OLMIS

by Stacey Whaley, Barry Annis Phd.
Published Feb-11-2008

Introduction Student Outcomes Scope and Sequence Pre-Skills Assessment Conclusion

This curriculum was designed for use in classrooms with students of all ability levels. The rationale is that every student will eventually need to be able to make a living by finding and keeping a job. Obviously, people tend to keep the jobs they like longer than jobs they have no interest in. This set of lessons is intended to teach students a method they can use now and after they are out of school to research jobs and careers in Oregon. Hopefully by knowing more about the careers they are interested in, students can make informed choices that match better with their aptitudes, work preferences, and learning needs.

This curriculum serves three main purposes:

1. To provide skills to access career information from a source that will continue to be available after formal schooling ends.
   
   
2. To provide exposure to related career vocabulary.
   
   
3. To teach and use basic computer skills related to OLMIS (Oregon Labor Market Information System).

It is well known that the average person will switch career fields multiple times over the course of their working life. After students have completed this curriculum successfully, they will have a set of skills that will continue to serve them well in their future career changes. The skills students learn from this program help them use the tools provided by OLMIS to make informed choices about the careers they pursue.

After successfully completing this program, students will have:

1. Basic computer skills related to OLMIS.
   
   
2. The ability to use OLMIS to search for job openings.
   
   
3. The ability to use OLMIS to identify skills necessary for specific jobs.
   
   
4. Identified occupations meeting their criteria for education, income, and growth.
   
   
5. The ability to identify information related to future training or schooling within the OLMIS database.

The OLMIS curriculum provides an ideal way for schools to meet the state requirements for Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) check-offs in specific areas. The lessons included here address all six of the different CAM strands as well as teaching long-term career development skills that the state requires. (An overview of the career-related learning requirements is available at the  Oregon Department of Education Website.

This program has a limited scope and should be used in conjunction with other career development materials.

This curriculum DOES:

• Teach students to use the tools and data available on the OLMIS Web site.

This curriculum DOES NOT:

• Teach basic computer literacy skills.
  
  
• Provide instruction or tools for students to participate in career self-exploration activities.
  
  
• Include continuing career development instruction that would make this a comprehensive set of career development lessons.

There are many different curricula available to provide a chance for the in depth self-exploration activities that should precede this program and for the large scale career development activities that would naturally follow it.

The best scenario for teaching this program is to include the other aspects of a complete series of career development curricula and make it a term or semester-long course. Some schools may choose to incorporate the OLMIS program into the Personal Finance classes or other curricular areas as one of the units taught. Either way works well, but it is important to include lessons from this curriculum a minimum of three times a week for development and maintenance of skills taught.

Because this program does not presume to teach students everything they need to know about computers or career education, they need to come prepared with a few basic pre-skills in order to be successful using this curriculum. The required pre-skills and preliminary knowledge are:

1. A basic familiarity with mouse, keyboard, and internet.
   
   
2. A general idea of his/her current job skills.
   
   
3. A general idea of 3 career interest areas he or she would like to learn more about (from interest inventories or other sources).
   
   
4. The name of the county he or she lives in within Oregon.
   
   
5. A general idea of where they would like to work geographically (for example, in the Willamette Valley).
   
   
6. A general knowledge of basic graph reading, percentages, and other basic math skills.

This program has attempted to pull together a wide range of assessment tools to evaluate student gains. These tools range from puzzles and worksheets to quizzes and projects. The assignments and assessments have another purpose besides grading as well. They are intended to become a product that the student can take with them and use as a resource in a variety of ways. Multiple uses include (a) providing input for student led transition meetings, (b) providing data for Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals, (c) providing additional information for writing letters to colleges or vocational programs, to name a few.

Assessment and evaluation of student progress and learning occurs on two different timetables – daily and short term (the length of the unit). Daily evaluations of student progress take place through the completion of worksheets and daily assignments. The short term assessments include student printouts of individual information related to their career interests (the portfolio), the vocabulary tests and activities, and the final Career Development Plan.

The assessment methods are described below.

• Daily worksheets
  These would serve as a relatively short-term evaluation of the student's grasp of the skill or concept as well as a way to gauge application of the skill on a given task. For the teacher, it is a way to frequently assign a grade to the work the student is submitting and keep a record of it in a grade book. The assignments are also checked off on the Portfolio checklist and filed in the student's Portfolio.
  
  
• Skill assessment printout
  After a student has mastered a skill enough to successfully complete the structured worksheet, he/she has the opportunity to add their own career information and print out the results. This becomes part of the Portfolio as well.
  
  
• Vocabulary worksheets, activities, and quizzes
  The vocabulary activities take many different forms. They include matching, multiple choice, use the word in a sentence, fill in the blank, and crossword puzzles. These sheets provide practice and an opportunity for students to learn vocabulary words. The vocabulary worksheets and other work also serve as review sheets for the quizzes, which attempt to assess the students' proficiency in using the contextual vocabulary.
  
  
• Culmination Activity
  The culmination activity reflects the learning that the student has done over the course of the unit related to OLMIS. The student will be expected to take the skills they have learned and apply them by using OLMIS to research a career of their choice. They will then fill out a Career Development Plan (see the Final Project section), which charts the education and training needed to achieve the goal job as well as the skills they bring and those they need to continue to develop. This will be the key culminating piece of the Portfolio the student takes with them at the end.

This curriculum provides an excellent base for students to start exploring and planning for their future careers, but there are so many experiences that this program doesn't provide for students. Educators will need to build on skills taught in this curriculum and get creative about bringing career education into your classrooms. There are so many ways to take this knowledge and really bring it home to students so they will remember the lessons and skills they learned for years to come. A few ideas are listed here to get your creative juices flowing...remember, the only limit is your imagination and planning!

Build on skills taught in this curriculum by:

• Using computer skills in the real world.
  
  
• Taking it one step further and teaching job applications and resumes for the jobs the students have researched.
  
  
• Using the information researched by the student to contact employers about a job shadow experience.
  
  
• Hosting a Career Fair and inviting businesses from careers the students expressed interests in (you could even have mock interviews for practice).
  
  
• Generalizing the skills learned here to other areas of life (Example: computer skills apply to shopping online).
  
  
• Recognizing OLMIS as a resource to use after school ends and using it frequently for practice after the formal unit instruction is finished.