 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for an update on the California Adult Education Course Approvals Process. My name is Renee Collins, Director of Adult Education at Sacramento County Office of Education. I direct the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network and the SCOE arm of the CAPE Technical Assistance Project. I want to take a moment to thank the team that helped update the course approval site from CDE, Dr. Carolyn Zachary, Dr. Corey Briola, and Neil Kelly. From the field, we have two OTAN subject matter experts, Yasenia Delgado-Lorenzo, and Francesca Wentworth. And from OTAN, we have our development team members, Yolanda O'Shea and Angela Steele. Today, we're going to review the changes that have been made to date to the site. However, please note that there will be more changes to come in the next year. So in the next hour, we will address the following agenda items. What are course approvals? What changes can you expect for 23-24? Why are the course approvals needed and who's required to do them? And how do you navigate the course approval site? Once we're done kind of giving you the logistics, we will Yolanda O'Shea will be taking us through a live demonstration of the course approval site on the online application and reporting site, and then we'll come back together for a Q&A to close out the hour. So what are course approvals? California school districts and county offices providing adult education must have their courses and course outlines approved by their local board and on record with the California Department of Education Adult Education Office. The course approval system has courses that may be selected and submitted from an approved course list. The course approval system is accessible through the California Adult Education online application and reporting site. The online application and reporting site, also referred to sometimes as the OAR site, requires a login. If your agency doesn't have a login to the OAR site, you can connect with your regional CDE consultant to request access to the system. And finally, very important to note that you do want to submit your course approvals on an annual basis. And if you're making any changes throughout the year to your course list, you will want to resubmit your course approval, so to make sure that you have all of your courses listed. The following education code governs the course approval process. The state superintendent of public instruction is required to establish procedures for K-12 and County Office of Education Adult Schools to secure course and program approval. This is part of education code section 52506. And this is really why the course approvals site was developed by the OTAN team and CDE. And then education code 51056, a course of study for each adult school shall be prepared under the governing board of the district maintaining the adult school and shall be subject to approval of the CDE if those classes are offered for state apportionment. So this education code has not changed, but we wanted to make you aware of it and know that the course approvals are really specific to our K-12 and County Office of Education Adult Schools. All right, some of the changes that you can expect for 23-24 include the first bullet, a change to how we refer to course approvals. If you've been with adult education for a number of years as I have, you may have heard of course approvals referred to as the A-22 or the A-22 process. We have retired this term and will now refer to the approval process as simply course approvals. In the case that there have been additions or changes to education code, or we just want to let you know what education code to reference, we have updated that language in the course approvals. There have been some updates to the approval letters. So later on in the webinar, Yolanda O'Shea will walk us through those approval letters. Probably the most significant changes are to the career and technical education program area. The courses are organized now by industry sector and pathway, and we'll talk about how to, how to identify the appropriate course codes and titles as you are selecting your courses. And then finally, you'll see some minor changes to the CTE course pages to reflect updated education code and practice. I apologize for the small print and the density of this slide, but we wanted to make sure to give you the full requirements and education code related to the job market study requirements. Before establishing a career technical education training program, education code 84906 requires a job market survey must be completed and the governing body of the member or the local consortium must determine if the proposed course or program is needed. Agencies should be looking at labor market information and work with their workforce development boards to establish a demand for the proposed CTE program. And Sorcha should also consider training programs that may already be available in the local area to avoid any duplication of services. Job market surveys do not apply to CTE courses that were offered prior to January 1st, 2022. So this is a relatively new change to the education code. Course outline requirements. Course outlines are recommended but not required before requesting course approval. If you are a BOA II funded agency and have a federal program monitoring visit or an FPM, your CBE consultant will request to see your course outlines on file. There are recommended components for course outlines that have not changed. They include the following six elements, the goals and purpose of the course, the performance objectives or competencies, the instructional strategies, the units of study and approximate hours to complete each unit, the evaluation process and the repetition policy telling how many times a student can retake a particular course. Some minor changes have been made to the approval letters that are generated once your consultant has received and approved your submitted course list. Your assigned CDE consultant will be the approver. Any questions during this process can be directed to your program consultant. The system is now fully electronic. So don't expect the signed letter as you maybe have in the past. If you choose to, and then finally, if you choose to make any changes to your courses throughout the school year, just know that you will need to submit a new course approval request. Okay, it's time to walk through what you will see on the course approval site itself. This website is caadultedreporting.org or C-A-A-D-U-L-T-E-D-R-E-P-O-R-T-I-N-G.org. That's our online application and reporting site. So to log into the, so first you're going to want to log into the OAR site. And then on the navigation bar here, you can see course approvals under the red arrow. So you'll want to click on course approvals to be able to enter that area. Anyone assigned by the authorizer at your agency is able to access course approvals. If your agency has not had previous access, users will need to be set up via course approval form that your CDE program consultants will have. Once you're logged into the system, you'll see a navigation bar on the left. And the home button, this is where you will see an overview of the requirements for course approvals. Under select courses, you will be able to select the current fiscal year. In our case, it's 2324. And then you will be able to go into the area where you will select your courses. Once you select your courses, you can review your course list. And if you need to make any edits, you can make it directly from this page. And then finally, request approval. So you will want to make sure that you click the button that says submit the list for CDE approval. If you do not click the button, your consultant will not receive it or be able to approve it. And then finally, once it is approved, you will be able to go to this tab, approval letters in order to access the electronic version of the approval letter. You can download the letter or email it to yourself. You will also be able to see any previous letters from prior years. So now we're going to get into the, to how to select the appropriate courses. And as there have been no updates to the academic courses, we're really not going to focus there today. We're going to focus more on how to choose the correct career and technical education course. But you can see in the image on the left of the image is the academics, adult basic education, adult secondary education or high school, civic engagement and ASC electives and English as a second language. In order to select those courses, you would just click on the academic area that you want to add courses. And then you will follow a very similar method to what we're going to be walking through with the career and technical education courses. We have not made any updates to the academics this year, but it is our plan to make some changes and updates heading into next year. So you can expect to have an update to this webinar in the coming year. So let's really focus on the right side of the image where it lists the career technical education industry sectors. And I'm going to walk through really how we're going to go about selecting these courses. So once you select the year 23, 24, you're going to choose the appropriate industry sector. Perhaps you have a course in building trades and construction or you have a course in health science and medical technology. You will click on the appropriate industry sector and then once in you will choose the pathway that's associated to your course and then you will be able to break it down even further and choose the course that is most appropriate. Under each pathway, you're going to be required to select when you've done a job market study. So remember there's that new education code that you must have a job market study prior to starting a new program. So we're going to ask you to complete some information related to that. You will also have to indicate the job titles that this course will prepare students for, the licensure type or certification that you're preparing students for. And then we'll talk about, and then you'll have to choose the specific course whether it be an introductory, intermediate or advanced course. So here we're within a medical assistant course. We're looking at the health science and medical technology industry sector or program area. And you need to mark when you have just most recently done the job market study, perhaps this 2023, the current year or perhaps you did a job market study maybe two or three years ago when you started a program in the past. You will want, if your program is new this year you will want to check the box that says new program for 2324 under job titles. You want to select at least one. You must select at least one or you will not be able to continue. And then, oops, I'm sorry. And then also under certification and licensure you must select at least one license that you're preparing students for with your course. Okay, this is a larger view of the CTE page. Again, we've got the job market study at the top. You'll notice there's a little circle with an eye in it throughout the document. All of these eyes are additional information. So if you were to click on job market study for example, you would see more about the requirements for having to list the year that you did a job market study. Or for example, if you come down to intermediate child development and you clicked on the eye you would be able to get a description of that course. So don't ignore the eyes if you have additional questions. But again, job titles, select at least one certification licensure, select at least one. You will want to select your course number here after you have determined what it's going to be. And then you will also have to indicate your most recent year that course outline has been developed or updated. But you will not have to submit that course outline on the course approvals. You just want to make sure that you retain a course outline in your files and your system at your site. So that when, if and when you have an FPM visit especially for the we are two folks that you will be prepared. So when you go into the course approval system this year you'll notice that the course titles have been simplified. Courses under each pathway are now divided only into three courses. An introductory course which is an overview of the pathway. A concentrated course which is the intermediate level course or courses. And then capstone course is the advanced level that leads to licensure. So many of our agencies we have short-term CTE that generally doesn't take more than a year to complete and must lead to licensure of some type or certification. So many of our courses are going to be considered capstone courses but let's take a look at the image here on the right. We have two pathways that are listed under the health science and medical technology industry sector. We're seeing mental and behavioral health and biotechnology you see the simplified course structure introduction to mental and behavioral health intermediate mental and behavioral health and advanced mental and behavioral health. If you know that you have a course that ends in some type of licensure or certification you are going to choose this course. This is the course that you are offering but maybe you have two or three courses that lead to that capstone course where you're going to get certification then maybe you will have an introduction to mental and behavioral health as your course number one intermediate mental and behavioral health as course number two. And then once the students are at the point where they're ready to get their certification you would have the advanced mental and behavioral health course. I wanted to let you know about two resources that are very helpful in helping you determine which industry sector and pathway that your course belongs to. So the first resource is the CTE model curriculum standards. The standards and framework identify all of the 15 industry sectors within California and then it breaks it down further into the pathways and the standards for each pathway. So the way that I would use this resource is you take your course outline or your course objectives. You look at the model standards and you try to choose the pathway industry sector and pathway that most closely aligned to the objectives in your course. And then the other document on the right the career technical education course code definitions by sectors and pathways. This is the full list of codes, titles, definitions. It's really what you're going to see in the course approval site, but it's in one document that you may find useful to look at it in a slightly different manner. So these are great resources for you. So I would encourage you to keep them handy. So we've completed the selection of our courses and we're going to review the course list. This is the review page you can see on the right that you have an opportunity to edit. If you do need to edit something you can just click right there in the box and it will take you directly to the page where you can make your edits. And then once you've reviewed you will want to submit your course list to CDE. So this is the blue button that I was talking about make sure that you click submit course list to CDE for approval. Another thing that we just really want to emphasize is that anytime you add classes even throughout the year you should be resubmit your list to CDE. And then here, once approved you'll have access to the electronic copy of your approval letter. As shown in the slide you'll also be able to see approval letters from prior years. And you can download it or you can email it to yourself. So at this time I'm going to stop my sharing and I'm going to invite Yolanda O'Shea to walk us through a live demonstration of the course approvals. And then we'll come back and answer any questions you might have. Okay, good afternoon everybody. Renee, feel free to interject anytime you have something to add. This is the page you will come to on the California Adult Ed Reporting site. It is where you will log in. But before we log in I want to direct your attention into this link down here on the right-hand side which says California Course Approvals. And then again click on the approved course list and this will take you to the entire course list of all the currently approved courses. We start with the academics and move on through the CTE courses. It's extensive. It's also searchable. If you click on, sorry, search a course by name or number. You can put your search term in. Let's search for aiming and we get introduction to games and simulation. It will search the course title and the description. So you should be able to find what you're looking for that way. See if we go back to the homepage. You, if you are an agency who has not had access to course approvals in the past you can contact your CTE regional consultant at the email and number in this little blue box and they will help you get set up. Once you log into the system this is the homepage. This is the homepage for the entire OAR the online application and reporting site. You'll want to select course approvals from the green banner and that will take you to the course approval system. The top blue bar on this page will give you the status of your course approval request. It will either say you're not approved for this fiscal year or your request has been sent to CTE and is waiting their attention or you've not been approved. It will give you some sort of status on your request. It also gives you a very general sort of directions on how to complete the request. It mentions the sea beds and some resources on where to get information but also it tells you the name of your particular CTE regional consultant and how to contact that regional consultant. It also gives you the general number for CTE. Now, if you're doing your course approval for this year you can select this big blue button right here but you can actually do a course approval for a previously year if you have a need by selecting the select courses link on the left. We're gonna focus on this year so we're gonna click the big blue button and it will take us to the program areas page. On the left are all your academics. Those have not changed this year. There's exactly as they were for the last, I'm not sure, 10 years or so and selecting courses for the academics is very simple. You select your program area, you select the courses that you want to request approval for by checking the box next to the course number and you select a year for your most recent course outline. Select by clicking on little I you get a brief description of the course and by selecting the I under the course outline you get some information on what's required of a course outline. Let's get rid of that, there we go. Okay, so you're gonna select all the courses that you want to select in any given program area and then once you've made your selections you're gonna scroll all the way to the bottom and save my selections. If you don't select the save my selections button nothing will be saved. So we select that and it takes us back to the program area selection area and you can select another program area. Now the CTE courses require a little bit more information. We'll need to have a job market study select the year for your job market study for this particular program area. If you have any questions again the I gives you the information that you may need. If you click on an I and it doesn't give you the information you're looking for contact your CTE regional consultant and they should be able to answer your questions for you. If this is a new program for your agency this year you'll want to let them know by selecting the checkbox next to new program and then you will be required to select at least one job title and one certification. Again, the eyes in those areas will give you some information on those. And then the rest of it is the same as it is for the academics. Select the courses that you want. Select the year for your course outline. Select all of the courses that you will be offering and then save your selections. If for some reason you forgot your finger slip the mouse slipped or something and you forget to check a box in either job titles or certification or you forget to include a course outline year it will not let you progress. It'll just bring you right back to this page with an error message telling you that you must have at least one certification or one job title or you forgot your course outline or whatever it is that you forgot to do. It won't make you guess it'll tell you what to do and then you save your selections and move on to the next area. So all of the CTE courses are going to look basically the same. You make your selections and then save those selections down here. There we go. Now, once you've made all the selections that you're going to make you go to your review course list select this fiscal year and it will give you a list of all the courses that you selected. It gives you the course name, the course number, the course outline year. In the CTE courses it will tell us the job market study date and whether or not it's a new program. Also, if you need to make a change you selected fundamentals of art but you didn't really mean to do that. Select edit and it takes you right back to that page and you deselect by deselecting the course number and deselecting the course outline year and then you save your changes again and then we can go back and review that course list again. Make sure it's exactly as you want it. You can add and subtract courses any time you want. All year long the system doesn't close except at the switch of the fiscal year for a couple of days. To request approval once you have your course list the way you want it we click on the request approval link and you must click this big blue button. By doing so it sends an email to your CTE regional consultant and they will know to go check the system and approve your request. Now, if we go back to the homepage now it will tell you that your course approval for this fiscal year is awaiting CTE action. Please check back later and when it receives that action this message will change and it will tell you what their decision was. To view current or past approval letters you just click on the link for that and it tells you the fiscal year and it gives you a link to the actual letter. This is what the letter looks like. It's in PDF format. It tells you the date of the approval and it tells you who it was sent to your CDS code who at the CTE office is responsible for your course approvals and how to contact that person and then it gives you a list of every course that you have received approval for the course number, the name, the course outline year and the study date and it gives you again an ad code that is referring to course outlines and I think that is it. Renee, do you have anything to add? I don't. That was great. Great recap. Thank you, Yolanda.