ODiCY

Observatory on Digital technologies in Career guidance for Youth

Learning from each other is a powerful means to better prepare young people for working life

The OECD Observatory on Digital technologies in Career guidance for Youth (ODiCY) is an open-access repository on the use of digital technologies in career education and guidance by primary and secondary schools. This is designed to enable the global community of policy makers, schools and guidance practitioners to gain easy access to up-to-date practice examples, and insights on effective commissioning, development and use. Developers and users of digital tools in career guidance in schools are invited to submit a case study.

Featured content

BEYOND – Online Careers Guidance Platform

The BEYOND digital Careers Platform is a free digital tool created for secondary school students, schools & parents across Australia. Designed by educators and career specialists, the digital ecosystem, facilitates discovery, exploration, planning, and action...

18/04/2024

CareerVillage.org: crowdsourcing career advice

CareerVillage.org is a platform where students can ask questions about future careers of volunteers who are in those careers. Volunteers are notified of relevant questions and their responses are made publicly available. Multiple volunteers can...

04/03/2024

Ada-Intérêts: Online career orientation tool

Ada-Intérêts is an online career orientation tool developed as part of a platform by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, in collaboration with the Academy of Research and Higher Education and the Walloon Office for Vocational Training and...

04/03/2024

YOUTHShare: Online Guidance Platform

The YOUTHShare project is primarily focused on addressing youth unemployment in disadvantaged areas of the Mediterranean European Economic Area (EEA), especially in the coastal and island regions of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Cyprus. The initiative,...

20/02/2024

How does it work?

The structure of the Observatory is driven by the needs of education systems, schools and guidance professionals and is shaped by the OECD’s identification of Career Readiness Indicators forms of guidance connected to how young people explore, experience and think about potential futures in work that are confirmed through analysis of national longitudinal datasets to commonly link with better long-term employment outcomes for youth.

>> Discover research and policy papers, blogs and videos on the use of digital technologies in career guidance

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04/03/2024

In practice

Ada-Intérêts: Online career orientation tool

Ada-Intérêts is an online career orientation tool developed as part of a platform by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, in collaboration with the Academy of Research and Higher Education and the Walloon Office for Vocational Training and Employment. It constitutes the first module of three designed to aid the career orientation process. Aimed at students at the end of secondary education in Belgium (4th to 6th years), Ada-Intérêts allows users to assess career interests, connect them with potential professions and post-secondary programs, and explore a database of 700 professions and 800 training courses. Teachers receive a guide with pedagogical scenarios to facilitate the tool's use in schools, fostering reflection on career plans.

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16/05/2023

In practice

Amazon Future Engineer Tech Tours

Amazon Future Engineer Tech Tours are interactive, virtual field trips that take students behind-the-scenes to explore the inner workings of Amazon's latest technologies and to discover the careers that bring these innovations to life. Through video and interactive questions, students learn new STEM vocabulary, uncover how a certain technology works, and meet different STEM professionals to gain a better understanding of the different careers that make our everyday technologies (like Alexa or Amazon delivery) possible.

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16/05/2023

In practice

BECOME Education: Career exploration

BECOME engages students to learn about themselves and the wide world of work. The BECOME program includes teacher-led lessons and a student-facing app showcasing over 50,000 careers. An intensive learning process facilitated by teachers, throughout BECOME students explore their motivations, interests and aspirations, and learn about the many ways people engage with work. Students from age 10 up examine their personal context and assumptions, learn to define aspirations for themselves and are prompted to seek out wide-ranging career ideas. They practice taking agency within an ‘experiment’ based on an idea that excites them right now, learning valuable skills for shaping their future life.

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18/04/2024

In practice

BEYOND – Online Careers Guidance Platform

The BEYOND digital Careers Platform is a free digital tool created for secondary school students, schools & parents across Australia. Designed by educators and career specialists, the digital ecosystem, facilitates discovery, exploration, planning, and action in career and educational pathways. The main objective is to empower students in their career development journey, providing guidance and resources tailored to their individual aspirations and needs.

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01/02/2024

In practice

C-Game: Understanding psychological work preferences through gaming

C-Game uses an online game format to enrich the career education of pupils aged 12-15. It takes place in a virtual city where students are introduced to a large number of occupations and at the same time find out their interest profile (based on Holland’s Occupational Themes (RIASEC)). Students complete a picture test based on the same Holland typology that contains images related to various job activities & hobbies and users have to rate their attitude towards the given activity. The facilitator of the game (teacher, educational/career advisor, leader of the interest group) is able to monitor the progress of the game and the results achieved by individual students. The interest profiles of individual players can be printed in pdf format and used as a basis for further career guidance. The C-Game activity should always have 3 stages: introduction - game - reflection. The last stage of the game is very important and requires the guidance counsellor / teacher to have a good knowledge of Holland's typology.

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28/11/2023

In practice

Career Central: Online career guidance platform

Career Central is a career guidance platform used by schools to support students, teachers, and caregivers in career planning. The platform is based around students developing career management competencies and is differentiated to suit different year levels. Students’ complete self-awareness modules, research and save jobs of interest and plan for their transition from school. Schools can also choose to add to the Future Pathway Assessments and personal strengths quiz which guide students into job families which may suit them.

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16/06/2023

In practice

Career exploration: Green Jobs Intervention Series

The See it, Be it: Green Jobs Intervention Series allows teachers to connect the subjects they teach with future ‘green’ jobs via two mediums. 1. Short captivating documentaries about real people in the workplace used as the basis of a lesson. 2. A lesson connected specifically to the film the students watch which goes deeper into the person, the job and the industry as well as exercises that relate to each student’s own uniqueness and set of skills.

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04/03/2024

In practice

CareerVillage.org: crowdsourcing career advice

CareerVillage.org is a platform where students can ask questions about future careers of volunteers who are in those careers. Volunteers are notified of relevant questions and their responses are made publicly available. Multiple volunteers can respond to the same question and follow-up questions can be posted. CareerVillage.org aims to increase access to career information and advice for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The resource is designed to build the social capital of students by giving them access to an informal network of advisors.

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16/05/2023

In practice

Careers Portal, Ireland

CareersPortal.ie is a “one stop shop” for those needing or providing career guidance in Ireland. The site is freely available and integrates up-to-date occupational and course information with advanced search and career self-assessment tools. Results of self-assessments can be used to help the user to research the world of work and the world of education. This is supported with information on career sectors, apprenticeships, labour market information, scholarships, and work experience opportunities along with daily career news and events. The site incorporates accessibility tools which integrate many features including language translations, supports for dyslexia, the visually impaired and spoken text. The portal has become an integral tool for guidance professionals and their clients. It is supported by both public and private organisations which collaborate to disseminate the most useful and up-to-date information about careers and courses across all sectors of the economy.

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07/12/2023

In practice

CareersCraft: Using Minecraft to engage students in career guidance

Careers Wales uses Minecraft to introduce some key concepts in career management to younger students, around the ages of 8-14, in a fun and engaging way. The result, built with the aid of an external Minecraft developer, is CareersCraft. Gameplay within the resource is designed around the six Areas of Learning and Experience (AOLEs) in the Curriculum for Wales. These are: • Expressive Arts • Health and Well-being • Humanities • Languages, Literacy and Communication • Mathematics and Numeracy • Science and Technology Students complete an activity in each location which teaches a career management competency that is linked to its AOLE. The resource is freely available to all schools in Wales, but it is unknown how many schools are using it. The combined number of downloads of CareersCraft from the Minecraft Education Edition website and the Minecraft Marketplace is more than 7 million.

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16/05/2023

In practice

Choices Match: Self-assessment tool

Choices Match is an interactive online self-assessment tool, using language and design to promote reflection and self-understanding. By exploring self, skills and workplace options the user documents a pathway produced in a report. Through user interaction the tool answers the questions of this model: SELF - What kind of person am I? What environments suit me? + SKILLS KETE (toolkit) - What skills appeal/would I love to learn? = POSSIBILITIES (Job Clouds) - What work areas and jobs should I explore?

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16/05/2023

In practice

CiCi, the 24/7 careers chatbot

CiCi the careers chatbot supports personalised career exploration for young people (and adults) by giving them access to current and relevant careers information in a single place. It lightens the workload of career advisers and improves the quality of time spent supporting students by providing 24/7 impartial and confidential careers information and advice. The chatbot can also potentially be used by teachers and parents. While developed in the UK, it can be translated into different languages and has a text-to-speech function to support individuals with different learning preferences. A live dashboard complements CiCi the bot by capturing information on the user type i.e. gender, ethnicity, age, types of searches being carried out and top occupations, time of the day usage, and numbers requesting a warm handover to a human adviser. The bot information is aligned with the national (England) inspection framework for schools, quality standards and the Gatsby benchmarks.

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16/05/2023

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Class Chats: Virtual career talks

Class Chats connects Amazon professionals with students for live, interactive career talks. The programme exposes students to a breadth of careers in the tech sector (not just technical jobs!) through Amazon employees who share their personal career journeys. Amazon speakers video conference into classrooms to deliver a 15-minute career talk, followed by a 15-minute student Q&A session. The programme also includes a free Teacher Toolkit with lesson plans for pre-and-post learning.

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16/05/2023

In practice

Empresas que Inspiran (Inspiring Companies): Connecting schools to companies and professionals

To bring the professional world closer to students in Spain, one part of the Empresas que Inspiran platform creates a "match" between a company and school, thus facilitating the organisation of workplace visits, career talks in schools and job shadowing experiences. The other section of the platform is a compilation of career guidance materials, including +100 videos of professionals and labour sectors for any teacher to use. These actions are designed to help reduce early school dropout rates, as they awaken vocations and interests, inspire and broaden professional aspirations, allow experimentation in professional environments, dismantle stereotypes and contribute to a better understanding of the world of work.

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16/05/2023

In practice

Exit Entry: Skill matching app

Exit Entry is a free mobile application for students in Ireland, where they take two assessments - one based on their skills and the other on their interests. It then matches the students with occupations and College & University courses based on their interests. It also allows students to complete free micro credentials courses and activities from IBM and Google in emerging future careers opportunities. This enables students to learn and develop skills in new areas. Exit Entry has built an extensive social community with 55+ million views of their social content for students. This has enabled students to learn about what Exit Entry offers and has resulted in students on boarding independently and bringing this learning to schools for further engagement (peer to peer referral). The first iteration of our student app was released in 2020 and by mid-2021 Exit Entry had more than 50,000+ student users ranging from first year school students right through to university level.

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25/09/2023

In practice

Grand Déclic: Career exploration

Grand Déclic is a web platform that gives access to career guidance resources to allow students to explore the world of work. Students have access to videos of those in the world of work that are pre-recorded. Webinars that focus on specific professions are also available. There is information regarding internships and summer student job opportunities which students can apply for through a specific section of the website. The internships and summer student job opportunities are posted by employers directly on the website. Students can also connect by email with mentors they choose from their profile (picture, gender, profession, presentation) for advice and guidance. Grand Déclic helps to highlight jobs and careers in real workplaces and provides information about types of jobs available. A section offers information to parents to support their children in their career choice. Employers and schools can also add their exploration activities. Employers, parents, and schools can subscribe to specific newsletters.

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16/06/2023

In practice

Inspiring the Future

Inspiring the Future is an innovative match-making service which connects schools directly with employers and volunteers from the world of work. It uses cutting edge technology that has been refined over 10 years to make it very quick and easy for teachers to connect with a diverse range of people from apprentices to CEOs across all sectors of employment. The use of technology and the design of the programme enable high volume employer engagement across a wide range of career guidance areas at very low cost. In the United Kingdom, where the service first launched, over 85% of schools and colleges, 23 000 teachers and career leaders have registered together with 80 000 volunteers and over 3 million interactions between young people and the world of work have taken place to date. Schools use Inspiring the Future to find volunteers for a wide range of career development activities, including job fairs, career talks, job shadowing, mentoring, work related learning and the securing of virtual and non-virtual work placements. Moreover, schools are increasingly using Inspiring the Future to find volunteers to take part in career guidance activities that use video streaming, notably online career talks. More info here: https://www.educationandemployers.org/oecd-launches-new-report-on-the-benefits-of-employers-engaging-with-young-people/

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28/06/2023

In practice

Inzone Careers Kiosk

Inzone Career Kiosks let students explore a huge range of different training and career opportunities in an approachable way. The video clips are carefully selected to provide students with a brief insight of what to expect from a range of different industries and what opportunities they have been exposed to through following that career pathway. If the student finds something that interests them, they are then provided with follow up information via a txt response system which also gives them a chance to share their findings with their family or whanau (Maori for ‘extended family’) which can then open a discussion on careers at home. To see how the kiosks work: https://www.inzone.co.nz/careers_kiosks/

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29/06/2023

In practice

Jexplore: Career exploration in Virtual Reality

Jexplore connects students with the professional world through a diverse range of virtual reality experiences. The solution is designed for secondary school students and is used in a pedagogical context by teachers during workshop hours dedicated to career development. Jexplore provides 80 immersive work modules across 20 professional sectors and qualification entry points, ranging from national vocational qualifications to PhDs. Through virtual reality, students have the opportunity to gain realistic insights into new work environments, broadening their career interests and aspirations.

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01/09/2023

In practice

JobIRL.com Online Platform

The JobIRL.com is a social network that helps young people develop their career plans through a wide range of resources: from an orientation test for the most confused students (developed by JobIRL with the help of an employment psychologist), to profiles of professionals available for discussion via the site's internal messaging system, as well as online resources such as job descriptions, interviews with professionals and students, and thematic support groups (e.g. Parcoursup, SOS Resume & Cover Letter).

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The OECD gratefully acknowledges the support of the JP Morgan Chase Foundation.

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