An Exploration of Career Decision-Making among Domestic and International Instructional Design Students

Abstract

Graduate students encounter specific career difficulties in making career decisions, and turn to various sources of assistance, help-seeking resources and guidance (Gati, Gadasi & Shemesh, 2005). Previous research into graduate student career needs have not sought to better understand the specific differences between international and domestic graduate students in instructional design. As a result, the factors that influence and impact graduate students in the context of their career decision making within an instructional design graduate program remain unexplored. This mixed methods study captured actual career related difficulties of graduate instructional design students through a conceptual framework based on Bandura (1986) and Lent's (1994) social cognitive career theory, emphasizing the importance of interactions with key factors such as career readiness, access to career information and consistent and reliable career information. Participants recorded their levels of career decision-making difficulty through an online survey, the Career Decision Making Questionnaire (CDDQ), (Gati, Kraus & Osipow, 1996). The CDDQ was used to measure: 1) lack of readiness, 2) lack of information and 3) inconsistent information. Independent t-tests compared mean scores per question in each category among the domestic and international student groups, indicating statistical significance. A demographic questionnaire added to the CDDQ captured participant's demographic v information and resources utilized. A sample (n=20) of the participants completed semistructured follow up interviews. This study indicates that the current level of support for graduate students in instructional design may not be robust enough to support their needs. It also demonstrates the value of mixed method approaches toward better understanding instructional design students, their avenues for accessing career information, and the benefit of assisting students with career decision-making. The results demonstrate that graduate students have specific career needs and experience career decision-making difficulty regardless of country of origin, primarily in the pre-decision making phase and in working through internal and external sources of conflict. The psychosocial mechanisms revealed by this study can help educators (including professional organizations, university practitioners and academic advisors) better understand both domestic and international student's challenges, and eventually facilitate their academic and career success.

Pengambilan Keputusan Karir: Suatu Tinjauan Literatur

“…Beberapa peneliti menggunakan instrumen yang telah ada, seperti Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) oleh Gati et al, yang dikembangkan tahun 1996 (Duru et al, 2021;Fatimah, 2020;He et al, 2021;Levin et al, 2020Levin et al, , 2022Mills et al, 2020;Natia & Nino, 2020;Rossier et al, 2021), Skala keputusan karir (Career Decision Making Scale; CDM) dirancang oleh Osipow et al pada tahun 1987 (Pordelan & Hosseinian, 2020;Zaini et al, 2021), Career Decision-making Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, CDMSE (He et al, 2021;Natia & Nino, 2020), Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (CDMSES-SF) yang dikembangkan oleh Betz et al, pada tahun 1996(Cheng & Sin, 2021Duru et al, 2021;Rossier et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2021), Career Thoughts Inventory dikembangkan oleh Sampson et al, pada tahun 1996 mengukur pemikiran karir negatif yang terkait dengan pemecahan masalah karir dan pengambilan keputusan (Hayden & Osborn, 2020), skala gaya pengambilan keputusan karir diadopsi dari Rivas, et al, (1989), terdiri atas 12 item, dan mengukur tiga gaya: rasional, intuitif, dan bergantung, dan skala efikasi diri pengambilan keputusan (versi singkat diadaptasi dari Carbonero dan Merino ( 2003) digunakan dalam penelitian Álvarez-Justel & Ruiz-Bueno (2021).…”

Keeping the Learner at the Focal Point: The Use of Needs Assessment and Persona Construction to Develop an Instructional Resource Center For Instructional Designers

“…We conducted a needs assessment to further examine factors that influenced graduate students' , both domestic and international, career decisions (Mills et al, 2020). The data gathered during the needs assessment was used to inform the development of learner personas later on in the project.…”

“…Based on our findings gathered from our needs assessment (Mills et al, 2020), we developed a series of personas to be the focal point of all design decisions made for the project (Baaki et al, 2017). Personas are fictitious representations of audience members for an intended design (Baek et al, 2008;Williams van Rooij, 2012).…”

“…Our design team met and reviewed excerpts from participants in our needs assessment study (Mills et al, 2020). We discussed which comments were most common among the participants.…”

“…The Career Resource Center (CRC) was created in response to data collected in a previous study exploring the career needs of graduate instructional design students (Mills et al, 2020). By capturing the career needs of instructional design students, we were able to respond to their feedback regarding a lack of career resources.…”