Your monthly update on all things assessment

Fall Into CTE

October brings fall weather to Mississippi and marks the season when students and educators hit their stride with CTE classes and educational projects. It is also a great time to reflect and adjust your instruction to get your students where they need to be prior to the holiday season.

The assessment team is making the final push to prepare for the fall and spring testing periods. These efforts typically encompass updating manuals, presentations, assessments and other training materials.

A few new things have happened for our group. We moved Test Coordinator Training to the fall and increased the number of national certification exams. We feel these changes will not only prove beneficial to CTE educators, but also CTE students.

For our educational technology focus of the month, I will highlight a tool I just started using with my presentations and another celebrated as one of 2021’s hottest educational tech tools.

• Slido: I love using this free tool to promote viewer engagement in remote or in-person presentations. The product easily embeds into Google or Microsoft presentations. I have found the learning curve for the presenter and attendees is very low. One of the things I like best is one link can work for multiple questions or polls throughout your presentation.
• Blooket: This is a classroom review game that helps teachers increase engagement inside and outside the classroom. One application I see for CTE is to create a game around common terminology and scenarios covered during the courses in the CTE pathway. Students would join the game you created and race each other to the finish line!

If you have CTE colleagues unfamiliar with this newsletter, please share our Assessment Minute page on the RCU website with others who may want to subscribe or catch up on recent issues. I hope this month goes well for each of you!

Sean Owen, PhD

Assistant Director of Research Development and Strategic Initiatives

If your CTE center has a new director or 

testing coordinator for the 2021-2022 school year, please 

let us know by submitting a Help Desk ticket with the

name and contact information of this new hire.

Test Coordinator Training

We are preparing for Test Coordinator Training and are excited to finally see you all face-to-face again at our one-day trainings in Hattiesburg (Oct. 19) and Starkville (Nov. 2). Many of you have registered, but if you have not, there is still time! The deadline to register is 5 p.m. Oct. 12.

To register for Hattiesburg, Oct. 19, click here.

To register for Starkville, Nov. 2, click here.

In both locations, we will have a session for new test coordinators from 8-9 a.m. Sessions for all other attendees will begin at 9 a.m., and we will close out the day at 2:30 p.m.

Due to purchasing processes for national certification vouchers, roster upload into the RCU portal will now need to take place in the fall. We will walk you through this process at Test Coordinator Training and will have staff members in place to help if you have any trouble or questions. Make plans to have your roster spreadsheet accessible at Test Coordinator Training, but do not attempt to upload your spring testers before Test Coordinator Training. You will have an opportunity in the spring to make minor edits to your rosters before the spring testing window opens.

Important Dates

To view a full calendar, visit the MS-CPAS resources page and log in to the RCU website.

MS-CPAS

If your district tests in the fall, make sure to upload your rosters during the fall submission window so that practice tests are made available to your students. Spring testers will not have access to practice tests until the spring practice test window.

Some pathways that took an MS-CPAS last year have transitioned to a national certification. Please make sure to look at the section below to see if you have a new national certification. You can also use Appendix A in the “CTE Testing Manual” to find this information.

National Certifications

New Certifications:

As a reminder, several pathways are transitioning to new national certifications this school year. The pathways that will take new certifications are:

• Advanced Manufacturing (Y1)
• Architecture and Drafting (Y2)
• Business, Marketing, and Finance (Y2)
• Engineering (Y2)
• Information Technology (Y1 & Y2)
• Metal Fabrication (Y1)

More information about each of these certifications can be found on the Student Certifications page of the RCU website. The “2021-2022 National Certifications Manual” can be found under the General Certification Resources tab, and survival guides (along with other helpful resources) for each certification can be found under the Certification Tools tab.

Fall Testing Option:

Any student that will take a certification in the fall window (this request had to be submitted by Sept. 15) will need to be uploaded into the RCU portal during the fall submission period. The deadline to upload these students into the RCU portal is Oct. 8. All vouchers for these fall testers have been purchased. If you have fall certification testers, you should begin to use the survival guides on our website to complete the procedures required by each certification company.

SolidWorks:

SolidWorks is available for all districts that selected this option for their end-of-year national certification. All instructors using SolidWorks should have received an email with directions to download the software last week. Please reach out to the Help Desk if you did not receive this information and will be using SolidWorks for the 2021-2022 school year.

NCCER Module Testing:

Reminder: If you have a new student, the student must be added to the correct group, and that group would then need to be added to each module going forward.

As always, if you have a question or need assistance, please reach out to us by sending a Help Desk ticket or by calling 662.325.2510.

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