High-quality IET program design is responsive to student, industry, community needs and goals. Resources in this section support the intentional design and development of a program that meets the needs of local labor markets, provides a pathway to quality jobs, and advances equity, diversity, and inclusion in career pathways and IET programs.
Goals and Objectives
The resources in Goals and Objectives support the creation of a common vision and alignment with student and partner outcomes.
Compendium of Innovative Practices: Adult Education Bridge Programs and Integrated Education and Training (IET) Programs
Abt Associates (2021)
This compendium describes five innovative practices in bridge and integrated education and training (IET) programs as selected by the Advancing Innovation in Adult Education project.
Reflective Guide for the Design of Guided Pathways
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (2022)
This resource is a series of reflective guides for program design to ensure racial and social equity are included in the development and implementation of career pathways. Descriptions of practice are included to guide program design in the following areas: organizing and introducing programs by field of interest, improving new student intake and onboarding, expanding career and transfer advising to all students, and designing credit enrollment as an on-ramp to college.
IET Program and Professional Development Resources
American Institutes for Research (2024)
This video shares new resources for developing IET programs and introducing staff and partners to core IET program features. These resources include the ADVANCE IET repository of open education resources and a self-paced online course, ADVANCE IET: IET Fundamentals. In the course, presenters facilitate a discussion about how practitioners, program leaders, and professional developers can build program and staff capacity to design and deliver IET programs.
Connecting Jail-Based IET Programs to Career Pathways
American Institutes for Research (2024)
This video explores partnering with jails to design and deliver IET programs and explains how jail-based IET programs can connect learners to career pathways as their correctional status changes. Panelists share their partnership experiences and lessons learned from IET development and delivery.
Labor Market Information
The resources in Labor Market Information support the use of labor market information and leverage employer validation to create pathways to quality jobs.
Integrated Education and Training Design Toolkit and Train-the-Trainer Resources
When choosing the focus of your IET program, it is important to establish education and training opportunities that are relevant to the local labor market demand. Page 15 of the IET Toolkit offers the reader assistance in exploring regional workforce development needs and the local labor market. Examine Key Area #2 to learn more.
Using Labor Market Information to Improve Program and Credential Quality
Education and Employment Research Center, Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (2024)
This project landing web page focuses on how and why educational institutions are using labor market data. The project is intended to develop case studies with a range of institutions, including community colleges, four-year universities, and schools with a mix of liberal arts and workforce-oriented programs, to determine how and why they are using labor market data. The case studies will be followed by a national survey of colleges and universities in the project.
Career Pathways
The resources in Career Pathways support opportunities for students to advance to additional workforce training, postsecondary education, and employment in a career—all in alignment with guidance under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
Promising Practices for Integrated Education and Training Pathways to Postsecondary Education
American Institutes for Research (2023)
This publication highlights promising practices for how IET providers can connect IET programs to credit-bearing credentials and pathways to associate degrees.
Designing and Delivering Career Pathways at Community Colleges (Practice Guide)
National Center for Education Evaluation, Institute of Education Sciences (2021)
This practice guide provides community colleges with five specific recommendations for supporting occupational skills training through career pathways.
COABE Journal—Career Pathways Edition
Coalition on Adult Basic Education (2019)
This special edition of the COABE Journal highlights career pathways and workforce development.
What Works for Adult Learners: Lessons from Career Pathway Evaluations
University of Washington, Jobs for the Future (2019)
This report presents the results of a systematic examination of rigorous evaluation studies to determine what is known about the impact of career pathways on adults seeking to attain a living-wage career.
Defining On-Ramps to Adult Career Pathways
Center for Law and Social Policy (2017)
This report synthesizes survey and interview data with a limited literature review to identify key service model delivery components, system components, and barriers to implementing service delivery models.
Career Pathway Connections for Adult Learners: Moving the Needle on Service Integration
Maryland Department of Labor (2022)
This report was created to document the strategies, challenges, and best practices that emerged from a Maryland Department of Labor grant program (2018–2019) focused on expanding use of the career pathways model and increasing co-enrollment rates in WIOA Titles I and II. The report details how WIOA Title I and Title II providers collaborated to offer programming such as IET. The report provides statewide performance outcomes, high-level overviews of the individual projects implemented by local area grantees, and results of in-depth interviews conducted with the project teams involved in implementing career pathways projects.
Non-Degree Credential Quality: A Conceptual Framework to Guide Measurement
Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (2019)
This framework, which outlines how to define non-degree credential quality, focuses on four key elements: credential design, demonstrated competencies, market processes, and outcomes of value. The framework provides recommendations for key stakeholders to promote the measurement of non-degree credential quality.
Health Care Career Pathways and Adult English Language Learners
National Institute for Literacy (2011)
This report discusses healthcare workforce needs in entry-level, mid-level, and professional positions and profiles the changing American workforce, with a focus on adult immigrants and English language learners (ELLs), their workforce participation, and how adult ELLs could fill healthcare positions.
Outreach and Orientation
The resources in Outreach and Orientation support increased access to and success in IET programs, especially for historically underserved populations.
Why Equity Matters for Adult College Completion
Mathematica (2019)
This brief describes how Adult Promise program leaders and their partners are incorporating a racial equity focus into initiatives targeting adult learners through goal setting, outreach and recruitment, financial supports, and completion strategies.
The Playlists: Disability Resources for WIOA Practitioners
WorkforceGPS, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (2017)
The resource is a website with "playlists" that include links to videos, briefs, and other technical assistance resources to help adult educators, workforce development staff, and service agency providers collaborate on high-quality services for individuals with disabilities across the following topics: (1) Guidance for WIOA Programs, Service Providers, and Practitioners; (2) Including Individuals with Disabilities in Outreach and Recruitment; (3) Disability Etiquette and Effective Communication; (4) Physical Access; (5) Technology Access; (6) Employer Engagement Strategies to Recruit and Retain; (7) Partnerships; (8) Legislation; (9) Students; and (10) Veterans.
Wisconsin's Equity Informed Approach to Expanding Integrated Education and Training
Wisconsin Technical College System, Mid-State Technical College (2021)
This video recording of a Wisconsin Technical College System COABE webinar explores the data analysis, equity-centered policies, fiscal levers to address equity gaps, and professional development that Wisconsin has leveraged to promote IET innovation and expansion. Beginning with an overview of the Wisconsin system and of IET itself, the webinar then covers topics such as the value of IET, the essential connection with workforce training, short-term credentials, data-informed integrated supports, and IET as an equity driver. Discussed in the video is this system-wide equity report, which (1) describes the economic imperative to address inequity in college access and to support success for all students and (2) presents resources for assessing and addressing equity gaps at institutions.
Program Models
The resources in Program Models support the development of models for IET programs, including approaches to team teaching and structures for building student cohorts.
Integrated Education and Training: Implementing Programs in Diverse Contexts
New England Literacy Resource Center, National College Transition Network (2017)
This guide profiles eight diverse IET programs, providing inspiration, models, and lessons for adult educators as they plan or strengthen their own IET programs.
Integrated Education and Training (IET)
American Institutes for Research, San Diego Community College District (2017)
This policy brief summarizes teaching models that can be leveraged for IET programming, including a variety of co-teaching and alternating teaching models.
IET in Corrections Companion Guide
RTI International (2023)
This guide summarizes considerations, tools, and examples that can be used by state and facility administrators and instructors as they develop and implement IET programs in jails and prisons. It applies the key components of the Reentry Education Framework to the IET Design Toolkit’s approach to planning, designing, implementing, and evaluating IET programs.
Introduction to ICAPS IET Model One and Model Two
Illinois Community College Board (2019)
This webinar recording defines and compares two Illinois IET models, known as the Integrated Career & Academic Preparation System (ICAPS). It includes an overview of resources that can be used to develop either of the two ICAPS models. The resource includes a PDF of the session slides.
ICAPS Teacher Videos
Illinois Adult Education Professional Development Network (2022)
This series of teacher videos provides tips how to build and implement team teaching models in IET programming. Topics include navigating challenges, how to foster collaboration, and how team teaching benefits both students and teachers. These videos can be used for teacher recruitment for IET and also for communicating the benefits of collaborative/team teaching for instructors and learners.
I-BEST Team-Teaching Models: Learning Modules (and Corresponding Video Series)
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (2014)
The website defines team teaching and provides materials for self-guided or group learning around six research-based teaching models: traditional team teaching, collaborative teaching, complementary-supportive, parallel instruction, differentiated split class, and monitoring teacher. The videos provide classroom examples, along with instructor and student videos, for each of the six teaching models.
Integrated Education and Training (IET) Models of Implementation
California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project (2012)
This comprehensive video series focuses on two teaching models for IET programming: the co-teaching model and the alternating teacher model. Each series includes interviews with practitioners who share their perspectives and lessons learned. There is an additional video series that highlights several considerations in selecting an appropriate implementation model from the perspective of administrators.
Designing an Integrated Education and Training Program for English Language Learners at a Community-Based Literacy Organization
SIT Graduate Institute and World Education (2019)
This thesis highlights how staff at one community-based literacy organization in Virginia designed and implemented an IET program. The author describes legislation and policy around WIOA and IET and offers unit plans, lesson plans, and contextualized activities for a customer service IET program for English language learners.
Wisconsin Technical College System's Innovative Practices for Integrated Education and Training
Wisconsin Technical College System (2021)
This website contains resources curated by state staff in Wisconsin to support the development and expansion of IET.
Michigan's IET Planning Grant Guidance and Requirements
Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity & Workforce Development (2023)
This document serves as the IET grant guidance and requirements resource for Michigan. It provides a general overview of IET and WIOA and describes the resources needed for the development of IET programming. There are two embedded resources within the document: a program year planner and a program year syllabus planner. Because this is for state-specific grants, there are also guidelines that are unique to in-state providers applying to receive grant funds.
Virginia IET Checklist
Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center (2024)
This checklist, adapted from the ADVANCE IET Design Camp Toolkit and the Virginia IET Planning Tool, is a step-by-step guide for administrators, instructors, and partners to plan, develop, implement, and evaluate an IET program. Each item on the checklist is a clickable link to resources and tools that design teams can use to implement each step of the process.
Wisconsin IET Basic Design Camp: Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) Edition
Wisconsin Technical College System (2024)
This Wisconsin Technical College System web page resource functions as a repository of Wisconsin's IET Design Camp learning sessions, with the objective of helping local providers develop, design, and implement IET programs using IELCE activities and programs for English language learners. The learning session topics follow the topics covered in the IET Design Camp, and the sessions are supplemented by a variety of relevant linked resources.