The Conference was organized in partnership with the US Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) of which IVETA has been an affiliate member since its inception 34 years ago. The IVETA Conference Theme was “Helping Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) educators, administrators, and other key stakeholders prepare citizens with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the changing 21st Century Economy”. The IVETA Conference included five elements that provided participants with an excellent perspective from different countries (i.e., US, Malawi, Nigeria, Australia, Philippines, Turkey, Japan etc.) on the Conference theme.
- A half day site visit on November 30 to the Campus of the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas where participants were briefed on, and provided a tour, of a wide variety of programs including formal and informal, economic development, targeted industry and client programs. College of Southern Nevada – Las Vegas, NV (communitycollegereview.com)
- Eight IVETA technical presentations December 1-3 on a variety of topics related to the Conference theme including: use of Labor Market information in planning and evaluating TVET programs, motivating adult learners, multi-stake holder engagement for quality TVET in the face of digitalization education in Africa, aligning work-based learning to a global economy, publishing in the IVETA Journal, cloud based competency education and training in Australia, longitudinal study on participant in secondary and career technical education, the impact of tracer studies in Malawi, and a cross cultural examination of materialism and happiness in seven countries.
- A summary dinner for IVETA members and guests December 2, which included introduction of the 2023 IVETA Board members, review of IVETA products and services, awards, comments by the ACTE Vice President, and overview comments by the Minister of Labor from Malawi who led the Malawi delegation. The Minister proposed that Malawi would be very interested in hosting an IVETA International Conference in November 2023.
- Attendance at selected ACTE technical presentations Dec. 1-3, at all levels and technical areas. These 300+sessions were organized by ACTE, and IVETA participants had full access.
- One-on-one discussions with some of the 300+ exhibitors of TVET goods and products December 1-2, a number of which are involved with and interested in international work, and potentially membership in IVETA. These exhibits were organized by ACTE and IVETA participants had full accesses
In summary, the Conference was successful in presenting different points of view of key challenges to TVET from developing and developing countries on the common theme of meeting the challenge of changing economic and labor force trends. One of the key factor in the success was the fact that some of the 6000 registered ACTE participant attended IVETA sessions, and IVETA participants could attend some of the 300+ ACTE sessions and the 200+ exhibits. ACTE also handled all conference registration and payments. The IVETA registration rate was about 50% of the rate ACTE charged its own members. ACTE promoted all IVETA sessions in the overall ACTE program announcement, including inserting late arriving IVETA program speakers into to the overall ACTE program summary. ACTE is interested in upgrading IVETA’s status in ACTE from the current “Affiliation” to a more formal “Section” of the New and Related Services Division, which would mean that there would need to be 24 IVETA members which would also be members of ACTE.
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