Speaker: Jessamyn Perlus, Senior Associate Director, Cornell Career Services, Cornell University
Please state your full name, title, organization, and the award name.
Jessamyn Perlus: Hi, my name is Jessamyn Perlus. I'm the senior associate director with Cornell Career Services, and we received the Technology Excellence Award.
Talk briefly about your program and what sparked you to develop it.
Jessamyn Perlus: The Cornell Career Development Tool Kit is a series of modules on Canvas, the learning management system used by Cornell University. We created these modules in 2019 with the goal of providing career content accessible 24/7 and approachable by including gamification. So students and alumni are more engaged when interacting with this high quality career content.
What were you trying to achieve? Did you achieve what you expected?
Jessamyn Perlus: There were many goals for the Career Development Tool Kit. Initially, we wanted to build high quality content in one place, infusing career education and theory. Then we expanded to now have industry- specific modules. We have 29 currently and growing. And we really wanted our university partners and the students to become engaged and really use these. So I would say we are successful, we now are able to enroll all incoming students and currently have 23,000 users in the Career Development Tool Kit.
Were there any surprises—any results you weren’t expecting?
Jessamyn Perlus: One thing that surprised me with the Career Development Tool Kit is how engaged students, alumni and staff became once the modules were published. I get requests weekly for new links or enhancements, pages, even modules people want to add. They're willing to be co-authors, reviewers, and even share their personal stories to help other Cornell students.
How did you develop this program? What processes did you use?
Jessamyn Perlus: To build the Career Development Tool Kit we started with what we had: our website, our Power Points, and our printed materials. We organized it, starting with understand yourself, explore options and take action. We moved all the content into Canvas, which required a little extra training on HTML and buying a tool called H5P for the interactive games. We sought reviewer feedback, we published, and now we continually seek feedback and are constantly trying to enhance it with real student stories.
From your perspective, what was the single most important outcome of this program?
Jessamyn Perlus: It's hard to pick. But for me, the most important thing about the Tool Kit is how it represents collaboration. Our goal was to level the playing field, so all students and alumni had access to the same quality information, no matter what their major or college or industry of interest was. Because so many of our campus partners and alumni partners have been able to contribute their knowledge and their expertise into these modules, they're also able to promote it to everyone, which is what makes it so rewarding to have it available.
If someone wants to replicate your program, what do they need to know upfront (the first steps to take, potential pitfalls to watch for)?
Jessamyn Perlus: I recommend everyone take advantage of the learning management system at your institution, because that's where students are trained to go for all their content anyways. And take advantage of some of the built-in features like we put the career fairs on the calendar. So the first things to do are to connect with your IT departments, learn a little bit more about what's possible, get an account, and just start playing around.
