Assessing Career Planning Courses without using test scores: another neglected issue?

Twenty years ago, in an article entitled “Assigning Grades in Career Planning Courses: A Neglected issue”[1], Rex Filer posed several important questions in terms of the practicalities of how we design and grade career planning courses. The challenge, he suggested, is that while teaching pedagogy often relies on Bloom’s traditional taxonomy where information and understanding act as an ‘anchor’ while synthesis and evaluation are goals achieved later, career course activities are naturally geared to the top of the pyramid – regardless of when the class is taught. This, he argues, poses particular issues in terms of career course objectives and outcomes. Even a cursory examination of the literature on career course assessment may offer some insight as to why Filer’s individual instructor/student level concerns have been ‘neglected’: most of the mainstream work in this area is based on various types of exams or pre and post test scores. One of the most common tools, the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) based on Cognitive Information Processing Theory, helps researchers determine ‘dysfunctional thinking’ in career problems and identify issues for specific populations as well as general ‘progress’ made in the course. While such tools are invaluable and have provided many crucial insights in terms of the value and impact of career courses, the suggestion here is that, for smaller schools and programs, there is a largely unmet need to discuss grading systems used for career courses and the assessment of career education at any given institution. This paper will examine the course design and assessment process, including specific rubrics and tools, used by an interdisciplinary program at our small liberal arts school in a remote, rural California campus of Humboldt State University (HSU). The goal, with Filer, will be to address (another) neglected issue of how we go about creating career development interventions, design specific courses, and assess career education at the level of the individual student, instructor/course and program. [1] Filer, Rex (1986) “Assigning Grades in Career Planning Courses: A Neglected issue”. The Career Development Quarterly. December. Vol 35. pp. 141-147

Career Planning and Curriculum Integration: millennials on the ‘lost’ coast

Career preparation during college is increasingly an area of interest and concern not only for the parents, family and friends of prospective students, but administrators, politicians, and even the average taxpayer. As costs continue to rise, the ‘value’ of higher education is no longer based primarily on the goal of preparing a future generation to participate in, and to lead a democratic civil society, but on how competitive students will be in the global marketplace as a result. Humboldt State University is located approximately 300 miles north of San Francisco in a relatively isolated region known as the ‘lost coast’, famous for old growth redwoods and a dramatic coastline. Over the past five years, HSU has started to take seriously the challenge of connecting the ideals of a relatively small, liberal arts school to the changing goals and aspirations of an increasingly diverse student body in the context of an ever more connected world. This paper seeks to do two things. First, to briefly outline current questions in the field of career development with a view to better understanding how the stated goals of the millennial generation affect their ideas of ‘career’ and ‘success’. Second, to offer Humboldt State University as a case study by examining the way these issues have influenced the development of career education in the HSU’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), specifically the International Studies Program. The argument is that while the overarching goals of millennials are not so very unusual or different from their predecessors, career education needs to adapt to meet specific needs of our students. Further, that this is best done through a strategy that combines traditional ‘user activated’ services, with intentional ‘scaffolding’ designed by each college – ideally by each department or program. The objective is to offer other and/or similar institutions a framework that includes a range of approaches to embedding career education into the academic curriculum in a way that not only meets the range of needs of our students, but also connects the liberal arts education campus to the classroom of the world