Advising and Communication

Digital Tools with a Purpose: Advising for Career Planning and Job Searching

With all the advising resources out there, wouldn’t it be useful to know which ones your peers have chosen to use with which students, and the ways they use them? This interactive session will use the recently released Career Planning and Job Search Resources for Advisors document as a basis to explore Massachusetts advisors' favorite advising tools and resources. The aim is to help you select the ones that your students can use to move forward on their career paths.  

This webinar will address three advising tools:  

• O*NET My Next Move 

• MassHire CIS and CIS 360 (new!)

• MassHire JobQuest

We will also discuss the digital skills needed to use these sites and resources you can use with students to help them strengthen these skills. 

Digital Tools with a Purpose: Communication

Teachers, advisors, tutors, and directors need to communicate with their students outside of in-person class meetings as well as for distance education classes. Keeping in touch and continuing instruction are more important than ever. What digital tools can help us continue to provide real-time practice and support? What asynchronous communication tools are most effective to allow people to participate when schedules permit? And how can we choose the best ones to use according to staff and student needs?

This webinar will address four tools:  

• Remind for messaging and more

• Google Voice for phoning and texting

• Zoom for real-time video meetings

• Screencast-O-Matic for creating narrated instructional recordings of anything you show on your computer screen, including yourself via your computer camera

Online Career Planning and Job Search Tools: Supporting Students from a Distance

"I think this workshop is valuable to even the most seasoned advisor. There are new resources and techniques being created and it's impossible to find them all by yourself."

Learn tips and techniques for using online career exploration and job searching tools with students to continue your work together. In addition, these tools can help students gain fluency in digital literacy skills that will assist them at school and at work. 

Tools and Strategies for Remote Advising

There are many ways advisors and coaches support students and doing so in our current situation with limited or no in-person contact can require rethinking. Some of the major supports advisors provide include keeping in touch with students, sharing resources, referrals and materials with students, and completing education and career planning activities. This workshop will address the challenges of delivering these supports remotely by suggesting strategies and tools for online and offline remote advising. In this workshop, you will identify a specific goal you have for your remote advising related to keeping in touch with students, sharing resources and referrals, or completing education and career planning activities. With your goal in mind, you will identify a free, user-friendly online or offline tool that you plan to try. Some sample tools and strategies we will address include Zoom office hours, Calendly, Google Calendar and Drive, Weebly, newsletters, MassCIS activities, among others. We will consider how to select tools that align with your goals and students’ goals as well as student access to digital devices and connectivity.