Bismarck High School seniors Paul Offerman and Adam Frank spent a recent school day before winter break programming a robot.

They wanted the robot to move and stop when they clapped. When the robot was on, they wanted a crane-like appendage off the front of the car-shaped robot to twirl.

“I feel I learn more because it is hands on,” Frank said. “I can see what I’m working with right away.”

The assignments have room for the students to express creativity in their solutions. The way their teacher, Pat Phillips, structures the class incorporates many skills employers want from potential employees. These type of skills are often referred to as 21st century skills, or soft skills.

“Twenty-first century skills are the integration of academics and hands-on,” instruction, said Dale Hoerauf, director of the Bismarck Public Schools career and technical programs.

Communication, problem solving, critical thinking, technological literacy and teamwork are among the types of skills educators identify as 21st century skills.

Back in the 1970s, when vocational education centers were established, students either took classes to prepare for college or for a career, Hoerauf said. Now, many of those straight-to-workforce jobs require more advanced training beyond a high school education.

The goal is to incorporate these skills into what the students are already learning, which can be a challenge, Hoerauf said, so that the students work in environments similar to what they’d experience on the job. This means the teacher works more as a facilitator, and the class could be working toward a cumulative, year-end project. The newly approved aviation II class, for example, will be building a full-scale version of the 1902 Wright brothers glider.

In Phillips’ engineering and 3-D design class, students work in groups to solve hands-on problems, like how to make a robot follow a particular course mapped out on the classroom floor in black electrical tape. How the students make their robots go through the course is up to the them. They can use a variety of sensors that use touch, light or sound to take direction.

In the last three years, Phillips has doubled the number of sections he teaches from three to six. Classes average 15 to 20 students.

Instead of workbooks and worksheets, the class reads Phillips’ blog to see what he wants the class to accomplish. Then, the students use their own blogs to record their progress on the assignments and ask Phillips questions.

“I like it because I don’t just hear the teacher give directions once,” Frank said. Instead, he can refer to the directions as often as he needs.

Career and technical centers across the state are starting to incorporate more academics in the classroom. This involves collaboration among academic and career and technical education teachers.

In automotive, for instance, the teacher can incorporate math lessons when teaching students how to use micrometers to measure brake pads, said Kraig Steinhoff, assistant director of the Southeast Regional Career and Technology Center in Oakes.

Conversely, it helps the core area teachers understand what concepts or skills the student is learning in the career and technical education class, so that maybe lessons can be more relevant.

It used to be career and technical education classes trained

students to enter directly into the workforce. That has changed over the years.

“Students go to two-year for sure, or four-year,” college, Steinhoff said.

The engineering class at Bismarck High appeals to students because of the interactive nature of the class compared to other classes.

“I don’t like sitting in a classroom so much, unless we’re doing stuff,” junior David Fischer said.

The career and technology classes work well for students who learn better by performing a task, rather than listening to a lecture.

Senior Anna Ross started taking the engineering classes when she thought she’d go into electrical engineering. Her career goals have shifted to healthcare, and now she takes the class for fun, she said

Fischer also took a class, thinking it was in an area he’d want to work.

“I took auto tech,” he said. “I decided it is not what I want to do.”

Fischer likes how the classes integrate math and science in a way that makes sense to him. How he’s utilized those skills in his tech classes has helped him understand similar concepts in other classes.

The set up of the class helps students learn to work in teams.

Working in teams on projects can help students develop team working skills, as well as decide how to use each individual’s strengths.

For teachers, it’s a matter of examining how those skills already come out in what they teach.

“It’s there, but they do not focus on those skills,” said Peter

Magnuson, senior director of programs and communications with the Association for Career and Technical Education, a national association for career and technical education educators.

The definition the association uses for 21st century skills is soft skills, which are neither technical nor academic, Magnuson said. It’s the interpersonal skills needed for a person to perform well on the job.

Students learning culinary arts, for example, need to learn to work with suppliers and how to meet their customers’ needs.

The push to incorporate these skills in the classroom comes from the business community, Magnuson said. The business community is relying on education to train students with the skills they are not able to take the time to teach them on their own.

“Business is so streamlined now, that the more time it takes to ramp up an employee, the less time they are in a productive mode,” Magnuson said.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)