Suggestions for training students in using the internet for career counseling. (Effective Techniques).

The Internet is increasingly important for career counseling; however, there are few suggestions for training graduate counseling students how to use this technology. This project sought to address that lack by having graduate counseling students use a structured interview with undergraduate volunteer clients to assess which needs could be met using the Internet. Graduate students then identified relevant Web sites and explored these in a meeting with the volunteer clients. Results of class surveys indicated that participants encountered few obstacles using the Internet and perceived this intervention to be useful. Implications for training graduate students in using the Internet for career counseling are discussed.

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Although predicting the long-range impact of the Internet on the counseling field is challenging, it is an important task for career counseling practitioners to undertake (Harris-Bowlsbey, Dikel, & Sampson, 1998; Stevens & Lundberg, 1998). First, the Internet radically affects the accessibility of career-related information in ways that are important for career counselors and their clients. Second, the Internet can profoundly alter the process of career counseling by allowing instant communication among counselors, clients, and even employers through electronic mail, postings on Web sites, and videoconferencing (Sampson, 1999). Although a number of resources exist that document the explosive proliferation of career-related Web sites currently available (Koonce, 1997), there has as yet been little systematic exploration of their usefulness as it applies to career counseling (Sampson, Kolodinsky, & Greeno, 1997). In addition, despite the increasing body of literature pertaining to integrating the Internet into the classroom (Kahn, 1997), there are few suggestions for training career counselors in the use of the Internet.

Because the Internet vastly increases the accessibility of information, some have wondered whether career counselors will find themselves by-passed as clients increasingly conduct their own career searches online (Noll & Graves, 1996). However, Noll and Graves (1998) argued that career counselors who successfully integrated the Internet into their interventions would not be left behind. Rather, the services of career counselors may become ever more important as the amount of information available online expands exponentially. Although using the Internet as part of one-to-one, face-to-face counseling with clients is more time intensive than using it in other modalities (for example, as part of group interventions or as a homework assignment completed outside of session), this approach may pay substantial dividends in helping clients manage the potentially overwhelming amount of information that is available online. Because career-related information on the Internet is constantly changing and expanding, trainin g in its use for one-on-one interventions may also provide a unique opportunity for counselors-in-training to learn about these resources and their relative utility for clients.

Harris-Bowlsbey et al. (1998) have identified four broad categories of career resources on the Internet: assessment services, communication Web sites, occupational information, and career-related databases. However, as Stevens and Lundberg (1998) pointed out, seekers of information on the Internet today are confronted with much the same task as those using libraries before the advent of the Dewey decimal system: Vast amounts of information are available, but not necessarily organized in a coherent manner. In fact, the ease with which individuals who are surfing the Web can become mired in the sheer volume of information available has been cited as one of the main barriers to the Internet's effective use (Presno, 1998). Career counselors can be of great service to their clients by helping them overcome the possible discouragement associated with not finding relevant information (Offer & Watts, 1997). This, of course, means that the counselor must first be familiar with the various types of information that exi st on the Internet and the best ways to find it. The latter can be accomplished with the various search engines now available to navigate the Internet (Gilster, 1997).

Purpose of the Study

Because the Internet offers both considerable promise and numerous challenges for career development activities, this study was designed as an exploratory investigation of the possible benefits and obstacles in its use for one-on-one career counseling. The intervention was designed to serve two purposes: (a) to develop graduate counseling students' Internet career counseling skills and (b) to facilitate the use of these skills with volunteer undergraduate clients. To accomplish the first goal, the graduate counseling students developed their facility with the Internet by learning how to use various search engines to find career information and then assisting in the design of a class Web page containing links to relevant career resources. The second goal was accomplished by having the counseling students use a structured interview with undergraduate volunteers, assess which of their needs could be met through the Internet, and then use Internet resources (with the class Web page serving as a starting point) as part of face-to-face meetings with their clients.

Two main research questions were therefore explored: (a) How effective was this intervention perceived to be by both the graduate counseling students delivering the intervention and the undergraduate students they worked with? and (b) What barriers to using the Internet were encountered by both groups? We adapted quantitative surveys to use in finding the answers to both questions. Semistructured focus groups were also conducted with the graduate counseling students after the intervention to probe for information that might not have been conveyed in the quantitative surveys. In the following sections, we provide a description of the implementation of this project as part of a graduate-level career counseling class. The results of the project are then presented, along with a summary of the project's implications for training graduate students in the use of the Internet for career interventions and suggestions for future research.

Method

Participants

Participants in this study were 14 counselor education students enrolled in a graduate-level career counseling course and 20 undergraduate students enrolled in an undergraduate Career Planning course. Before participating in this project, both groups were surveyed regarding the amount of time they spent using computers for school, work, and educational purposes. Most reported using computers frequently for at least two of the above three categories, but few had any experience in constructing Web pages. Both groups are described in more detail in the following sections.

Graduate students. Thirteen of the 14 counselors-in-training who participated in this project were female, 7 were European American, 4 were Asian American, 2 were African American, and 2 were Latino/a. The average age of these participants was 27.5 years, and all but 1 student were in the 1st year of a 2-year graduate counselor education program at a large southwestern university (the remaining student was in a doctoral program in counseling psychology). Each of these students worked with 1 or 2 undergraduate students as part of this investigation.

Undergraduate students. These participants were enrolled in an undergraduate Career Planning course, which is an upper division elective designed for students seeking to learn more about their own career development. Of the undergraduate participants, 76% were female and 24% male, 48% were juniors and 52% were seniors, and the average age was 22 years. Regarding ethnic background, the undergraduate participants were 67% European American, 19% Latino/a, and 14% Asian American.

We recruited the undergraduate participants from the Career Planning classes, and as an incentive, they were allowed to substitute this activity for another class assignment. The nature of the project was described to the prospective participants, including the fact that they would receive a two-session structured counseling experience. These students were asked to volunteer only if they had specific career concerns that fit within the scope of this project.

Procedure

Training graduate students in the Internet career intervention. The career development class in which the graduate students were enrolled was a 3-semester-hour, graduate-level course that is required for students in counselor education. During the first half of the semester, the focus of the course was primarily academic and the nature of instruction was mainly lecture and small group activity. This section of the class included a review of the main theoretical approaches to career development.