Career Development:
Interview Preparation
Interview Preparation was a major course objective of Career Development II at Bryant and Stratton College. This unit was taught through multiple lessons over the course of five weeks leading up to mock interviews with community corporate and state agency partners. As part of our adaptation to online learning due to COVID in March 2020, a need existed to transform our traditional in-person classes into eLearning modules that could be experienced without the presence of an instructor in real-time. To meet this need, I took the lead on learning how to use more advanced eLearning applications (such as Captivate) and tools to transform my courses into interactive, engaging and memorable online learning experiences that maintained the high quality instruction I had previously delivered to my students in person.
**Project details are still being added below.
Unit Storyboard
The storyboard was created in PowerPoint as a general outline of the supplemental unit materials and lessons based on topics provided in the institution’s curriculum. The purpose of the storyboard was to ensure that the appropriate layout of content and interactive features were chosen for presentation in Blackboard Learning. I wrote a profound amount supplemental instructional content for this unit, created videos, designed interactive activities and embedded knowledge and skills assessments to enhance learning and retention.
Interactive Features and Special Effects
To maintain students’ engagement, interactive features were created and embedded into the Interview Preparation Lessons. The example below is very similar to the original created for the course lesson.
Branching Scenario
The learning is given the choice to select an interview candidate to take them through key details of preparation — attire, resume documents review, elevator pitch recital, interview question response practice, learning from feedback and using interview technology before the day of the interview to ensure understanding and proper function. The full version of this branching scenario contained 22 frames with special interactive features and effects included to maximize learner engagement as well as quiz them on the skills and knowledge they were acquiring in this unit’s lesson.
Make a Choice. The learner must select which candidate they believe is more appropriately dressed based on their knowledge from the course lesson and the point made in the previous frame.
If the learner selects the candidate in pink, they will receive immediate feedback on why this candidate is not the best choice for “best dressed” for a corporate interview. Each piece of text is accompanied by audio and slides into the frame one point at a time for emphasis and easy reading. The learner is then sent to view the appropriately dressed candidate.
If the learner selects the candidate in the black blouse, they receive immediate feedback on why their choice is correct. Each piece of text is accompanied by audio and slides into the frame one point at a time with each arrow appearing simultaneous to the text it accompanies (this is the same for arrows in the wrong response frame, too).
View Excerpt of Interactive Scenario
Click on the image to view the interactive experience when a learner clicks on the character Danielle.
Unit Major Assessment
The major assessment to test students’ mastery of knowledge and skills in this unit was in the form of Speed Interviews. Each student was scheduled for two 15-minute interviews with interviewers from local businesses related to the student’s chosen career. I created the Evaluation Form (Rubric) by which each student was assessed on key elements of their interviews, including professionalism presentation, responses to questions and quality of professional career documents. This major assessment accounted for 20% of the overall Career Development II course grade.