University of Hawaii Community Colleges unveil new, interactive career exploration website and touchscreen kiosks

New software application helps users define career goals and explore career options

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Susan Lee, (808) 956-5852
UH Community Colleges
Kristen Bonilla, (808) 956-5039
External Affairs & University Relations
Posted: Nov 30, 2007

HONOLULU — The University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges unveiled its new Career Connections website and touchscreen kiosks today at a special ceremony at Honolulu Community College. Career Connections is a new, interactive software application developed by a team of UH Community Colleges personnel that helps people define their career goals and explore career options through interest- and skills-based assessments, video clips, career and training information, career-related activities and games, and more.

Career Connections is offered free to the public and is available as stand-alone kiosks at the UH community college campuses statewide or online at http://careerconnections.hawaii.edu. Anyone preparing for college, planning a career change, or interested in learning more about jobs and careers in today‘s marketplace will find the program extremely useful.

"We know for a fact that students who have a clearly established career goal are much more likely to graduate than those who don‘t," says UH Community Colleges Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael Rota. "That‘s why we see Career Connections as a critical piece in our strategy to help students achieve success in school and in their future careers. As educators, it is important that we provide every possible opportunity for our students to be successful."

Career Connections offers users an opportunity to explore more than 1,000 career options, interest- and skills-based assessments, University of Hawaiʻi program information and tips, as well as information on salaries, occupations and industry outlooks in Hawaiʻi and across the nation. It also features more than 400 career video clips, job-readiness tutorials on topics such as writing resumes and interviewing, and fun career-based activities and games.

What is particularly unique about the Career Connections program is it was developed using Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which incorporate client-side technology that can execute instructions on the client‘s computer, making it faster and quicker for the viewer to see the information requested. Unlike the traditional web applications, sometimes referred to as "page-to-page architecture," this new web development design using RIAs avoids the numerous round trips to and from the server and the constant reloading and flickering of each static page as the user moves from page to page.

Funding for Career Connections was provided by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. It was developed by Paul Sakamoto and Carol Pang of the UH Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges, and Karen Hayashida, Sandy Hoshino, Melinda Lee and Erin Loo of Leeward Community College. This same team was recognized for their work on the Career Access job-preparation software, the first module developed under the Career Connections umbrella project, with the University of Hawaiʻi 2006 Team Excellence Award of Merit and selected to represent UH in the 2006 Governor's Awards for Distinguished State Service.

For more information, visit: http://careerconnections.hawaii.edu