Career Development for Distance Education
Needs Assessment
My study will focus on University level students utilizing distance education resources. Because students, studying on-line, are not directly on campus they do not benefit from career services. My university specifically, has had a huge burst in enrollment through the area of distance education. In order for the career services office to stick to it’s core values and mission, we must find new and innovative ways to reach those students not on campus. I would like to utilize technology to provide professional development opportunities to distance education students. Ways to find the results will be first to research various workshop offered at other universities and software used. Surveying students will be used to collect data to support our assessment.
Objectives and Vision of the action research project
My vision of this study is to result in more professional/career development activities and resources for my insitutions distance education students. I will begin to do this by researching various workshop offered at other universities and software used.
I will do this by viewing what on line resources they are utilizing, talking with other colleagues at peer institutions, and through my professional memberships. Next, I will talk to distance education about utilizing resources to accommodate these students. Once I have confimed how I will be able to reach my population of students, I will collect data from employers. I will do this as a needs assessment and form more employer insight. As I begin to build Workshops, I have to ensure that I am utilizing new software that appeals to the 21st century learner. My last objective is to track the number of students using the workshops. It will be very important for me to see how many students were using these workshops to be sure that what we are doing is effective.
Review of the Literature and Action Research Strategy
The economy has changed drastically. Therefore, higher education has a greater need of showing it’s value to the community. (Levine 2001) One issue is operating cost and budgets that have changed universities across the country. Students coming into the university, both traditional and non-traditional, expect the same benefits regardless of budget woes. According to Lewis, Snow, Farris, and Levin (1999), 78% of public four-year institutions offered distance education courses during the 1997-1998 academic year, generating over 1.3 million student enrollments. Since then, the Institutional Technology Council has reported that universities have reported a 7-9% increase each year in distance education students. As you can see the use of the Internet is growing in popularity as the medium of choice for distance education. Boettcher (1999) and Levine (2001) noted that because of the increased demand for education, it is creating the need to facilitate learning non traditionally.These findings have spearheaded my study to show that career development needs to find a place in the middle of this ever growing trend.
Articulate the Vision
Sharing your work with others is a key element to the research process. The whole point of research would be to share it with others. While conducting my research, and after I finish, I plan to share my data with others including; colleagues at other institutions, professional organization and colleagues in my office. I would like others to understand why and how we did the research. Many of my colleauges at other universities would like to know exactly what type of professional development that we are offering students. Sharing our results would greatly assist their offices in outreach efforts to distance education students. I truly believe in the power of sharing information with others. I don’t expect for each individual to duplicate what we are doing but giving them something to walk away with would be great professional development for everyone.
Manage the organization
Leading a task of this size will need me to take a strong and aggressive path of leadership. My team make up will consist of 4 instructional designers. We will have a budget of $4,000 to work with. I will need to budget software to purchase, speakers, mics, and camera’s. One of the first issues brought to their attention will be on increasing students knowledge of career development and job search strategies. I intend to train my staff on using technology to be incorporated into instruction. The type of technology that will be used is going to take some time to train on. Once I train the staff, they will begin working on developing videos and orientations. I will set deadlines for the development an encourage collaboration in the process. In the mean time, I will be creating surveys, talking with employers and gathering data. This data will help my team to understand what they need to work on. Doing these steps will allow us to have enough focus and vision to the results we are to achieve.
Manage Operations
I will work closely with my staff to ensure we are meeting deadlines. I have also made it clear to the staff what my deadlines are by placing information on our shared google calendars. Additionally, we must collaborate on projects. This will allow for consistency of each project and provide uniformity to the material produced. I will keep track of how many productions are made and make sure that they are placed on our website in a timely fashion. We have bi-weekly meetings in order to share and communicate about progress being made. I lead each meeting by sharing our mission of these projects so that we do not lose sight of the results.
Respond to Community Interest and Needs
During these hard economic times, it is imparitive that higher education show value to the community on and off campus. Providing quality education has always been our mission here at Lamar University. The quality piece of instruction should not be any different, being traditional or non-traditional. Career services can play an intrical part in non-traditional courses by offering more resources to those students. We will be able to assist all populations and factors such as disabilities, gender, race and ethnicities will not be an issue. We are reaching them with technology that can be used and understood by all. Our office will be able to show our value in educating students that will one day be on the job hunt. The university understands the cycle of educating the student and those students getting employed can turn into alumni giving back to other students. I feel that we are not completing that cycle if we are missing some of our population through distance education.
Levine, A. (2001). The remaking of the American university. Innovative Higher Education, 25, 253- 267.
Lewis, L., Snow, K., Farris, E., & Levin, D. (1999). Distance education at postsecondary education institutions: 1997-98. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, Washington, DC.
