Project Timeline

When will the Guide be ready?

The project has a 2 year timeline. Within that, there will be four phases:

• The initial stage will develop the content and the website. Content will be researched and written, tools and case studies will be collected from working group members, and new templates will be drafted.
• During the second phase, the new templates, and the draft content and tools will be tested with staff in the offices of the working group members, in order to get feedback. This feedback will then be reviewed and the draft Guide will be edited.
• The third phase will be External Testing, which will take the draft Guide to three other career offices (most likely one in the West, one in the East, and one in Quebec) to get feedback from centre leaders and staff. The Guide will be edited based on this feedback. The final version of the Guide will be prepared for making it public.
• The final phase will disseminate this new tool to career offices across Canada (and more broadly based on interest).

Timeline At-A-Glance

Content & Web Development Phase:
8 months
January 2010-August 2010

Internal Testing Phase:
8 months
Sept. 2010-April 2011

External Testing Phase:
4 months
May 2011-August 2011

Final Production and Distribution Phase:
4 months
Sept 2011-Dec 2011

An Introduction to the Project

To give you an introduction to this project, here is brief look at WHY we’re doing this, WHAT we want to create, and WHO is involved.

Why:

There is probably not a need to say a lot about the “why” of the project. Evaluation has become one of the most discussed topics amongst career centre leaders. Interestingly, according to NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers representing career centres at post-secondary institutions in the US and Canada, “if one were to point to just one critical issue for career services, accountability would likely be it” (NACE Journal, 2005, p. 28). A survey of their members revealed that two of the top three issues of the future for career services professionals are “measuring the effectiveness of your office’s programs and services” and “demonstrating and validating the value of the career services function at your institution” (NACE Journal, 2005, p. 28).

While there is a lot of interest and some activity in regards to evaluation happening, what we regularly hear from career centre leaders and practitioners (and feel ourselves) is that we require more tools and strategies to guide our evaluation efforts.

What:

The purpose of this project is to create an easy-to-use, comprehensive set of content and tools for career office leaders and staff to use as they strive to improve and expand their evaluation activities in order to better monitor and enhance the quality of career support for clients.

In order to make the Guide easily accessible and affordable, it will be produced as an online site with open access.

Who:

Working Group (The University Career Centre Metrics Working Group):

The group of career centre leaders who have conceptualized this project and will be seeing it through are:

Karen Benzinger, Director, Centre for Career Education, University of Windsor
Kristi Kerford, Director, Career Centre, Trent University
Leslie Lumsden, Director, The Student Success Centre, The University of Western Ontario
Kerry Mahoney, Director, Career Services, University of Waterloo
Yvonne Rodney, Director, Career Centre, University of Toronto

This group has been meeting over the last 5 years to discuss and share approaches to evaluation. While discussions and evaluation activities within the group have been broad-ranging, as a first project to create for sharing with the larger community, the group developed a tool for setting and evaluating learning outcomes. This tool was shared with colleagues, including through a presentation at the CACEE National Conference in 2007. The group is now excited to share other aspects of their work on evaluation, and create new tools, for the Guide.

Project Coordinator:
The Project Coordinator is Cathy Keates, Director of Career Considerations, who has been a member of the Working Group since its inception, formerly within her role as Associate Director of the Career Centre at York University.

Funding:
The project is happening because of funding from The Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling, (CERIC), (thank you CERIC!) and contributions from the working group members.

Project Blog Introduction – Career Centre Evaluation: A Practitioners’ Guide

In Fall 2009 we received approval from CERIC for funding for a two-year project to create an online guide to evaluation for career centres (thank you CERIC!). The Guide will be targeted to university career centres, but we hope it may have applicability in other settings as well.

As we kick-off the official start of the project in January 2010 we decided that having a way to involve interested colleagues in the development and progress of the project could both help inform the development of the Guide, and keep you informed about our progress.

We hope that a project blog will:
• keep interested career centres up-to-date on the progress of this project
• provide a way for interested people to be more engaged in this project
• solicit input, examples, and questions to enrich and inform the project content and direction.

The blog will
• start by giving you an introduction to the project, its objectives and timelines
• share project updates as we progress through the development of the Guide
• share new resources – as we discover new evaluation resources along the way (eg articles, training), we will share them with you here
• ask for your questions and input – we want to make sure the final Guide is targeted to the needs of the people who will use it, so along the way we will pose questions to you, and we welcome comments and input.

The blog is being written by Cathy Keates, project coordinator, on behalf of the project team.

Thank you for visiting our blog. We hope you continue to follow the project updates and submit comments and questions along the way. (You can follow the blog by clicking on "follow" at the top left hand corner of your screen). Looking forward to communicating with you through this blog!