22 December 1994 Lincoln Develops Computerised Aid to Course and Career Selection

It's called "LUCCA", acronym for Lincoln University Courses and Careers Adviser, and it's an innovative computer-assisted aid to guiding students through the processes of course selection and career choice.

LUCCA was developed at Lincoln as a joint venture between Master of Commerce and Management graduate Julia Meyale, supervised by Dr Dan Sauers of the Department of Economics and Marketing, Lincoln University's Student Services Group, the Community Relations Centre and Lincoln Ventures Ltd. All believe it is set to give the University a competitive edge in the area of course and careers advice.

"Over recent years enrolments at Lincoln have risen dramatically, giving rise to an increased demand for timely, accurate and locally relevant careers information," says Julia.

"And coupled with this has been a greater interest by students in tying courses to specific careers.

"To help meet this situation the University's Careers Advisory Service decided to look at computerised career guidance systems. Typically such systems involve individual self-assessment, the generation of occupational alternatives, the provision of careers and educational information, instruction in career decision-making, and a planning process for implementing choices."

The system developed for Lincoln provides assistance with deciding what courses to take; contains job information; helps guide users towards an appropriate career; provides employer contact addresses; can be administered throughout the year; does not require any supervision; is accompanied by printed information and on-line tutorial; and can be completed within three hours.

"LUCCA is unique in the way it combines timely, accurate, and locally relevant career related information with individual self-assessment, linking courses with careers," says Julia.

A needs assessment, conducted as part of Julia's Master of Commerce and Management thesis, identified a strong demand from both the Careers Advisory Service (CAS) and students for a computer-assisted careers guidance system.

Julia evaluated several commercially available systems, all of which would have needed substantial modifications to meet Lincoln's local requirements. As a result, the decision was made to develop a new system appropriate to the unique counselling needs of the University's students.

LUCCA provides support for all facets of career guidance, integrating individual self-assessment, careers and course advice, and general University information.

LUCCA incorporates the New Zealand revision of the Self-Directed Search (SDS-NZ) a self-assessment instrument which links an individual's personality type with appropriate career alternatives. These alternatives in turn are tied to Lincoln University course information. The SDS takes into consideration the user's interests, skills, abilities, and education in determining appropriate career areas.

"LUCCA has two main applications," says Julia, "to provide careers and course counselling to students currently enrolled at Lincoln University and to provide similar services to potential students who may not have access to professional counsellors."

On campus the Careers Advisory Service will act as manager of LUCCA, coordinating it with other sources of careers information. By handling the routine tasks associated with information gathering and processing, LUCCA will allow the Careers Adviser to focus on other aspects of students’ careers choices.

"Increased competition among tertiary education providers has resulted in a flood of recruiters seeking access to secondary school students. As a consequence, some schools have responded by restricting the access of universities' liaison staff to their students. At the same time, fiscal pressures have led to dramatic cuts in the careers advisory programmes at many schools. We envisage providing LUCCA to secondary schools as part of an overall strategy to raise Lincoln University’s profile while counteracting the restricted access of liaison staff."

Available free of charge on the University's computer network, LUCCA is a menu-driven program, and is easily portable. It also comes with an update facility to easily update all the information it contains. Currently it is available only in PC version and requires a 386 with a colour monitor to run.

LUCCA has a number of advantages over competing packages, for example it is New Zealand-relevant. Overseas packages need to be modified to meet local circumstances e.g. addresses, titles, job descriptions. And most local packages are not comprehensive in the same way that LUCCA is. They either provide solely information or the self-assessment ones do not provide information on the whole process of finding a job.

 The information about the University offered in LUCCA covers facilities (for example, information about the bank, bookshop, library computer centre etc.) student services (halls of residence, recreation centre, students association, health and counselling services, careers advisory services, childcare etc.). The course information includes contact details of course advisers.

"LUCCA is designed to cater for the needs of students at all levels, and even prospective students," says Julia.

"This includes first year or prospective students who are trying to determine suitable courses through to final year students who are completing their degrees or diplomas and looking for appropriate careers."

Julia says that a particularly important advantage of a guidance programme such as LUCCA is the independence it gives to the user.

"With LUCCA we believe we have come up with an attractive, interesting and easy-to­ use programme able to cater for the needs of students at all levels of their university study.

"As design considerations we took into account the 'ideal' attributes identified in a needs assessment study. These were (1) it should cater for the needs of all students - first, second, third and fourth year; (2) it should take into account that students from different years of study require differing levels of careers guidance and may be at different stages of the career decision-making process; (3) it should not take too much time away from course work; (4) it should provide individualised treatments; (5) it should be comprehensive so that it can provide help in moving from decision to action; (6) it should cater for students who may not be able to get the help of a counsellor; (7) it should be attractive, interesting and easy to use.

"Overall we believe LUCCA meets all these criteria and early usage data certainly reinforces the value of the new service. Within three weeks of its recent introduction to the Lincoln campus computer network it was used by about 450 students and staff."

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.