In a recent issue of The Counseling Psychology Krumboltz reminds counseling psychology, couinselor education, and vocational psychology to integrate the available internet techologies within the traditional course offerings. What is being done within the career counseling and vocational psychology courses to promote the use of technology, media, internet and world wide web? The question is sweeping! The data sources are elusive and ever changing. The course links are ever modifying, disappearing, and replacing; this is the nature of the web.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the web-supported innovations in career education and in vocational psychology, as shown in on-line syllabi. We identified a group of counseling psychology programs that has recognition qualilty and the potential for providing leadership within the profession, i.e., the complete set of Counseling Psychology programs accredited by the Committee on Accredition for the American Psychological Association.

The development of this paper produces three parts. The first part describes the method for finding the courses at the 75 accredited programs. The second part of the paper describes the larger, more diverse set of syllabi at the vocational psychology "portal" site. The third part of the paper is the offers some observersations and recommendations for on-line course presentation.

Method

The step by step sequence for finding whether an on-line syllabus was available followed many different paths. The starting point was the creation of a valid list of accredited counseling psychology programs and links to their websites http://www.uky.edu/Education/counprog.html is an excellent source. The list was cross-validated against the CCPTP site and the APA list of accredited programs. Our counseling psychology portal page is visited 800-1000 times a month and updated by vistors who report out-of-date links.

We linked to the program site and searched for the career or vocational course. We have noted that programs vary greatly in how they make the course information available (e.g., not listing a course by name or number, providing a link to the program of study from which course names could be derived, or providing a separate button for courses). From these resources we were able to search for the course description and the syllabus. Unfortunately often the course title was the only information available for the course. We also searched faculty listed for those who were interested in career and/or vocational psychology for their on-line syllabus, as well as the Department, College and University directories. We were unsuccessful in finding on-line syllabi more often than not.

Once we found the syllabi, we searched the document for information about the format (Word, PDF, or html), required texts, exercises and projects, class-related links (power point, lecture notes and reference pages), use of email (e.g., LISTSERV), and use of course package (e.g., Blackboard or WebTV). The table is the presented at http://www.uky.edu/Education/EDP/edp666project.html

Results

We searched 75 programs and found 126 career or vocational psychology course numbers and titles. Several programs appeared to have more than one career or vocational development course up to as many as six courses. Whether these courses were only in counseling psychology or in counselor education, guidance, rehabilitation couinseling and counseling psychology remains to be seen by the up-dates to the portal. Thirty-two courses had available on-line syllabi. Highlights from this search include:

• Zunker, V. G. (2002). Career counseling: Applied concepts of life planning (6th ed.) was the most popular followed by (1) Gysbers, N. C., Heppner, M. J., & Johnston, J. A. (1998). Career counseling: Process, issues, and techniques. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, (2) Sampson, J. P., Jr., Reardon, R. C., Lenz, J. G., & Peterson, G. W. (in preparation). Career counseling and services: A cognitive information processing approach. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, Center for the Study of Technology in Counseling and Career Development, Tallahassee and (3) Sharf, R. (2001). Applying Career Development Theory to Counseling (3rd eds). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
• Twenty-one of the 32 programs described either a course-related exercise or a project. A common project was use selected tests and prepare a report on themselves or for another student. Several syllabi described a group project to create a career-related workshop.
• Most of the syllabi were displayed as hyper text. PDF was not used often.
• Sixteen of the syllabi offered links to course-related materials, web-pages related to career counseling, university pages, or other career-information sites (e.g., BLS)
• E-mail was not emphasized in the syllabi. An unanticipate finding was the very low number of Blackboard and WebTV Courses

Several courses are exceptional in a positive way for different reasons. For example, the three courses offered by Florida State appear to be closely interdependent with the Center for the Study of Technology in Counseling and Career Development. Our focus on the syllabi was expanded to the comprehensive context of links available through the Center. For another example, the vocational and occupational health psychology course offered by the Universitiy of Minnesota's Psychology Department offers the viewer a plethora of links to the syllabus, to PowerPoint and PDF lecture notes, to portals on occupational health psychology, stress, career development, assessment and prevention. For a third example, the course for all ages (elementary, middle, high school students and post-secondary) offered by The University of Tennessee examplifies the exciting integration of activities and/or projects within the web-supported course.

The notes collected during the searches for the course syllabi became the background for some qualitative findings, observations and recommendations:

Observations:

1. Search was within the department supporting the counseling psychology program. If the department included secondary counseling and rehablitation counseling, then the number of career-related courses might be larger than in departments that focused on counseling psychology;
2. Search for courses was over several months and web-sites change. Some courses that did not appear to be web-supported might now be supported. Some other courses no longer appear on the program page nor in the other usual places (e.g., College list of courses). Course links come and go in the virtual world.
3. Courses need to be updated regularly. Some syllabi were more than two years old. The search engine will find even the old courses so the files should be removed or organized in a repository for a sefl-study (e.g., NCATE).
4. Some departments offer attractive pass-port size photographs of the faculty; other departments offer unreadable pictures.
5. A few departments offer sites that are extremely graphic intense and slow to load for a potential viewer who does not have a T-1 line, DSL or cable modum.
6. Visitors come to your site from many different angles. Web-sites, unlike books and libraries, do not have a single entrance point. As a consequence of the many approaches to a given page, web design needs to make navigation around the site as accessible as possible (e.g., button for return to department, college and university homepages )
7. Program's URL might be changed. The search for the new URL might be obviated by "redirecting" the viewer with a short note.

Recommendations:

1. Colleges and Departments add search engines to their sites. The College search engine can be easily modified to focus the search on the department that supports the counseling psychology program
2. Searching for courses can be enhanced by adding meta tags to the html versions of the syllabi. The combination of the file name, course title AND meta tag keywords will truly speed up the search engine's task and make the sites more easily located.
3. Collect the syllabi over time. NCATE does want to review the courses to observe the changes based upon feedback from students and from program graduates.
4. Visitors come to a site with different limitations, e.g., modum connection, small monitor, older browsers and/or no "bells and whistles". Accordingly, pages become more visible more quickly when graphic files are small or few in number, the tables are constructed flexibly with percentages rather than fixed pixils, the text occupies the middle 80 percent of the page, the pages are simple, without fanfare.

Our web adventure in career and vocational counseling is beginning. The virtual world allows the learner, the employer and the teacher to exchange information, to train, and to create new ways to help people wend their way through the world of work. Career counseling and vocational psychology can take advantage of the opportunity offered by the web to share quickly our ideas for teaching, disseminate training activites (e.g., applets). Our portal is one such way to continue the exchange of information.

Textbooks used in Career Courses include:

Bolles, R.N. (2001 OR 2002). What color is your parachute? A practical manual for job-hunters & career changers. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. (((bol)))

Bridges, W. (1994). JobShift: How to prosper in a workplace without jobs. New York: Addison Wesley. ((((wb))))

Brown, D. (2003). Career information, career counseling, and career development (8th ed.).
Boston: Allyn and Bacon ((b))

Brown, D., & Brooks, L. (1996). Career Choice and Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (((b&b)))

Career Counseling for African Americans. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. ((CCAA))

Gysbers, N. C., Heppner, M. J., & Johnston, J. A. (1998). Career counseling: Process, issues, and techniques. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ((ghj))

Gysbers, N.C., Heppner, M. J., & Johnson, J. A. (2003). Career counseling: Process, issues and techniques. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.((ghj))

Kapes, J.T. & Mastie, M.M. (1994). A counselor's guide to career assessment instruments (3rd
Edition). Alexandria, Va.: National Career Development Association ((k&m))

Leong, F.T.L. (Ed.) (1995). Career Development and Vocational Behavior of Racial and
Ethnic Minorities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.(((l)))

Niles, S. G. & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2002). Career development interventions in the 21st century. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall. (((n&b)))

Osipow, S. H., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1996). Theories of career development (4th Ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon (((o&f))))

Quick, J. C., & Tetrick, L. E. (2003). Handbook of occupational health psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association ((q&t))

Reardon, R. C., Lenz, J. G., Sampson, J. P., Jr., & Peterson, G. W. (2000). Career development and planning: A comprehensive approach. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. (((r)))

Sampson, J. P., Jr., Reardon, R. C., Lenz, J. G., & Peterson, G. W. (in preparation). Career counseling and services: A cognitive information processing approach. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, Center for the Study of Technology in Counseling and Career Development, Tallahassee.(((S)))

Sharf, R. (2001). Applying Career Development Theory to Counseling (3rd eds). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. (((rs)))

Spokane, A. R. (1991). Career Intervention. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ((ars)))

Suler, J. (2002). The Psychology of Cyberspace (((sul)))

Swanson, J., & Fouad, N. (1999). Career theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (((s&f)))

Swanson, J. L., & Fouad, N. A. (1999). Career theory and practice: Learning through case studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. ((s&f)))

Walsh, W. B., Osipow, S. H. (Eds.). Handbook of vocational psychology (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates ((((w&o)))

Ward, W. B., Bingham, R. P., Brown, M.T., & Ward, C.M. (Eds.) (2001). (((wbb&w)))

Yost, E.B. and Corbishley, M.A. (1987). Career Counseling. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (((y&c)))

Zunker, V. G. (2002). Career counseling: Applied concepts of life planning (6th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. ((z))

Zunker, V. G. & Osborn, D. S. (2002). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (6th Edition). Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole (((z&o)))

b&b, z&o

CNPS 363
CPNS 574
CNPS 677

0