Careers Online Project Weblog

Expert Advice Planning Meeting

The agenda for tomorrow's meeting:
1. We will give a brief demo of the questions and our template for answers.

2. Discuss how the questions will appear throughout COL. (We'll need an update on how the help text will appear too.)

3. Discuss how will the answers appear in Expert Advice, integrating our templates, video stills or not, and the info in the video database?

Initial Thoughts-Next Steps

I have set up a new WIKI page for documenting our thoughts on the Next Steps for COL - now that it is live. This can be accessed off the front WIKI page under "Initial Brainstorm" I know that we are still in the transition from birthing to breathing stage - but I thought it might be helpful, nonethless, to have place to put our thoughts as they occur.

Please feel free to add your thoughts as you have them.

RSS Help Text

I have now finished the help text for the RSS stuff. Its at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/HTRss

This page also has the list of feeds that we want to include in the RSS Reader in CareersOnline.

What is missing from this section is some kind of information on using Labour Market News and generating job leads - basically, why we have provided this information. Can we take some lines of text from Future Mapping or some other resource about Labour Market info? Or perhaps a link to another website that has a tutorial about LMI, I know there is one that Keira has that I have looked at before.

I have also added the Research Companies links to that text to go on the front of that section. This should now be complete. Its at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/AdditionalText

Help Text Finalizing

As per my conversation with Una, I have tried to finalized the help text and guided tour.

The text for the Guided Tour is at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/GuidedTour and is ready to be added to the site.

The help text is 99% complete, and can be added to the site. It is at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/HTRss The only part that is incomplete is the RSS help text, which I hope to work on on tuesday this week. Also, some small adjustments may have to be made after some questions have been confirmed by James.

I have taken any remaining questions for James and Renee out of the body of the help text and put them on a seperate page of notes at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/HTNotes

I have also taken the guided tour text and created intro paragraphs for the Explore Careers section and the Researching Employers section. It is at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/AdditionalText

Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

January 27 -COL meeting

Here are some highlights from today's meeting with Claire, Dawn, Una and Alex:

Student Guided Tour

Here is my rough draft on the Guided Tour. Suggestions and editing are appreciated.

http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/GuidedTour

CareersOnline Students Usability test results

Login
- More emphasis on using student number and PIN

Search for a job
- It should be made clearer that all fields are optional
- It’s confusing to have two different submit buttons that do two different things (one for using search profile that’s on top, the other for standard search that’s on the bottom)
- If every option is selected, would that be refining the search too much?
- In results, there may be confusion between clicking on employer (which leads to employer profile instead of the job posting) and job posting
- Occupational categories are useful but sectoral are too numerous for students to scroll through

Search profile
- Adding a search profile under My CareersOnline is confusing, as it returns you to the same form. People expect to see their results for the search (maybe return to main list?)
- Adding a search profile from the Search Job: confirmation message is not clear enough and users are not sure that it is saved
- It’s unclear where one should edit the search profile
- Need more help text
- Some will still use form and not set search profile

Bookmarking, setting email, setting reminder
- Need consistent terminology for bookmarking
- Confusion over where to view bookmarked items (might be because of the terminology again)
- Change to fixed reminder?
- Need to specify what reminder does
- Users were not sure what sending email does; need text to clarify
- The emailing seemed the least useful to students
- It would be nice to have folders or something similar to sort through the bookmarked jobs (for next version)

Research Companies
- Most will use this function (it’s a good first point of access and saves time)
- Keyword search does not work

General
- URLs should be copy and paste-able (send URL)
- There needs to be some reordering of functions on the left hand side of the menu
- There seems to be some confusion between the functions outside My CareersOnline and inside

News Feed
- Fewer clicks are better; have the list of feeds on the side showing as links and not as checkboxes, then show button

Employer Edits

I have done the final proofreading of the employer pages. I put all my changes in the wiki at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?COL/EmployerEdits. Una, could you please look over these and make sure there is nothing to add and then coordinate with James and Claire to get the changes made.

Most of the changes are small typos, some are changes to instructions since the fuctionality has changed, and others are some minor errors in programming.

One thing to note is that if the sector profiles are not going to be viewable from the employer pages on launch, we will need to take out the references to that.

Let me know if there are any questions.

Student Help Text

I have finished the first draft of the student help text, for all sections except the Labour Market News/RSS stuff, which will take some additional thinking. There are a few little parts that I couldn't write because they aren't up on the site yet, but they can be added later.

I have made notes throughout on things that need to be clarified with James regarding functionalities, particularly in the My CareersOnline section. If you could discuss this at your next meeting, or if James can go into the wiki and write in the answers, that would be helpful.

I have also made notes for whoever is editing where I had questions about form and content. When you have had a chance to respond let me know and I will go in again and fix things up.

Next week I will be working on the 'Guided Tour' which will be a kind of summary of all the help text, or an overview of the functionalitiy of each section, and the remaining help text for RSS, etc.

Table of Website changes

Download file

This is a more up-dated version of the table of website changes.