Val Mobley, Information Officer, education.au limited [HREF1] , 178 Fullarton Rd Dulwich, 5065 vmobley@educationau.edu.au
The paper explores the development of a national career information service, and describes information management issues during the first year of operation. The service is a website, but much more than that - it is a searchable online library of extensive information capable of continuous refreshment. Searches may combine elements from multiple data sets to refine resource discovery. The service also offers an interactive personalised career planning and decision making tool. A WebDesk service offers assistance in use of the site. Other interactive features are planned.
The impetus to develop a national online career information service represents the coming together of at least two paradigms. The first is the movement within the career counselling community to supplement traditional means of delivery with online services (Pelling 2002), including personal assessment and electronic data on occupations, industries and courses. The second is the interest of governments in funding quality career information delivered online. It has been pointed out (Watts 2001, Bevan 2002) that such a service can be seen as helping to reduce the economic costs of high drop-out rates from higher education, and the re-training of inappropriately employed workers. It also, of course, serves to promote e-learning and ICT skills. Successful government career services operate in the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand and include:
This paper will explore development of a national careers information online service and touch on the role of an information officer within it. The service is a website, but much more than that - it is a searchable online library of extensive information capable of continual refreshment; it also offers resources and services to assist clients with planning their career directions and a personalised self-assessment tool. Requirements for user functionality were set out in the Business Plan as:
The Australian Ministerial Council for Education (MCEETYA) has responded to the compelling need to make available quality career planning tools and information in a freely available online service. The service was built over two years, and launched in July 2002 with a branding identity of myfuture.edu.au. The Federal government agency, education.au limited was contracted to build the site, and formed a team consisting of technical, administrative career, education and information professionals. The task facing the team was both challenging and daunting. Relevant data sets to be incorporated were identified as:
Decisions were made about how best to support the required technical architecture of the site. The development of a content management system was out-sourced to Dytech Solutions (Hobart); however, the majority of the site, including the My Guide section, was designed and developed in-house. (An overview of the basis of myfuture's technical architecture can found in the Appendix).
The challenge for the technical team is not only to load, index and update the data sets, but more importantly to provide for relationships between the data sets, and to ensure easy effective information retrieval at a very specific level. For example, the client must be able to research an occupation title, and from that point seek related information from other data sets. Similarly, the client must be able to start their search from an alternative data set and navigate through the same relationships. (Figure 1 below)
Ultimately, the quality of the service will be judged as much on the refinement of its information retrieval capability as on the quality and amount of its data. Although rigourous processes exist to ensure the quality of the site's data the team understands the need, and is constantly striving to ensure that this high quality data is easily discovered. Site architecture has integrated links between data sets so that the user may navigate seamlessly between them. It is true that the user needs a certain level of information literacy skills to gain optimum results from their searching. This potentially makes myfuture an excellent resource for teaching information literacy skills in schools, colleges and libraries.
myfuture.edu.au aims to provide a range of interactive user services in addition to the career-related information included in The Facts. Its other main section, My Guide, incorporates a comprehensive set of career diagnostic inventories, and a facility for users to set up a personal profile in accessing these. Various assessment tests were considered for inclusion in myfuture. The company decided to implement an Interest inventory developed by Dr James Athanasou (Athanasou 2000). Other inventories were developed in-house, mostly based on the American O*Net[HREF9] classification. These inventories include skills, values, work conditions, location, and education. In addition, aspirations and life balance reflective activities were developed to support this functionality. My Guide has also been built with linkage back to the data sets and articles contained in The Facts section, thus providing another access point to the databases contained in The Facts. For example, as a user generates career ideas following the completion of the Identifying and Exploring sections, these are hotlinked to the occupation database in The Facts, inviting the user to continue exploring and researching the suggestions.
Further interactive services are part of the planned development of myfuture.edu.au. In particular the site was designed to incorporate an innovative mentoring function which will allow a career counsellor and a student user to communicate via a secure messaging service. The mentor will also be able to see what sections of the My Guide inventories the user has accessed or completed. This functionality has not as yet been activated due to concerns about accreditation and authenticity checking of career counsellors. However, a pilot test is planned for the near future. A validation study will also be carried out in May-July 2003, by career practitioners based at Queensland University of Technology to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of the inventories used in My Guide.
The nature of working with large data sets and multiple types of information in an online environment may be seen from an Informatics perspective as a process with several discrete areas. These are Finding, Organising, Managing and Delivering (information). The librarian is familiar with these terms in a traditional library environment, and their principles still apply to the organisation of electronic resources. With the assistance of new information technology, the integration of these strands results in the capability for powerful knowledge management.
Strong information retrieval capacity is critical to the success of the service. At the design stage a content management system (CMS) was commissioned. The CMS was designed to be a tool for creating, publishing and managing content other than the data sets. It was also intended to enable and support effective information retrieval. In order to support this objective a metadata application profile was created. This was based on the EdNA Standard, and the AGLS (Australian Government Locator Service) Standard, which in turn flow out of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The new scheme was then built into the CMS design in the form of templates for use in describing resources. Associated with this was the development of a controlled vocabulary to populate the subject element of the metadata. It was recognised that the adoption of controlled vocabulary would achieve consistency and maximise the search functionality of the site. Several existing thesauri of terms relating to education were considered, and ultimately the Thesaurus of Australian Government Subjects (TAGS)[HREF10] was adopted. It was judged to be most appropriate for a site such as ours which targets all educational sectors as well as the general community. TAGS is a very generalised high-level thesaurus, but it does offer a basis which could be interoperable with other government information services in the future. Where there is a need for more specialised descriptive terms, these are chosen from the VOCED[HREF11] thesaurus as a secondary reference tool. The incorporated results form a career-specific vocabulary set for myfuture.edu.au.
The vocabulary base is also extended by our adoption of ASCO occupation titles, which are mapped to O*NET [HREF9] titles. The Industry classification was developed by consultants based on the ANZSIC [HREF12] classification with additions to reflect contemporary and emerging industry fields. The field of Information Technology is an example where a range of new occupations needed to be incorporated. These vocabularies (Industry and Occupational) are built into the myfuture metadata schema and ensure consistent detailed metadata descriptions for all the site's online resources.
Retrieval of relevant information is also aided by the provision of an age-related search parameter. When logging onto My Guide the user specifies an age group to which they belong. A user logged on as a younger secondary school aged student will then have their site interactions filtered accordingly. They might see a simplified version of an article, or some sections of the site might be masked from them. An example is the 'Values' Inventory in My Guide, which does not appear to younger users. Furthermore, the content management system enables every resource described to be identified to a group or groups of users defined by age. The aim of this is to present a 'view' of the site which is most appropriate to each group of users.
Basic to search functionality is of course the quality of the site search engine(s). In the case of myfuture the site has seven different search engines, so this introduces some complexity. Six of the search engines were developed by the team in-house. They are data driven and interrogate the data sets of Occupations, Industries, Education Providers, Courses, Education Programs, Scholarships. and Contact Organisations. These search functions are accessed from the Home Page of The Facts, under appropriate headings. The seventh search engine was designed to be a Search Whole Site function, and this is accessed from the main Search tab on the top horizontal menu bar as well as from the Home Page. The functionality of the search engines is of major interest to the technical developers, who believe it is important to review these search engines from a user perspective. How effective are they? What are the usability issues? How can they be modified to provide users with better information retrieval capability? For example, the main search engine has been carefully configured to search on a combination of free text and metadata. It looks for the key search term in the title, the body of the text, and also in the metadata. Results are presented in a hierarchy which emphasises the article content and the external links as well as course, provider and industry resources. This search engine is the first one that some users will encounter, so it is important to configure it very carefully and monitor its performance.
An important focus of the work of education.au Career Services Team is site architectural design. This involves collaboration between information staff, media developers, technical staff and graphic designers. Ideally the site should consist of an arrangement of articles, links and services that has sound internal logic providing good usability and ease of navigation. The myfuture team is continually refining our information architecture as a result of feedback from a number of sources. These include, feedback from users, feedback from stakeholders and 3rd party site audits. The Content Management System (CMS) assists in the arrangement of resources by displaying navigation pathways (or breadcrumbs) and by allowing lists of links to be organised thematically or alphabetically. The arrangement might be seen as a category tree with self-rendering branches. An example of site design issues is that of the arrangement of links to external websites. In the pre-launch phase of site construction about 1000 external links were selected and documented to include on myfuture. These were categorised, metadata was added, and some were folded in to the overall architecture of the site. Others are waiting to be loaded and integrated. This might mean the creation of new pages of URL links (link articles), or the addition of links to existing ones. Interestingly, it will also mean the identification of content articles to which links might be added as further enrichment to the article. For example, the article Returning to Work after a Long Absence might include a set of further links to sites dealing with the balancing of work and family commitments, or issues for women in the workplace.
Since the site launch in July 2002 the team has increasingly been involved with issues of information management. This has meant the development of tools and policies to aid sound and consistent information management decisions. The CMS has already been mentioned as a work in progress - there is no doubt in the future it will be an excellent and flexible tool for managing and publishing the site's information resources. A complementary DMS (Data Management System) tool is also being created to manage the information in the data sets more efficiently.
Part of the information management process involves the development of QA(Quality Assurance) standards to underpin the content added to the site. One example of this is the development of guidelines for the selection of external links. These cover the areas of:
Similarly a set of principles was collaboratively developed for the News and Views section of the site. These relate to the ephemeral and dynamic nature of content added to this part of the site; to the national focus of the site; and to QA standards. QA standards for News and Views were developed in line with those relating to the weblink selection process as outlined previously. A new element was added to refer to the "social standards" involved when material added needs to be suitable for younger age groups as well as adult users.
An important element in data management is the capacity of the site to update regularly and readily from its data providers e.g. Bureau of Statistics, The Good Guides, Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) Job Guide or Department of Employment and Work Relations (DEWR). A site is often judged on its performance in this respect, and it is a vital part of our overall functionality. The integration of updated data coming in various formats is a technical challenge for our team to meet, and the complexity of the issue can be surprising. For example, new census data has come to us with changed regional boundaries or classification systems. New fields do not necessarily line up with former ones.
Another important aspect of updating is the management of "deadlinks" or external links which fail for any number of reasons. Deadlinks are reported automatically weekly for investigation and remedial action. Reports may come from links on the link article pages, or sometimes from links which writers have embedded into the content of their articles. Action taken may be the correction of a changed URL or the deletion of an extinct site. Sometimes it is necessary to change the wording of an article, or to research a replacement link as part of this process. The ephemeral nature of the content on the News and Views feature of the site leads to constantly changing content. The CMS manages this by including a 'review date' when adding metadata. A report is provided at the appropriate date listing those articles that are due for review.
Other aspects of News and Views add value and variety to the site. One of these is a monthly career event calendar; the other is a weekly selection of news stories of interest to those in the world of work or career education. These items are researched, published and managed with a view to keeping the content of the site dynamic and up-to-date. The work of the team on the myfuture site is subject to the approval of education and career officers in the Department of Education Science and Training (DEST). For that reason collaboration occurs with DEST officers who moderate the content added to News and Views on a weekly basis.
Work flow is built into the design of the CMS. Only content managers are authorised to add edit or delete article text. Each time a resource is created or amended it must go through a process of submission for moderation before publication.
The final phase in the information process is that of delivery. An online library service presents a few challenges in this area, as users are rarely seen in the flesh. It is therefore problematic to gauge user satisfaction with the service and its delivery. One main online tool useful for that purpose is of course the online Contact Us service, or Webdesk, which can be an avenue for user feedback. This is "virtual reference" in practice, and a growing area in new roles for librarians. Virtual reference was a major theme of the recent Information Online Conference held by Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) [HREF13] in Sydney. There are similarities with traditional reference work except that interactions are conducted by telephone or messaging in real time, or via email, instead of face to face. Feedback to the myfuture site tends to come in the form of queries about career and educational choices. Information to answer the query is usually to be found on the site itself, and the user can be pointed to the section of the site they need to access. Some queries reveal issues of usability as users describe their difficulties accessing the information they need. It was quickly recognised that user feedback could be useful in many ways to inform future development of the site, and a database was designed to categorise and store all Webdesk queries and answers. It is also recognised that information revealed about user difficulty in accessing information could be used by educators to assess information literacy needs.
It was soon discovered that the same queries tend to crop up regularly, and a series of Standard Responses was developed that could be used and re-used. Parameters were put in place to guide the development of Webdesk answers. They included ideas such as:
Webdesk queries can of course be used to illuminate statistics and descriptive reports about the site and its impact on users. They are also proving a useful basis for the development of a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the site. The Validation Study mentioned earlier is a more formal evaluation which will study the experiences of school-aged users interacting with the site.
There are some interesting additions to the functionality of the service that are currently under development or possible proposals. Presently underway is a re-design of My Guide and News and Views sections of the site, providing user-friendly improvements such as clearer navigation and more visual cues. Other main pages such as The Facts and Assist Others will follow soon. This re-design will eventually extend to all of our web pages. Some users have advocated that Webdesk be extended to a telephone based advice service. This type of service operates successfully in the UK, Canada and the United States. Its adoption would add a new dimension of interactivity to our site and offer the potential for an element of career counselling to be offered to users.
Another imminent development is the activation of the mentoring service, referred to earlier, whereby a user can nominate another person (mentor) to share online discussion centred on the user's career development needs, and interactions with the site's tools and resources. The trial of this has created a lot of interest amongst career counsellors and bodies such as the Australian Institute of Sport, who see the potential of such functionality to assist sports people with career development.
Other possible plans for the future include the development of a high-bandwidth version of the site, incorporating multimedia elements. Still photographic images may be supplemented with streaming video content. The compliance with accessibility guidelines will ensure the site is available to those users with special needs and readily compatible with assistive technologies.
The site's XML-based technology will enable it to be customised for hand-held devices, including those using wireless technology.
Lastly, the development of school curriculum materials will be important to maximise the educational value of myfuture to school-aged users. For example, in South Australia it is suggested that myfuture could become a core resource for a new Work Education syllabus.
myfuture.edu.au was launched in July 2002. The content of this article reflects the first year of its operation with inevitable challenges and problems as well as significant achievements. The site by its size, complexity and scope claims to be a world leader in the provision of online career information. Many of its attributes represent innovative applications and varied use of technology as well as ambitious business planning. The build and launch phases are now over, and team developers are planning future improvements and enhancements. The graphic design project currently underway is bringing improved usability and navigation features. There will be substantial additions to quality article and links content. The team is also committed to exploring the possibilities presented by emerging multimedia and interactive technologies. These improvements are often problematic due to the need for the site to be accessible to low-bandwidth users.
myfuture.edu.au is a multi-faceted website, including many services as well as access to continually updated information sources. User functionality is personalised and flexible. Interactivity will continue to be a notable feature. myfuture was intended to be a key career information service for the benefit of all Australians. As we reflect on our first year of operation we believe we have delivered this, as we anticipate new directions and challenges in the future.
Athanasou, J.A. (2000). A Brief Free, and Standardised Assessment of Interests for Use in Educational and Vocational Guidance. Occasional Paper Number 12. ERIC440120
Bevan, Alan (2002). The Australian National Career Information System: an Education.au Limited Case Study in 'Building Knowledge Networks'
Bevan, Alan (2001). National Career Information System - Business Plan (2001)
Pelling, Nadine (May 2002). "The Use of Technology in Career Counselling" in Journal of Technology in Counselling Vol2_2.) Available online [HREF14].
Watts, A.G (2001). The Role of Information and Communication Technologies in an Integrated Career Information and Guidance System. A paper prepared for an OECD review of policies for information, guidance and counselling services.