Future Forward
In March 2020, I partnered with Hilarie Longnecker to develop Future Forward, a NACE 2022 award-winning year-long co-curricular asynchronous career incubator for first-year students at DePaul University. This program was a yield initiative that incentivized prospective students to apply early, integrate and normalize career exploration as part of the first-year experience, and offer a communal experience for a class that would begin their time at DePaul remotely.
Future Forward’s structure integrates design thinking, growth mindset, and career development theory to deliver virtual modules, peer-to-peer communities, and career experiences. It normalizes early engagement with careers among first-year students and promotes students' consideration of their whole selves as they draft their path to career success.
In developing this program and its content, we profiled our target audience by creating personas representative of our diverse first-year student population. We used these personas to create empathy maps that helped us identify specific needs and opportunities for engaging these students. Using these insights, we started with learning outcomes aligned with the necessary competencies. Then, we curated and created micro-focused and approachable learning resources and self-assessments. We produced a skeleton outline of the content and sequence, with a focus on scaffolding, diversity of options, peer engagement, and micro-learning. We created a check-out survey for each module to get real-time feedback on the learning experience. At the top of every module, we identified the skills students would gain and offered an opportunity to practice that skill at least once within every module.
Learning Outcomes:
Students will embrace the value of exploration in their own journey and become confident in their ability to navigate the career readiness model.
Students will gain insight into their interests, values, strengths, and skills, and learn how to apply that holistic self-knowledge when evaluating potential career paths.
Students will learn and apply career research methods to explore career paths available to them and gain insight into the world of work.
Students will recognize the importance of and begin to build a network of advocates, advisors, peers, and professionals who will support them in their continued exploration and career development.
Students will take concrete steps towards building a personal career toolkit that reflects their level of career development, including a first-year-appropriate resume and draft of their brand statement.
Students will become advocates for career exploration and readiness among the larger student body, sharing what they’ve learned with peers and encouraging them to engage early with the Career Center and in their career development.
Participants will experience a sense of affinity and belonging as members of the Future Forward community.
Below is a slideshow that previews the organic digital community we created using Yellowdig, a promo video for the program, and our Future Forward Workbook of career activities (Designed by Tara Hoover).
