The Role Of Technology In Youth Career Guidance

The Role Of Technology In Youth Career Guidance

The Role Of Technology In Youth Career Guidance

Self-determination is a key issue for young people to actively engage in community development. Young people are more likely to be effective and able to contribute to nation development if they are aware of their talents, interests, and capabilities. Technology tools can play a big role in youth career guidance, in terms of helping young people to explore their talents, match them with an academic course, and then link it with a dream job.

Many young people pursuing a university course that they don’t like, or doing a job that they are not interested in, the reason might be that parents want their children to study a specific course or do a particular job without considering their interests and abilities. As an example, John had the experience of studying for a bachelor of telecommunication engineering for five years, later on, he discovered that he don’t like it, he didn’t have the opportunity to explore his interests, and no one guided him to find the most suitable degree course to him. He started to involve in student activities, reading books, attending lectures, and doing part-time jobs to find his passion. He wished if someone at home or back in school helped him to determine his life path, or if he could join a youth career guidance program. He decided to help his friends and peers to discover their capabilities and interests to reach inner satisfaction and grow healthy.

Family, Educators, and adults may use several resources for youth career guidance. In the digital age, technology can play a vital role in helping young people to determine their life path. They can encourage young people to play self-exploration video games or to have e-mentoring sessions with youth development experts to guide and keep track of self-determination process, or engage young people in social media networks that post videos and articles to help young people explore their talents.

This article aims to provide an example of how technology can be used in motivating young people to discover their self, academic and professional and life path through Digital Youth Program.

 

Digital Youth Program for Youth Career Guidance

Digital Youth Program is an example of how to integrate technology into youth settings, it is a one-month youth program that aims to guide young people to determine their life passion. The program is divided into four main levels, self-discovery, academic course exploration, profession, and life dream determination. At the self-discovery level, participants are exposed to several personality tests to help them determine their hobbies, interests, and capabilities. The following level is to present the academic fields, so young people can match the suitable course to their interests and capabilities. Then the program will help young people to create a clear picture of the future profession they might join after graduating from the academic course they have chosen. Later on, all of these aspects will be linked up to help young people to build the dream of their life.

“Positive Technology Development informs the design of digital spaces so children can use new technologies to become better people and to make the world a better place” (Bers, 2012, P.4). Applying the PTD framework, the Digital Youth Program engages young people in the following:

  • Content creation, at the final stages of I, Count program, participants are asked to translate the dream of their life into a real project, and to demonstrate their competence of creating a concrete action plan for their projects, which is going to be presented to instructors and other participants. For example, participants might create PowerPoint slides to present their projects and ideas.
  • Communication,  young people are engaged in Digital Youth Program social media accounts to connect with peers and mentors, exchange knowledge, and resources and share their life path exploration experience, and also share photos, videos and memories of the experience.
  • Community building, Digital Youth Program encourages young people to contribute to society by utilizing social media networks in promoting the concept of self-determination among their friends and peers, to help them determine their skills and interests.
  • Collaboration, participants of the Digital Youth program are encouraged to work in teams at many levels of the program, complete several self-determination tasks, caring about team mate’s opinions and thoughts. Participants are also asked to care about and assist individuals who face difficulties in completing the tasks.
  • Creativity, young people are guided to discover their inner selves and the most suitable academic course and profession for themselves through the Digital Youth program, then they are asked to utilize new technologies, and to be creative in linking all of these aspects in building their life dream project in a sense of confidence.
  • Choice of conduct, Digital Youth program allows participants to read books, watch videos, and surf the internet to determine their values, helping them in exploring their character traits. Digital Youth program exposes young people to many choices of course and job selection, “giving them the opportunity of making choices about their behaviors” (Bers, 2012).

 

Developmental milestones

Digital Youth Program targets high school students, who started to ask questions about their behaviors and personalities, trying to understand the world around them and thinking about their future. Digital Youth Program considers Confidence as a developmental need of young people “An internal sense of overall positive self-worth and self-efficacy.” (Lerner, 2010). Young people need to be aware of their identities and capabilities while growing for them to do well. Digital Youth Program is addressing these issues and trying to help young people to understand their role in transition period. Young people might face several conflicts in their transition from childhood to adulthood; one of these challenges is growing in rapid changing world with fast socio-economical changes. Young people are more likely to be confused about their identities and the purpose of their lives; they are required to go for a long journey of answering complex questions, exploring themselves and understanding the surrounding environment to identify the roles they need to play in this life.

Young people might identify noble dreams and ambitions, like graduating from a high ranking university or working for a well known company, but in reality they might face several challenges, for instance if a young man wants to do a particular university course he might face difficult entry requirements, and his family might need him to study different course. Families and caring adults are required to assist young people in their transition process to ensure that they grow healthy.

 

Youth Career Guidance Curriculum

Digital Youth Program curriculum is designed with discovery learning instructional strategy “having the learner interact with his or her environment…The learners are given tools in an environment and they are encouraged to experiment and explore” (Clark, 2008). Digital Youth is a four weeks program consists of four main levels, self exploration, academic course matching, profession, and life dream determination. Digital Youth fulfill youth interests by adopting practical approach in guiding young people to self determination. Self exploration level is based on Stephen Covey’s (1989) theory the seven habits of highly effective people. Training sessions are helping youth to be effective by developing their “Thoughts, Skills, Interests, relations and role models” (Covey, 1989) in particular field of their interest after taking personality tests. For example if a young girl is interested passionate about music, mentors will work on encouraging her to develop her knowledge about musicology, develop her music playing skills, help her to build relations with likely minded people, and to define a musical role model. This will help her to develop her interest in music and she will become more likely to succeed. In the second week, participants are taken for field visit to a university, where academic fields are presented to them, to match the most relevant academic course to their interests and capabilities. The following two weeks concentrate on youth career guidance, helping young people to have clear picture of their future profession, and helping them to build their life dream project. In the third week participants go for industrial field visits, they visit different companies and institutions to get an idea of how is the work environment looks like. In the last week, instructors help youth to link their personal goals and ambitions in specific field and design a dream project, it could be a business oriented or community based project, through mentorship and training sessions.

 

Using Technology for Youth Career Guidance

Digital Youth Program use several means of technology to assist in achieving the learning goals of the program. Digital Youth Program is using social media networks accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp) to create platform for participants to exchange knowledge and share memories of the program. Skype video teleconferencing is used by Digital Youth Program in e-mentoring sessions during and after the program, to keep track of self determination progress. Digital Youth Program use self discovery video games, “Video games can foster the development of healthy adolescent identities, allowing young people to grow through digital action and reflection.” (Wonica, 2013) such as (UQ Life) is used to help youth identify their character traits and competencies. Participants are required to possess laptops or tablets with internet connection in certain sessions of the program and at their homes, to participate actively in the program.

 

Youth Career Guidance Mentoring Model

Digital Youth Program is facilitated by youth program coordinators, trainers and mentors. The program consists of self exploration activities, training sessions, field visits and e-mentoring sessions. Program coordinators shall do the managerial and secretarial tasks, such as booking the venue of the program, coordinate food and transportation of the participants during the program and preparing program materials. Trainers facilitate self exploration activities, giving instructions on how to complete personality tests, delivering developmental skills training session and monitoring participant while playing self exploration video games, ensuring that participants have learned from these approaches. Adults also coordinate field visits to universities and business institutions, encouraging participants to ask questions and exchange their thoughts about the visited institutions, to be sure that they have created clear idea about university and work environment. Mentors keep track of participant’s self determination and project action plan implementation progress by organizing e-mentoring sessions during and after the program.

Trainers and mentors involved in Digital Youth program shall possess good self motivation and communication skills and to demonstrate the ability of dealing with and guiding adolescents effectively to be able to deliver a successful program. Mentors and trainers are expected to receive youth program development, implementation and monitoring training, soft skills training ,to attend training sessions that trains them on how to utilize technology in youth programs, and to attend self discovery training of trainer’s sessions.

 

Access Environment

To access Digital Youth program, young people need to have a computer with good internet connection. For young people to participate in Digital Youth Program, they are required to access the program website and fill up the application form, to provide their personal details and information about their backgrounds, and to explain why they are willing to join the program, the applicant must read and agree with Digital Youth Program policy statement. Then Digital Youth team will review and asses their applications, participants will be contacted through phone and e mail to tell them the result of their applications, if they are accepted they will be asked to confirm their attendance by paying part of the participation fees before the starting of the program. After the completion of the program, participants are asked to access Digital Youth Program website from their home frequently with headphones and microphones, using good internet connection to participate in e-mentoring follow up sessions.

 

Institutional Context

Digital Youth Program is filling the gap of young people growing with confusion about their identities and roles that adults expecting them to play within the current socio-economical changes of a rapid evolving world. The program contributes to this issue by teaching youth how to identify their strengths and capabilities and helping them to understand the world around them.

Digital Youth Program shall take place in youth center at a metropolitan city, the venue shall be providing several facilities such as: meeting rooms with teaching equipments (white board, projector, microphones), sports play grounds, gym, swimming pool and library. Program venue might not include a computer lab and wireless internet network, so participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops or tablets.

Digital Youth Program policy urge participants to engage actively in all sessions and activities, to demonstrate good behaviors and to show respect to trainers and other participants. Digital Youth Program put a condition for participants to be engaged in e-mentoring sessions for six months after the completion of the program to ensure that action plan is progressing well. Hand phones are prohibited during the training sessions.

After getting exposed to personality tests, academic course selection process and work environment exploration, participants of Digital Youth Program are expected to be able to identify their character traits, interests, passion and competencies, with ability to identify the goal of their lives and put it into action.

Digital Youth Program could be developed to be a completely online experience to serve broader audience, by enhancing Digital Youth Program website to include virtual learning space contains the four main levels of Digital Youth Program. Digital Youth Program mobile application could be developed as well; it could be designed based on Digital Youth Program four main levels. Additional features that support self determination experience could be added, such as: specifying special space for personality tests, adding a list of academic courses with a brief introduction, and to provide success stories of people who have set dreams when they were young and achieving them later on.

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