A quick self-assessment
If you’ve just completed a training course, please consider responding to the three self-assessment questions below. Your responses will help you and other participants to get a head start on the transfer of training process.
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What have you learned? Write a brief summary of what you’ve learned.
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How can you apply it? List one or two ways in which you can apply what you’ve learned in your professional practice.
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What support do you need? Identify any support or additional information that you may need to apply what you’ve learned.
I learned about creating an effective plcement department and how their role affects more than just placement. I learned that our placement success will and can have a direct connection to increased enrollments. If we continue to do our jobs correctly, we should start to see that by having a high rate of students that have been placed will in turn increase our enrollments. I also learned that a good placement department is open full time and has one dedicated person (at least) performing the functions needed in this department. Another important item is keeping in contact with our students and graduates. Our governing bodies will be requiring some documentation from us every year and by staying connected to our graduates it will be easier to attain and get updated informatuion from them.
One way I can apply what I have learned is to create the Placement Department "Book" that has an ongoing list of current employers that have hired our graduates. I will also like to have some success stories put in there. I will add our job boards to this book as they are updated in our emails. Another item I would want added to the book would be some areas to show samples of resumes and cover letters just to get students to always be thinking about those resumes since they are so vital to their employment success.
Support for this departement would need to come from multiple places. We would need operational support from management to ensure we have all required forms for our students. We would need to ensure we have a member of our team prepared to work with students on all placement/career services items. This person will be the liasian for students to get in touch with emnployers and externship sites. At this point in time, our career services department is already working in a positive flow. I do not see myself needing anything additional at this time in order to apply some of the items discussed.
What I have learned is that we have to live by the mission of our department! The out comes of our students is what measures our success as a department and a school. I learned that each and every students is an individual and needs to be treated that way, each person comes to school with different desires and strengths. Have a good library of job search material is important to the out come of the student.
What I can do is have a placement department book. I get all the externship info but I have not put it in a book, I have it in a file on my computer, so this is a great thing it will be accessable all the time. Also having a good with possible leads, this is also a good Idea, I have them on my computer but again having them at our finger tips is great.
I feel that getting support from each department is essential for the overall success of the placement department. I feel that in the department I work at I get support from all of the departments. This is a team effort.
I found the training enlightening, I have found many great tips and the need to strenghten the process of following up on the graduates is something I will definetly do a more thorough job on. Though we do send surveys and communicate closely with recruiters there is valuable data we have missed in the process. I also love the idea of creating a skills checklist for our students to help the resume creating process.
I will have to work closer with admissions as I admit I have viewed them as a seperate arm and have avoided them on many issues as I feel once I have the students onsite they are my responsibility but working closer with admissions can have a profound effect on not only the student experience but all departments of our operation.
During my training session I learned some information that we are not utilizing at my college placement department. I will structure new procedures into place. I will provide resource material in our student lounge area. it have been really hard for us to do classroom workshops because we can not pull away from there class time. Due to we are open monday-Thursday not fon fridays students will not come to a workshop on there day off from school. A lot of the things I learned during the course I knew already.
I see Ed wants to have a externship book it good idea but make sure take the contact information out if this book is going to be avaialable for any student or future student to see. I am going to make a book with letters from graduates and there experience and place it in the waiting area so perspective student can see. All our departments work hand in hand and have a weekly managers meeting to go over upcoming events or things in the department
Doris - Interesting situation about lack of space to hold workshops. Do you think any of your employers would make space available for students to practice their employment skills training? Maybe these employers would even conduct mock interviews and make it very real. If you keep in touch with alumni then you can ask them to assist you in many different ways. Great idea about letters from grads. Have you considered asking for Student Success Stories. The Alumni Director at Pima Medical Institute, June Gudeman, has student success stories mounted graphically on wall boards. She posts them throughout the schools. You can imagine how powerful these are when new students are touring the school! And how inspirational to all students and staff. June facilitates MaxKnowledge course on how to set up an alumni community! Susan
Hi Dr. Schulz, The problem is we are in a office building setting. And all our classrooms are utilized. We have a Library it's small with 6 laptops and a small variety of books. There really is no room for anything else. the career Services department is Myself the Director and my Externship Coordinator we have our own offices there is no big room or a Career Services Center. I post a binder in the Student Lounge where they can find parttime work, I put our information such as resume writing, Interviewing skills and ress for success.
The problem is our Professors don't want us interrupting there class time for a workshop. i try to do them during there 30 min lunch break but its hard because the students want to eat not listen to me. In the student loung I post graduation photos, comments we even have a web site on facebook for feedback.
Hi Doris - we have been blessed at our Campus to where our Campus Director realizes the importance of the Workshops and has made it part of the curriculum. We use the regular classrooms for 5 workshop sessions (career development sessions) during the students' regularly scheduled class times. This approach has worked really well with the students and each one of them is told that if they want help in finding work, they need to be in class for the workshops. The Instructors support us because the time that we are in there has already been figured into their teaching schedules, so it does not disrupt the class time the Instructor needs to teach his curricula.
Interesting dilemma, Doris, The space issue might be easier to solve by using something nearby and off campus. Always an issue to get students to participate when their time is limited. But if students who participate get great jobs, it might encourage the others to make the time. Another thought is to hold your workshops in the lunch room. Also ask the students for their ideas. Good luck, Susan
I have learned the great importance of a Placement Dpmt and how it impacts the rest of the departments specially Admissions. The way I apply what I learned in this course is by giving special attention to the placement department and improving our relationship with prospective employers and externship sites. Finally, I have to say that my placement department needs help with the daily challenges of training students with language barriers and technology.
I have just completed CS104 Social Media. I have learned the difference between social media-social network-social networking. Most importantly I can now successfully build a social network for myself and can instruct my students on how to use social media to advance their careers and professions.
@LeWando,
I just responded to your forum posts in the course. I am excited that you will be using what you learned in the classroom with your students. I think it will benefit them greatly. You can find me here in The Lounge if you need support as you start to implement things in your classroom. Good luck!
@srmeers1 : I have just finished 101. It was refreshing to review the basics of teaching and the course has motivated me to improve on my organisational skills ; one is never too sophisticated for that. Louise Lotte, July 11, 2013
@srmeers1 :@srmeers1 :
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What have you learned? I really enjoyed this training, I learned some valuable tools to help enhance my duties and responsibilities as a job coach.
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How can you apply it? One of the tools I'm going to definitely use is the various ways students can actually search for a job, we assume that people already know how to but not everyone is computer savy or know the many resources available now such as social media for job search, another resource I enjoyed about the training was in Module 4 networking with potential employers more effectively to partner and create internships, our students currently do that now but now I have a better of presenting it to the establishment.
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What support do you need? Overall the training provided enough support, I'm just ready to utilize what I learned for our next upcoming class.
@srmeers1 : I learned about how to effectively set up a career placement center for our new logistics training school. Throughout this course I saw some common threads which pointed to the following needs:
1. The importance of networking with employers in the community. This will help us to customize the program to the needs of the industry and will help us to make sure that our program is a relevant partner in the industry.
2. The importance of starting to connect with the students as soon as they were enrolled in the program to start building relationships with our department to help students see our department as a powerful resource that is available to them as a student. This will help with building their skills, as well as help with student retention rates, and branding our school for they will be able to advertise for your program by using "word of mouth".
3. The importance of staying in touch with graduates and alumni to keep up with the ongoing trends in the field as well as provide on-going supports to them as needed. The information that is gathered can be used to update our courses and services that we offer.
I will apply the things that I have learned in this course by actually taking these ideas and making them my own to create the policies and procedures for operating our career service department.
For support: I would like to continue to have access to the forums to stay current with the trends in career services. I would also like to get information about tools that we can use to use as surveys for students who are exiting the program as well as information about skills inventory checklists to help students to discover their skills as they work on building their resume.
