Category: Professional Development

The Future of Education Stacks Up

The working world spins faster and faster, and the skills and needs of industries evolve constantly. On average, an American worker will change careers three to seven times and have up to twelve jobs over their working life.

New learning solutions such as stackable credentials have emerged to keep up with the changes.

The U.S. Department of Labor defines “stackable credentials” as a “sequence of credentials that can be accumulated over time to build up an individual’s qualifications and help that individual move along a career pathway to further education and different responsibilities, and potentially higher-paying jobs.” Learners progress along a structured pathway in key industries or disciplines to earn certificates, which they can stack vertically or horizontally like building blocks to the future and their career aspirations.

Vertical stacking occurs when an individual earns a certificate that leads to an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. Horizontal stacking takes place when an individual earns two short-term credit or noncredit certificates within a specified time frame (typically between several months and a year of coursework and training to complete).

Stackable credentials offer many advantages to today’s learners. Learners may:

  • Affordably explore new career or industry opportunities while earning a valuable credential.
  • Fill in knowledge gaps by staying current with the latest technologies and trends.
  • Benefit from an intentional curriculum with direct relevance to the workplace.

The promise of stackable credentials also has wider sociological impacts. According to a 2023 study by RAND, low-income certificate-earners were more likely to stack credentials than were middle- or high-income certificate-earners, which means the availability of stackable credentials or certificate programs improves access to education.

In addition, low-income certificate-earners who stacked vertically were more likely to advance to a middle-income wage than non-stacking low-income certificate-earners. Stackable credentials can contribute to the goal of upward mobility, especially for learners who find the traditional route to postsecondary education out of reach.

Employers can leverage stackable credentials during individualized employee conversations about their career goals. Survey data from the 2023 State of the Workforce Engagement Trends by Workforce Science Associates points to the need for employees to “see a clear path to realize their career goals.” Aligning workplace competencies with certificate programs may be a positive and achievable way for employers to develop and promote from within.

The value of training for employees and employers is unassailable with Indeed identifying a cascade of benefits, including increased productivity and performance, improved knowledge of policies and goals, enhanced customer valuation, better workplace environment and boosted morale.

Successful examples of stackable credentials range across industries and are particularly prevalent in healthcare, manufacturing, business and management and engineering technology.

UW-Green Bay embraces stackable credentials by creating certificate programs encompassing undergraduate credit, graduate credit and noncredit, in categories such as business, education, government, nonprofit, health and human services, leadership, workforce, science and engineering, specialist interest, sustainability, talent and recruitment.

The university understands that education must be adaptable, offering agile learning solutions that meet industry and employees ready for the many career turns they may face.

Sources:
U.S. Department of Labor https://www.dol.gov/

“Do Low-Income Students Benefit from Stacking Credentials?” RAND, April 13, 2023. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA2484-2.html

“2023 State of the Workforce Engagement Trends,” SHRM, offered by Workforce Science Associates (WSA), https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/white-papers/wsa-2023-state-of-the-workforce-engagement-trends

A Focus on Mental Health & Well-Being

There is a growing focus on mental health and well-being in today’s workplaces as leaders recognize its importance to employee resilience, retention and engagement. You can advocate within your organization for mental health friendly policies and awareness training for managers and supervisors. But you can also take steps to protect your own mental health by creating time to unplug and relax. Maybe by getting out in nature. Maybe by socializing with friends. Or maybe by utilizing an app for therapy or mindfulness. Here are some highly-rated apps to help you protect your mental health and well-being as we head into the holidays next week.

1. BetterHelp
Type: Online Therapy
Features: Offers video, audio, and chat therapy with licensed professionals. Flexible scheduling and unlimited messaging are available.
Cost: Approximately $70-$100 per week.

2. Talkspace
Type: Online Therapy
Features: Provides individual, couples, and teen therapy. Accepts insurance and offers virtual psychiatry.
Cost: $69-$109 per week for therapy.

3. Headspace
Type: Mindfulness and Meditation
Features: Offers guided meditations, sleep aids, and mindfulness exercises tailored to various topics like stress and anxiety.
Cost: $12.99/month or $94.99/year.

4. Calm
Type: Relaxation and Sleep
Features: Includes sleep stories, meditation sessions, and masterclasses on various wellness topics.
Cost: $12.99/month or $59.99/year.

5. Insight Timer
Type: Meditation
Features: A free app with thousands of guided meditations and a meditation timer for self-guided sessions.
Cost: Free, with optional premium features.

6. Worry Watch
Type: Anxiety Management
Features: Helps users track their worries and provides insights into patterns and triggers.
Cost: Free.

7. MoodKit
Type: Mood Tracking
Features: Offers tools for tracking mood, engaging in activities, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques.
Cost: One-time purchase of around $4.993.

8. 7 Cups
Type: Emotional Support
Features: Provides free, anonymous chat with trained listeners and licensed therapists.
Cost: Free for chat support; therapy sessions are paid.

Research for this blog post has been aided by Microsoft Co-Pilot.

Upskilling, Reskilling & New-Skilling

As the pace of change continues to escalate, one of the hottest workplace training trends right now is upskilling, reskilling and new-skilling. But what do each of these concepts mean?

Upskilling involves enhancing an employee’s existing skills to help them advance in their current role or field. This can include learning new technologies, improving soft skills or gaining advanced knowledge in a specific area. The goal is to keep employees competitive and prepared for future challenges within their current career path.

Reskilling, on the other hand, involves training employees in new skills so they can transition to different roles within the organization. This is particularly useful when certain job roles become obsolete or when the company needs to pivot to new business areas.

New-skilling is an emerging concept that focuses on a continuous learning mindset, enabling organizations and employees to stay agile and adaptable in the face of evolving challenges. Unlike upskilling and reskilling, which are often targeted at specific skills or roles, new-skilling emphasizes a broader, ongoing approach to learning and development.

The Division of Continuing Education and Workforce Training at UW-Green Bay is committed to upskilling, reskill and new-skilling with a goal of providing practical, locally-focused education that responds to the specific career and workforce needs.

This post was written with research assistance from Microsoft Co-pilot and Indeed.

How to Be Happy at Work

Most of us spend at least eight hours a day at work, so why not be happy? The key to being happy at work is developing a combination of personal strategy with taking advantage of available resources.

We offer three quick tips:

  • Set clear goals for yourself: Having clear, achievable goals
    can provide a sense of purpose and direction in your work.
    Break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable steps to
    make progress more visible and rewarding (Symonds Research).
  • Seek Feedback and Growth Opportunities: Regularly seek
    feedback from colleagues and supervisors to understand areas of improvement and recognize your strengths. Engage in professional development opportunities to advance your skills and career (Valamis).
  • Build Positive Relationships: Cultivate positive relationships
    with your colleagues. Strong workplace friendships can provide support, increase job satisfaction, and create a more enjoyable work environment (Thirst).

Opportunity for Growth Starts with You

In today’s dynamic workforce landscape, professional development has become a vital tool for organizations to stay competitive and ensure employee retention and growth. However, the success of these programs doesn’t solely rely on their design or the expertise of trainers; the participant’s willingness to learn can play a pivotal role in their effectiveness. It’s the individuals’ enthusiasm, engagement, and proactive approach that turn training into a transformative experience.

Working in the training and development industry, it can be interesting to see how people find their way into professional development opportunities. There are those who are motivated intrinsically, looking to expand their knowledge and skills for their own benefit. And then there are those extrinsically motivated, looking for a raise, a promotion, or more prestige from their employer or colleagues. People will come by their own choice, by recommendation, or required by their organization. Sometimes they come alone, others with their team, or as a group representing an organization. People from all walks of life may find their way into professional development opportunities, but there is one thing they all have in common: the opportunity to grow from the experience lies within each of them.

You might find yourself intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, or maybe both, but you hold the key. Whether it is seeking personal growth, a promotion, or representing an organization that wants to stay on top of their industry, a willingness to learn is the driving force behind finding success. And so, seize the opportunities before you, or find the means to show others the opportunities that could propel them towards their own goals and aspirations.

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Workforce Training Division is continuously looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for its clients. Be sure to check out the continuing education website, and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see! https://www.uwgb.edu/continuing-education/

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Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist

Social Media for Professional Development

Social media often gets a bad reputation for being a place filled with unnecessary or unhealthy communication. However, social media can also provide opportunities for connections across great distances and allow for the exchange of ideas from people of all walks of life and cultures. Today I want to share just a few ideas for what you can do to make new connections or find more content to build your professional social media skills up!

    1. #Hashtags – Searching for a certain phrase using a hashtag, such as #communicationskills or #servantleadership, is a great way to find content and people who are interested in those topics! In some cases, you can even follow certain hashtags to have content brought directly to your social media page, which makes the content more personalized but allows you to see a more diverse group of people’s posts.
    2. Association of… – By searching for “Association of…” followed by the topic you are interested in you could be introduced to a number of groups and organizations that are doing amazing things in your area of interest, but may not be in your region or even county! This could be a great way to get new ideas or new perspectives, and it works for all sorts of phrases such as “Organization of…”, “Club for…”, etc.
    3. Don’t be afraid to comment – Once you find a page, group, or organization that you are interested in, don’t be afraid to comment on their posts! This shows others in the community that you are interested, which can lead to additional connections. It also can boost the number of posts that you see on your page about the topics you enjoy.

Social media provides an exceptional way to connect with new people, new ideas, and new places in professional development. Take some time to look at how you are interacting with your social media pages and learn how you can expand your learning environment!

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Community Engagement Division is continuously looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for its clients. Be sure to check out the CECE website below, and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see! https://www.uwgb.edu/continuing-education/

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Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist

Goal Setting Strategies for Anytime!

As much as I hate to say it, summer is going to come to a close soon. For many people that means a return to school, less time with the family and more time in the office, but it doesn’t have to include a lack of planning! Goal setting shouldn’t be a yearly process meant for New Year’s resolutions, or annual strategic planning sessions. Having a good process for goal setting can be used anytime, whether you are revisiting once a year, month, or whenever makes sense. Here are a few strategies you can use to start creating goals that you can count on:

    1. SMART Goals have received a ton of attention, and for good reason! The process of creating a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely (SMART) leads to a great foundation of information for you to create action steps from. There are tons of websites and free resources dedicated to creating SMART goals as well, including this great article on MindTools.com
    2. A similar process to SMART goals is the PACT method. The acronym stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable and is great for long-term personal goals. For more information about the PACT method, check out this article from the National Society of Leadership and Success.
    3. A final alternative goal setting method is the “5 W’s” technique. This process requires you to start with a simple idea of your goal, then asking yourself a series of questions based on the five W questions: Who, What, Where, When and Why. Answering questions based on these ideas can do wonders to solidify how you will approach your goals in the future. This article from LinkedIn does a great job of explaining questions you can ask yourself to get started!

There isn’t one goal setting process that’s better than another, it all depends on your goals and what makes the most sense for you. However, taking the time to set your goals, and planning for reflection and revision, goes a long way towards accomplishing them!

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Community Engagement Division (CECE) is always looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for our clients. Be sure to check out the CECE website below, and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see! https://www.uwgb.edu/continuing-education/

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Ways to Effectively Set and Achieve Your Goals

Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist

Ending is the New Beginning: How to End Gracefully

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, over 7.5 million Americans will be graduating from high school or with a post-secondary degree this year. That is 7.5 million Americans transitioning into the next step in their personal and professional lives! And that’s just in a formal educational setting. The end of one journey can be just as confusing and challenging as beginning a new one, but hopefully with some thoughtful actions the process becomes one of enthusiasm and not anxiety. Here are some thoughts on graceful endings.

    1. Take a deep breath, you’ve earned it! Relax for a moment and reflect on what you have accomplished without having to consider next steps. At this moment you have reached a peak, and that’s worth recognizing.
    2. Take stock in the current you. Let’s flip the classic interview question and change it to, “Where did you see yourself five years ago?” How did you define yourself when the journey began, and what has changed?
    3. Take-Aways. Now that you’ve reached this ending, what are you taking with you? Whether it’s physical, emotional or intellectual, you’ve got a whole new set of tools and experiences for the next step.

Every year millions of people find themselves at the end of one journey, but not everyone knows how to handle that. Once you’ve reached an ending, it’s natural to want to start the next step, even if that next step is to not start something new at all! Taking the time to find a graceful ending can help the transition process and make you feel even more prepared for your future endeavors. So, the next time you wrap up that project, complete that class, or decide it’s time to move on to your next adventure, make the ending just as good as your new beginning!

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Community Engagement Division (CECE) is continuously looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for its clients. Be sure to check out the CECE website below, and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see! https://www.uwgb.edu/continuing-education/

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Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist

Design Your Solution

Using Design Thinking for Just About Anything

The idea of “design thinking” isn’t a new one, but the process can be used in a much larger scheme of situations than most people give it credit for. People in marketing, research, training and development, and other similar positions might be more familiar with the term, but why stop there? What if we stopped looking for solutions and started designing them in general? Here is a simple way of looking at the “Design Thinking Process” that can be applied to just about any situation:

Step One: Discover – One of the keys of design thinking is to put the end-user first. Whether that is your team of HR professionals or your children, look for information you can use to better understand the situation. Some ways to do this include conducting interviews, checking out the competition, and gathering data for analysis.

Step Two: Define – This is where you determine what the pieces of the solution might look like. Once all of that information from step one is gathered, now you can get creative and determine how to approach the situation. This step could include creating problem statements or experience maps, writing out examples of what the final solution could and should include.

Step Three: Ideate – Now that we know what we want, let’s take the next step and look for ways to achieve it. This step is when specific ways to solve the problem or address the situation are decided. Think about brainstorming sessions, creating blueprints, or even storyboards.

Step Four: Prototype – This is where we get our hands dirty. Most people want to jump to a possible solution right away, but without steps one through three, we’re letting intuition and guesswork control the process. Having a well-crafted way for people to practice or simulate the final solution is what makes this step critical, before they ever see it. Examples include mockups, test webpages and interactive presentations.

Step Five: Test – Here is the trick to step five: You should be asking for feedback throughout the whole process from your stakeholders. Include them in the process from the beginning, so that by this point you are validating what others have said before, not identifying critical elements this late in the process. Testing your design can look a lot like step one with interviews and observations, data analytics and metrics.

Whether you are designing a new performance review process or trying to decide where to go on vacation next, design thinking can be a useful tool for people to keep in mind. Following the process can increase confidence in your work and among those most impacted by the results. So, stop searching for solutions and start designing them!

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Community Engagement Division is continuously looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for its clients. Be sure to check out the CECE website below, and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see! https://www.uwgb.edu/continuing-education/

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Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist
User Experience Learning at https://uxhints.com/.

What ChatGPT Can Do For Your Organization?

If you haven’t heard about ChatGPT yet, allow me to introduce you to one of the most talked about artificial intelligence programs in the world. This program, a chatbot that launched in late 2022, has taken the world by storm with advanced language usage and an ability to “learn” from your previous answers to create even more effective responses. While quite a bit of the press has focused on the education space, the uses for a program like ChatGPT have significant value for other industries as well. Here are some ways that ChatGPT has been used to either create or improve processes across organizations:

    • Creating advertising plans and writing content for social media or marketing purposes.
    • Developing coding, data analytics and cybersecurity suggestions.
    • Acting as a recruiter and responding to questions and providing information that a potential candidate might ask for.
    • Gaining a second opinion by gathering information on a subject and explaining the various intricacies.

ChatGPT can be used for a myriad of processes within an organization. However it is important to recognize its limitations as well. The program only uses data through 2021 and is not able to incorporate real-time information for topics such as finance. It also cannot guarantee that any responses it generates is 100% accurate and therefore should be considered a resource requiring additional due diligence. Yet ChatGPT can still be a powerful tool for generating ideas and creating process improvements. Don’t believe me? Here is what ChatGPT told me when I asked how businesses can use it:

“A business can use ChatGPT to improve customer service, sales and content creation, resulting in saved time and resources, as well as providing more personalized, efficient and accurate interactions with customers and clients. ChatGPT can assist internal employees by automating repetitive tasks, providing real-time data and insights and allowing for more efficient and effective processes, thus freeing up employees’ time to focus on more important and value-added activities.”

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UW-Green Bay’s Continuing Education and Community Engagement Division is proactively looking for ways to stay on the cutting edge of professional development for its clients. Be sure to check out the CECE website and reach out if you have ideas for new content you want to see!

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Sources:
ChatGPT– ChatGPT by OpenAI

Writing/Research Credit: Christopher Ledvina, UW-Green Bay Business Development Specialist