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It's got such great content and it’s so user-friendly, once students are exposed to it, they'll often go home and show their parents. I get lots of feedback from parents as well about how their kids have engaged with it.
Once they're exposed to it, the program pretty much runs itself as far as sucking them in - for want of a better word - to do a bit more investigating in different areas.
The Next Big Thing
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01
Does TCD integrate well with classes at Kildare Catholic College?
100%, yes. The way that our timetable is designed, we have a really strong focus on welfare. We have ‘Coaching’ every morning, which runs for approximately 30 minutes, that's when roles are marked, daily notices are discussed, etc. It then gives teachers a significant amount of time to do other welfare type activities, and we use The Careers Department fairly extensively in that. It's a short amount of time, but it allows it to be more regular.
The activities that I've designed over the last couple of years - often the year 12’s would've done it previously, so the year 10’s might be completing it and they'll be able to ask an older student for help, this has a really good knock on effect because that then reinforces it for the older students and reminds them about The Careers Department.
One of the things I love about The Careers department is the analytics. From the teacher's perspective, being able to get in there and see who's logged on at what time is really helpful. I’ll often find that I may have done an activity with year 10 students and then, that night, I can see that students have randomly logged on to The Careers Department again.
CASE STUDY
We felt inspired by Karen Murray’s passion and dedication to educating her students. Keeping a close eye on engagement, she values the ability to see when students access TCD inside or outside of class!
Champion: Karen Murray, Career Adviser
SNAPSHOT
State
NSW
About
Catholic, Regional
Enrolment
1100
Active Teachers
8
Active Students
1100
Focus
Career Exploration
02
Do you have any dedicated careers lessons with students?
Every student has one careers lesson with me every term. For example, I will withdraw year seven from English in Term One, might be Science in Term Two, Math in Term Three, and then History in Term Four. This way, the teachers only miss one lesson, but the students get four careers' lessons and I find that teachers are happy to do it that way.
Although I've withdrawn them from a subject specific class, it doesn't end up being a careers lesson based around that subject. I’ll usually have two classes at a time and the classroom teachers stay with the class, we use this time as a professional development activity for the teachers as well. Our teachers are involved in ‘Coaching groups’, so if they've been in my career's lessons, then when an activity comes up during coaching, they've got some background on it.
It’s also useful for a couple of other reasons as well, firstly, information about subject selection changes and it’s very different now to what it was 10 years ago, so if they're in those careers' lessons with me, they're getting a bit of that background information when subject selection time comes around.
Secondly, if teachers have more professional learning behind them, they're more equipped to be able to give the correct information when those incidental careers conversations come up in classrooms. They're often the most effective careers conversations too!
03
What tasks or activities do you use in your lessons?
I have a couple of different activities that I’ve designed that use The Careers Department as a resource to find the answers. I've designed a lesson called ‘Fast Five’ which is linked to a number generator that they click on, they're randomly assigned five industries within The Careers Department, and they have to ‘look, listen or read’ two pieces of content for each industry. Then they write two bullet points for that piece of content to show their understanding.
At the end, they're asked two questions,
“If this wasn't randomly assigned to you, would you have ever looked at this industry?” Yes or No answer. More often than not, students will answer ‘No’ for Question 1.
“Now that you have looked at it, are you willing to look a bit further into that industry?” Approximately 90% of the students that answered ‘No’ to the first question then go on to say, ‘Yes’ to the second.
We know there's so much data out there that says that by far the biggest influences in students career choices are their parents and their family, which I totally understand that. I've always felt that the hardest part of my job was exposing students to things that they haven't already been exposed to. Using The Careers Department, I am able to leave them to their own devices and say, “Here's this amazing program that has all this amazing content on it, explore further!
04
Engagement is very high with your students; do you find they login after school hours?
100%. Yes. You can always tell after they've done a ‘Fast Five’ activity for the week because when I have a look at the analytics (Student Reports), you can always see that students log in outside of school hours, which is great.
It's got such great content and it’s so user-friendly, once students are exposed to it, they'll often go home and show their parents. I get lots of feedback from parents as well about how their kids have engaged with it.
Once they're exposed to it, the program pretty much runs itself as far as sucking them in - for want of a better word - to do a bit more investigating in different areas.
I've just recently started to use the notes section and it was probably a couple of months ago, I was in a meeting with a student, and I said, “Have you logged back onto The Careers Department?”. She said yes and then I remembered that I could check her timeline and I hadn't thought about it before, it was so useful!
One of my aims this year is to use The Careers Department to its full potential. I still know I'm not using it to its full effect but even the small amount that I am using is absolutely worth it.
05
You’ve discussed feedback from students and parents, have you had any other feedback from other teachers?
Yeah, definitely. When they're in coaching groups with their students and they see it and they often, very casually, mention how engaging the content is.
We also have a lot of teachers here who have their own kids that are high school age but aren't students here, and more often than not, the feedback I get from teachers is that they found content that they want to show their own kids.
The way I sell it to staff members is that it's, ‘look, listen, read’. We all know that students learn differently and the thing I love about The Careers Department is that it has those three options.
Some students are not going to sit and read text, either they find it difficult, or it doesn't interest them. At least we know, with The Careers Department, they have the option of listening or watching. They can watch a video instead or they can listen to one of the on the phone interviews. There are students that will watch a video and then want to read more to reinforce it, and they get the option to do that with The Careers Department. It just makes it much more accessible to all students. There's an option there for everyone regardless of what their literacy levels or their level of interest is. There's always something that they can find to engage with.
06
Do you have any last thoughts before we end?
Another thing I like about The Careers Department is that you are really open to feedback. I've been involved with The Careers Department for quite a few years and Sarah will often email me for feedback on new products. There's been times where I've emailed back saying that it’s awesome, but it's never going to work in a school setting because of X, Y, Z, and then next thing you know, it's been changed so that it can work in a school setting.
The Careers Department are really good at working with us rather than telling us what to do. You have big ideas, but you're happy for us to give you some suggestions about how it will work more efficiently in a school setting, knowing that all schools are different as well.
I think that is your point of difference.
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SNAPSHOT
State
NSW
About
Catholic, Regional
Enrolment
1100
Active Teachers
8
Active Students
1100
Focus
Career Exploration
CASE STUDY
We felt inspired by Karen Murray’s passion and dedication to educating her students. Keeping a close eye on engagement, she values the ability to see when students access TCD inside or outside of class!
Champion: Karen Murray, Career Adviser
