Date of Award
1-1-1984
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Center for the Advancement of Education
Keywords
activities, advisory committee, assessment, career exploration, career infusion, career planning, classroom learning, college, counselors, course content, courses, curriculum, curriculum development, data, decision making, education programs, evaluation, follow up studies, frequency distributions, graduates, industry, instructors, job seeking skills, methodology, opinionnaire, percentages, program implementation, research, secretarial courses, self assessment, self awareness, skyline college, statistical techniques, students, surveys, word processing
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify the important career planning skills needed by Word Processing students to select the career planning concepts appropriate for the four semesters of the word processing programs to match the career planning skills with the secretarial courses in the word processing programs and to develop career infusion activities for each of the secretarial courses in the word processing programs.
An opinionnaire was designed to collect data from or processing graduates or processing advisory committee members or processing instructors and counselors. All the participants were involved with the word processing programs at Skyline College in the San Bruno, California, as the recipient of the instruction, the provider of the instruction, or the developer of the instruction. Data collected were subjected to basic discriminative statistical techniques in which frequency distributions and percentages were computed and presented in tables. The results presented the word processing instructors with the career planning skills needed by word processing students.
Results from the opinionnaire identified 24 career planning skills that were important to include in the word processing curriculum. The 24 career planning skills were grouped into four career concept arenas: self-awareness and self-assessment, career exploration, decision-making, and job-seeking skills. The career planning skills were matched with the secretarial courses in the word processing programs. The first semester courses were matched with self-awareness and self-assessment skills, the second semester courses with the career exploration skills, the third semester courses with decision-making skills, and the fourth semester courses with job-seeking skills.
Career infusion activities for each of the secretarial courses in the word processing diagram were developed by word processing instructors. Counselors were consulted in areas of career planning that were unclear to the instructors, especially those concepts in the software and assessment areas.
Conclusions based on the results follow: 1. Work processing students are able to acquire career planning skills in the classroom rather than in a career center. 2. Career infusion is a method of providing career planning skills without displacing any segment of the course content. 3. Counselors are an important resource for developing career infusion activities. 4. Systematically including the career planning process into the work processing program ensures the conclusion of all the steps in career planning. 5. Graduate advisory committee members, instructors, and counselors are an important resource in planning curriculum. 6. The career infusion curriculum model for work processing is a plan that can be used in other education programs. 7. Curriculum development and updating should be an ongoing cooperative effort between college and industry. 8. Career education in-service workshops are a desirable means of sharing experiences in career infusion methodology.
Recommendations emanating from this study that support these conclusions are: 1. The implementation of the infusion activity by the secretarial instructors. 2. The development and administration of an evaluation instrument to determine the effectiveness of the career infusion activities in the secretarial department. 3. The development of career infusion activities for other courses in the secretarial department. 4. The revision of the courses of study for the secretarial courses in the work processing program. 5. The instruction of career infusion methods through in-service workshops for staff in other location programs. 6. The continuation of the cooperative efforts of the counselors and instructors in improving the career infusion activities. 7. The implementation of follow-up studies in the secretarial department as an ongoing process for curricular improvements.