Career orientation in Simulise
I was recently attending a general parents’ evening on study choices for my son who is taking final exams next year. Several studies passed in review. During the break, I caught a conversation from other parents. One mother said her daughter had chosen a city in the first place. And now they were looking at what study opportunities this city offers for her.
What a strange way to choose an advanced education, I thought. What makes you happy in life, the things you like to do, your competencies … these are the most important criteria for your choice of study, right? After all, this choice is the first step toward enjoyable work.
In the days when I was in high school myself, of course, it was different. You could take a career choice test and you could go to your dean for information. Some classmates knew exactly what they wanted to be later. And those who didn’t know that went on to pursue a broad study such as business administration or communications.
These days, fortunately, more attention is being paid to study choices. LOB or Career Orientation and Guidance offers a lot of attention to your competencies and the basis of your choice. Children are given time to ask themselves who they want to be.
What am I going to do after my exam?
For 15-year-old children, it is not at all natural to think about what they will do after their exams. They are often busy with very different things at this age. Whereas in vmbo, you have to make a choice by then. Many young people need guidance in this regard. That is precisely why LOB is so important.
There are all kinds of ways you can offer LOB at school. Because Simulise is already used by many schools to provide insight into students’ skills, we chose to include a free package of assignments and rubrics for LOB with Simulise. These are based on Professor Marinka Kuijpers’ five career competencies.
Career orientation in Simulise
Simulise is a digital portfolio that visualizes the development of skills and competencies. At school but also afterwards. We believe skills development is at least as important as getting good grades.
How do you work with Career Orientation in Simulise? This is very simple. You give your students one of the LOB assignments from Simulise. You can choose from 20 comprehensive assignments. Think of assignments such as: interviewing someone about a profession you like, talking to someone about your qualities and development points, making a timeline of your work experience, mapping your network… Suppose Julia is a student from this class and for Career Orientation she is going to ask her fine arts teacher questions about what he sees as her qualities and development points. Next, Julia assesses herself on the LOB competency “qualities reflection. One by one, she reviews the indicators.
Julia also invites her visual education teacher to assess this competency for her.
By doing different assignments Julia builds a portfolio step by step, which gives her a better and better idea of what her qualities are, what she likes to do and which subjects or professions suit her. This will allow her to later make an educated choice among the many options available to her when she completes her degree.
Julia discovers during her internship at a repair shop that she is very handy and enjoys exploring how an appliance works. She has loved being creative from the time she could hold scissors and crayons, and subjects such as drawing and crafts were always her favorite. Through the portfolio she has built, she has come to know herself well. Eventually, she decides to do the mbo-craftsman course after vmbo-tl. A deliberate choice.
Julia discovers not only what she likes, but more importantly what she excels at. That Julia knows “what she wants to be later” makes Julia motivated to get her vmbo diploma. She is looking forward to developing further and she is confident about her future. And that’s why Simulise provides this LOB package for free.
Interested in LOB ins Simulise?
Sign up for a demo. Then you can try Simulise and check out the LOB assignments.
