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Arkansas Department of Education

Division of Elementary and Secondary Education

Division of Career and Technical Education

ACT WorkKeys Curriculum Training

September 2021

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WorkKeys Curriculum Training Goals

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WorkKeys Curriculum Overview
WorkKeys Curriculum Login
Understanding User Roles
How to Assign User Roles
Understanding Student Setup
Understanding the Reporting Dashboard
Viewing and Exporting Reports

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WorkKeys Curriculum Overview

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The WorkKeys Curriculum is a pre-WorkKeys instructional tool that helps prepare students for assessments in:

Workplace Documents
Applied Math
Graphic Literacy

The curriculum also includes tools for Essential Skills, which are soft skills.

The WorkKeys Curriculum is a pre-WorkKeys instructional tool that helps prepare students for the assessments. Workplace Documents, Applied Math, and Graphic Literacy are all National Career Readiness Certificate aligned courses. Each course is composed of a placement quiz, lessons, practice questions, and level quizzes. A student begins working at the appropriate level in the course based on their predicted score on the placement quiz.

The curriculum can be placed into several different courses that are already being offered. Some suggested courses were listed on the Commissioner’s Memo and include: All CTE Courses, College and Career Readiness, Work Ready, JAG Program, advisory period, student enrichment. Applied Math and Graphic Literacy Courses could be offered in Technical Math for College and Career. Workplace Documents Courses could be offered in Critical Reading I and II, Reading and Writing for Business Professions, Reading and Writing for Trade Industry Professions, and Reading and Writing for STEM Professions.

Essential Skills are additional courses that may be assigned to allow students to practice soft skills for the workplace, such as: team building, communication, customer service, workplace discipline, and more. Ultimately, it is a local decision as to how the curriculum is implemented or integrated into other areas of study.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Overview

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The curriculum is optional, but highly recommended. It prepares students for the skills essential to succeed at higher levels on the ACT WorkKeys Assessments.

The curriculum is free to students in grades 10-12 as part of the state contract under ADE.

ACT WorkKeys Curriculum Overview

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WorkKeys Curriculum Overview (cont.)

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The curriculum window is from August 30, 2021 – June 30, 2022.
ACT WorkKeys Curriculum online platform is called BenchPrep.

Login credentials for access to this portal were sent to DTCs on August 30, 2021 from ACT.

ACT WorkKeys Assessment online platform is called Validus.

Login credentials for access to this portal will be sent to DTCs on September 22, 2021 from ACT.

NOTE: Training will be provided on ACT WorkKeys Assessments, including Validus, in October.

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WorkKeys Curriculum

Login Screen

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Select Sign in.
Type assigned email from ACT login credentials.
Click Reset Password to setup your own password.

https://workkeyscurriculum.act.org/

You will be responsible for setting up your password for this account. ACT will provide your username, which is your email address, and the url for the login page in their email sent on August 30. You set up a password by selecting “Reset Password”. You will then be prompted to follow the necessary steps to set your password. Once other admin and instructor accounts are created, they will follow the same process to set their password.

We recommend that you reach out to your JAG and CTE teachers to gather a list of any personnel on staff that has experience with the curriculum and assessment. Many of these teachers used WorkKeys under a previous state contract with ADWS. Some of the set up requirements and assessment policies will be different but the BenchPrep and Validus portals have not changed.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Roles

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roles of building TCs,

roles of DTC

role of state

role of teacher

Roles for the ACT WorkKeys Curriculum portal include: instructor, institution admin, institution supervisor, district admin, district supervisor, and organization supervisor. The organization supervisor is held by state users.

District admin and district supervisor roles will allow access to create student, instructor, and admin accounts, view and export reports for each school, set default quiz attempts for each course, and create groups.

As a DTC, you will automatically be assigned the roles of district admin and district supervisor. This will give you district level access to all accounts within the portal. You may determine if you have building level test coordinators that need the roles of institution admin and institution supervisor. If so, you will have to create user accounts for those staff members. These roles will allow the same capabilities as district admin and district supervisor, but at building level instead of district level. Teachers and facilitators of the curriculum should have the role of instructor only.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Roles (cont.)

DTCs will be responsible for the oversight of all WorkKeys Curriculum and Assessments for your district.

You may designate responsibilities to those in building level positions to oversee setup within your schools.

Once the DTC logs in, they must set up any other admin accounts before they have access.
A user with district or institution admin will need to set a default quiz attempt limit for all courses. We recommend that this should be set at a maximum of 5.
WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guide: Uploading Instructors and Admins

Once again, DTCs will be assigned the role of District Admin and District Supervisor by ACT. It is important that you log in to the curriculum portal and assign designated personnel the appropriate roles for use. Ultimately, it is your decision how you choose to designate roles to staff members, but it should be noted that instructors and other admin will not be able to access the platform until after they have been loaded.

It is important that either the district admin or institution admin access the admin dashboard to set a default quiz attempt limit. This is automatically set at 20. This should be set to no higher than 5. If students need additional quiz attempts for a specific lesson, their instructor will be able to grant that permission. Steps on how to complete this task are provided in the FAQ Quick Guide.

The DTC or designated institution admin must upload students into BenchPrep, create groups within the school, and then add students and instructors into the corresponding groups. Please refer to the WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guide for instructions on how to upload instructors.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Roles (cont.)

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Provided by ACT in email with login credentials on September 1.

Give all three roles to building level test coordinators. Teachers will only have the role of instructor.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Student Setup

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The DTC will use the Cognos Report (APSCN WorkKeys Curriculum File) to create a CSV file and upload into the WorkKeys Curriculum portal.

Use a specific file name so that you are able to identify which report to upload.

Once the CSV file is uploaded, the DTC will select all courses under WorkKeys NCRC Aligned Courses with the EXCEPTION of SPANISH.

Any additional courses may be selected under Other WorkKeys Aligned Courses and Essential Skills Courses.

There is also an option for uploading individual students without using the cognos report.

As the DTC, you will upload students into the portal. In order to upload multiple students, you will need access to the cognos file pulled from Eschool. After downloading the cognos report, be sure to save it as a specific file name that is identifiable as a CSV file. For uploading students into the curriculum, you will need to verify that the document contains student emails, names, and passwords.

Once the CSV file has been uploaded, you will select which courses you would like to offer students. You may select all except Spanish courses which are listed under WorkKeys NCRC Aligned Courses. You may also choose to select any Other WorkKeys Aligned Courses or Essential SKills Courses.

There is also an option for uploading a single student. Please refer to the WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guide for instructions on how to upload students.

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WorkKeys Curriculum Student Setup

(cont.)

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Once students are uploaded into BenchPrep, they will need access to their login information.

Students will be able to change their passwords once they receive their login information.

Students and instructors will need to be put into groups by DTC or TC. This must be done before students log in to the portal.
WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guide: Uploading Students and Setting Up Groups

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WorkKeys Curriculum Student Setup

(cont.)

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If there is no student email address provided in eSchool, the Cognos report will generate one for students.

10-DigitSSID@workkeys.com

Students using the state generated email address will be able to reset their password within the BenchPrep portal.
Students using their eSchool provided email address will be able to reset their password by selecting the “reset” password option and following the necessary steps.
ALL student passwords will be generated as:

wk12345

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WorkKeys Curriculum Steps for Set Up

Step 1: DTC logs in and creates TC accounts
Step 2: Run Cognos Report to upload students into portal
Step 3: Create instructor accounts
Step 4: Create groups
Step 5: Assign instructors and students to groups
Step 6: Set default quiz limit

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WorkKeys Curriculum:

Reporting Dashboard

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The Reporting Dashboard provides access to instructors and institution supervisors. The available tools include:

Creating banner and in-app messages
Granting additional attempts on quizzes
Viewing and Exporting Reports (Analytics and Real-Time)

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WorkKeys Curriculum �Viewing Student Reports

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There are two options for viewing student reports under the Reporting Dashboard: Analytics and Real-Time.

Analytics Reports: instructors have permissions to view individual or group reports, this report is updated twice a day
Real-Time Reports: generates real-time data on student performance

All reports can be exported into a CSV file from the reporting dashboard.
WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guide: Viewing and Exporting Reports

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WorkKeys Curriculum

Student Transfer

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Students that have been working in the WorkKeys Curriculum and transfer districts will lose their progress.

BenchPrep does not have the functionality to move students and their course progress to a new school.

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WorkKeys Curriculum �Support and Contact Information

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Trinity Jones

Program Advisor

Arkansas Department of Education

Division of Elementary and Secondary Education

Office of Student Assessment

Four Capitol Mall, Room 301-B

Little Rock, AR 72201

Phone: (501) 682-0705

trinity.jones@ade.arkansas.gov

Mary Beck

Program Advisor

Arkansas Department of Education

Division of Career and Technical Education

Career Readiness/Work-Based Learning Office

Three Capitol Mall

Little Rock, AR 72201

Phone: (501) 682-4834

mary.beck@ade.arkansas.gov

ACT WorkKeys Curriculum Support

Hours of Operation

Monday-Friday 7:00 AM-7:00 PM CT excluding ACT holidays

Phone Number

877.842.6205

Email:

https://workkeyscurriculum.act.org/contact-support

WorkKeys Curriculum Quick Guides: All

Frequently Asked Questions