I am a Cooperative Education or Work Experience Supervisor

• How can I use the profiles?
• How can I use the Reader's Guide?
• How can I use the Authentic Workplace materials?

You can use this part of the web site to help students:

• Investigate different careers, work opportunities and work environments
• Identify and/or select a potential work site
• Work with employers to develop a learning plan and identify how they are using Essential Skills at the work site
• Assess whether they have the skills they need to be successful in a particular placement
• Prepare for the work site by practicing on real work examples

The Occupational Profiles can be used by your students

• to research specific occupations
• to identify occupations that might suit their areas of strength
• to work from the relevant occupational profile when developing a learning plan
• to get help in thinking about whether they have the skills they will need in a placement

The Occupational Profiles can also be used by teachers

• helping students prepare for the work site

Students can

Research specific occupations

• Search the profiles using "Occupation". They can search using a job title or a code from the National Occupational Classification.
• They can connect to other sources of information about the occupation using the Links to Other Sites at the end of each profile.

(NOTE: Not all occupations are on the database. What occupations are profiled?)

Find out about occupations in areas that interest them

• Search using "Keyword". Enter a word related to their area of interest.
• Or, search using "Occupation" entering a word related to their area of interest.

Identify occupations that might suit their areas of strength

• Search using "Most Important Skills" to find occupations that require skills where they think they are strong, or occupations that don't require skills where they think they are not strong.

Work from the relevant occupational profile when developing a learning plan

• No particular job is likely to match the Occupational Profile exactly, since profiles have been written to describe a range of jobs (i.e., an occupation). The Profile is, however, a good place to start a conversation about what skills will be used in a work experience or co-op placement.

Get help in thinking about their own skills and whether or not they have the skills needed for a particular placement

• Use the complexity scales. Say they are thinking about their problem solving skills.
  • Enter any profile
  • Go to the Problem Solving section
  • Click on "Complexity"

This accesses information about the complexity scale for Problem Solving. Start by looking at the examples that illustrate the levels of the scale. Have they done anything that looks like the examples for Level 1? Level 2? or higher? You may want to look at the formal definitions of the scale.

Do you want to see more examples of the Levels?

• Use Search by skills
• Click the box for the complexity level(s) you want to see. Then click Next.
• This gives you a list of all occupational profiles in the database that contain examples illustrating Problem Solving at the level of complexity you chose.
• You can see all these examples by clicking "View Examples" at the bottom of the screen.

Now that they have thought about their skills, they can compare them to the skills required in the occupation where they will be doing their co-op or work experience placement

• By comparing their skills to the skills in that occupation, they can see if they have the skills they will need.

(NOTE: In co-op or work experience placements, students are unlikely to perform the full range of tasks that could potentially be associated with that occupation. The skill requirement for a placement may thus be lower than the requirements for actual job performance. This gap may be identified during the development of the learning plan. Use of the Occupational Profile in the development of the learning plan could encourage the inclusion of a broader range of tasks and more opportunities to develop and/or demonstrate skills.)

For more help in thinking about their skills and about what skills they demonstrated in a particular placement, your students can visit the ESPORT - Essential Skills Portfolio

Teachers helping students prepare for the work site could get ideas for practice activities from the "Examples" in the Occupational Profiles relevant to their students' placements. They could also get ideas for classroom activities from the Applications of Working and Learning web site.

Ideas for Using the Readers' Guide to Essential Skills Profiles

If this interests you, also see the Ideas for Using the Occupational Profiles and the ESPORT - Essential Skills Portfolio.

Ideas for Using the Authentic Workplace Materials

Other sources for ideas for classroom activities are the Examples in the Occupational Profiles and the Applications of Working and Learning web site.

View the User Guide to Authentic Workplace Materials