Week 2

For me, this week’s discussion was very interesting.  It was interesting to me because I got a chance to read some's related peer reviewed articles.  I found that to be a fun, rather stressful, topic in the discussion.  I was having a hard time finding an article that caught my attention.  Reading scholarly articles can confuse me and to find one that I understood took time.  I finally came across one that fits perfectly into the class discussions.  The article is titled, "Career Cruising Matchmaker: An Evaluation of a Middle School Career Counseling Program" by Delawna Davis.  If anyone is interested in this article, it was an easy and straight forward read.  Davis (2016) researched if the online career program called, Career Cruising, was a valid and reliable source for career matching. She surveyed 8th grade students on their interest online using the Career Cruising program.  She could conclude that the program was very relevant to the student’s interest and that the students ended up relying on some of the responses it provided with career choices.

In high school, I did not have the chance to use this tool. I never heard of it until I started researching career counseling programs.  This was the first one that showed up on every search engine site.  It is interesting to me to see how far along we have come with technology and how we can generate a program that can find careers and options for someone based off of their own individual interests. I was skeptical on the results of this program because it was an online program.  I thought to myself, how accurate can it be.  I did not think the program could know a student based on basic questions.  When I was reading further into this program, I realized that it is more than just vague questions.  They ask in depth analysis questions that can help generate results.  If I had such a program when I was in high school, I would have been able to figure out what I wanted to do a long time ago or could have been pointed into the right direction.  If it were not for this article, I probably would have questioned this program on the validity and reliability of it.  This class is opening up my perspective on different career counseling programs, idea and techniques.  I am interested in looking further into this program when I am working with high school students. 

Davis, D. B. (2016). Career Cruising Matchmaker: An evaluation of a middle school career counseling program. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 76,