DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTERISED CAREER GUIDANCE INFORMATION SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Man in search of comfort struggle to meet up with good career and for this to be achieved, it has to be started as early as possible. From the time man is born, expectations abound to know what likely he will be able to do as he grows up. This has to do with his natural behaviour and mental exercise display. This continues in family/parents and other relaxation acting as counselling unit until the child goes in to school. In school the teacher takes over the counselling, it is a continuous exercise until one finds one‟s feet, then he can continue from there and equally be in a position to guide and counsel others.

The stages where much work is carried out on counselling is in secondary schools. This is a stage when a child is grown to be able to understand maturely and when the child‟s attitude is fully studied in line with academic performance. In all secondary school across the country, there exist a guidance and counsellor office where people knowledgeable in the area of psychology are employed in order to help advise the younger ones in school which way forward to their future career. There people through class visitation, Observing students during recreation and calling on them at intervals for questioning, came to know the students betters and be able to guide and counsel them in their future career probably in university or in any other area of endeavour.

The job of counselling in secondary school is not an easy job to be taking into consideration the number students involved with respect to the number of staff involved. It is always very difficult to handle all the students and to remember everything about the students. This Counselling exercise needs a sophisticated system for the operation of counselling alliterates some of the problem associated with exercise. Personal behaviour and area of interest, they keep very close marks with the students to make sure that no stone is left unturned. This aspect of one‟s life is taken very seriously in schools because that is mainly the reason people go to school for the academics tests and examination only. The battle of career choice is handed over to individual when he/she attain a stage of being able to duct for himself what he/she really wants and how best possible to get such height. The person can steer the wheels directly to his destination or deviate in the other way due to carelessness or youthful exuberance; but the end justifies the means. Sometimes, due to laxity and incapability on the side of the career guidance and counsellor in schools, most of the students are led astray. Hoyfield (1997) argues that a good career in life, makes a lot of meaningful process in life. He queried “what is comfort and where comfort without a good career”. In his own views, it takes a long and rough way to arrive and clinch a good career but when one finally gets to it, life comes to be what nature made it be. He made it clear and that life is associated with a good career and that such a career is what can give full meaning of life a priceless gift of nature. Statistics shows that people who find good career are enjoying high standard of living and the unlucky ones cry of frustration and negatives social factors that limits life.

1.1 Statement Of The Problem

The number of students involved in schools counselling are very enormous and few staff in counselling cannot handle the job effectively. It is always very easy to forget information about students and to reach all the students, contributes and problems.Another major problem of the counselling is information storage. The made of storage of information observed from the students in different forms is not reliable and this makes the counselling to apply guess work in trying to direct students in their future career work.

This is a very big delay in taking decision on students concerning their future career. This is also because referencing to students information for decision making takes a very long time.

1.2 Aims/Objectives

The primary aim of this projects work is to provide lasting solution to the problem affecting counselling exercise in secondary schools. The following objectives below are the study

 To make the criteria and process involved in the exercise of counselling very easy and flexible.

 To carefully take care of the burden, the staff faces in trying to do the work of counselling manually.

 To provide adequate enabling environment for counselling on student to give them better career perspective.

 To maintain adequate observed information on students for future reference and quick decision taking.

1.3 Purpose Of The Study

The purpose of this project work is to probe into the developing a counselling software for schools with a view of creating awareness of the use computer in counselling with due consideration of this new technology advancement.

1.4 Significance Of The Study

This study is of numerous important to the guidance and counsellor department and the society in general in different ways:

 It will help the counsellor to always direct the students in their best career area with happiness because it will be result oriented.

 It will also help to eliminate the word frustration among the people which is very common in the society.

 It will ease of the stress of the counsellor using his/her brain trying to store information about different students in their large number and each student‟s area of interest he/she is fit for.

Using an automated system in this situation would be very efficient especially in information storage.

1.5 Scope/Delimitation Of The Study

The study covers the design and implementation of computerized career choice counselling system in secondary schools.

1.6 Constraints/Limitations

The major constraints identified in the course of this work are as follows:

 There are many secondary schools in primitive/rural areas that have little or no technological facilities in the school. Implementation of this system in such a situation becomes a problem.

 There may also be staff in the school who do not have knowledge on proper usage of computer. If such staff works in the guidance and counselling unit, it would be cumbersome for him/her to operate the computerized system.

Recommended solution to these problems is that there should be a room for proper training of personnel who cannot operate computers properly. Also, government should help provide technological facilities in those schools in the rural areas that have little or no level of technology.

1.7 Definition Of Terms

COUNSELLING: To give advise to another.

SOCIETY: This is an organized group of people living together and having things together.

AUTOMATED: Less independent of human direction and utilizes techniques of automation.

PROMPT: To motivate an action.

SYSTEM: A combination of parts organized in a whole working together to achieve a common purpose.

PSYCHOLOGY: The study of mind and it‟s function.

DATA: This is a raw and unprocessed facts and figures obtained from experiments, research, surveys etc. used to develop something or make decision.

RECORD: To write down event so that it can be remember.

COMPUTER: This is an electronic device that accept raw facts as data and processes it to give useful information.

INFORMATION: Data that has been processed.