CAREER READINESS will help users improve basic skills for job readiness. The career development process includes awareness, exploration, preparation, and application of those skills, culminating in life-long career management.
This course was created through a collaborative effort between the Nebraska Department of Labor and Nebraska Department of Education's Career Education System and Adult Basic Education to implement distance learning capabilities to instructors and adult and youth participants.
Nebraska Department of Labor and Nebraska Department of Education Produced by NET Interactive and Educational Media through a Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Incentive Grant
The modules in this course cover the following content:
MODULE 1. SEEKING EMPLOYMENT
Identifying interests and aptitudes.
Researching companies and job openings.
Networking.
Applying for a job.
Interviewing.
MODULE 2. WORKPLACE SUCCESS
Defining success.
Understanding rules, expectations, and responsibility.
Networking.
MODULE 3. COMMUNICATION
Conducting successful business conversations.
Face-to-face communication.
Nonverbal and verbal messages.
Written communication.
MODULE 4. PRESENTATIONS
Preparing for presentations.
The event.
Virtual presentations.
MODULE 5. CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Dealing with differences.
Respecting, listening, and finding out what's going on with your co-worker.
Reaching a resolution.
MODULE 6. DECISION MAKING
Processing methodically.
Deciding who decides.
Defining the need and involving the participants.
Researching.
Creating and evaluating options.
Deciding, acting, and following through.
MODULE 7. TEAMWORK & LEADERSHIP
What makes good teams, leaders, managers, and intrapreneurs.
Looking at the whole picture in teamwork.
Running meetings with good communication and brainstorming.
Embracing change.
MODULE 8. WORKPLACE ETHICS
Understanding, respecting, and complying with laws, policies, and codes of conduct.
Consequences of unethical behavior.
Demonstrating respect and owning your actions.
MODULE 9. SOCIAL & CULTURAL AWARENESS
Social norms in the workplace.
Cultural stereotypes, generalizations, and communication.
Ways to fight harassment.
MODULE 10. FINANCIAL WELLBEING
Managing your credit, credit cards, credit history, and credit score.
Establishing financial goals.
Developing a personal budget, including lifestyle, insurance, and taxes.
MODULE 11. PERSONAL WELLBEING
Your personal wellness plan.
Physical health: diet and exercise.
Mental health: cultural, intellectual, social, and emotional.
CAREER READINESS is a highly interactive Moodle website with video, audio, text, graphics, animations, activities, and self-checks illustrating the content. Most of the pages have more than one interaction, so be sure to scroll down to catch all of them.
At the bottom of every page (except self-check pages) is a link to a TEXT VERSION of the content, for accessibility and printing options. Occasionally, there are also links to outside websites for additional content. Those links, and more, are also listed on the Useful Resources and References page.
All modules and their pages can be accessed at all times from the left menu as well as from the Table of Contents on the home page. Use the arrows to open modules in order to see the individual pages.
STOP ACTIVITIES FROM PLAYING The first activity on each page is usually played automatically. If you are returning to look for something further down the page, you can stop most activities in this course by the following methods:
For videos, click the STOP or PAUSE buttons.
For animations, click the SKIP TO END button.
For all other activities, click the HOME button.
VIDEO Videos at the top of any page will play automatically. To play videos further down the page, click the play button.
To access the video captions, click the speech balloon icon in the lower right corner of the video player.
To bring back the video title and stop the captions, click the same icon again.
AUDIO BUTTONS and GLOSSARY Throughout the course, audio buttons allow you to replay instructions or simple text audio. We recommend playing all audio buttons to find out what each activity is about and whether or not there are any special instructions for playing each interaction.
Isolated blue words or phrases are glossary terms. When you run your mouse over one, it will display a definition. You can also access the full, printable glossary as an Adobe Reader file at the bottom of every page.
SELF-CHECKS Each module has one to three Self-Check pages. These include multiple choice, matching, and drag and drop activities, as well as games that should be replayed to discover different options. Not every one works the same as another, so follow the instructions carefully, and use these activities to test your understanding of the content of the module. These interactions are not saved in the database. If you want to keep your results, save a screen capture (PC) or screen shot (Mac).
REFRESH SITE Because this course is very media-intensive, it is possible to lock up an activity by being "click-happy" (clicking your mouse too often and too fast). Refresh/reload the page or click on another page and come back to the original one in order to have everything work properly again. If there are any tech issues, contact the Career Readiness Help Desk.
BROWSER OPTIONS Internet Explorer 9.0+ Mozilla Firefox 4.0+ Safari 5.0+ Google Chrome 5.0+ Opera 11
Screen resolution 1024 x 768 or higher
Color depth of 16-bit or higher
Flash 11.0+ plugin
Acrobat Reader 9+ plugin
Broadband connection
General System Information
Because this website uses Flash software to run content, it will not function on IOS devices, such as iPads.
This course has been designed for personal computers with the following minimal requirements:
Windows - Based
Macintosh - Based
Windows XP or Higher
OSX or Higher
512 Megabyte RAM
512 Megabyte RAM
Other configurations may also work with this course. However, without the above parameters, we can’t guarantee that all features will perform as expected.
CAREER READINESS can be used by both individuals and groups.
An instructor or business facilitator can assign a student or employee to experience a full module or individual pages. Then, he or she can ask the student to report back on and discuss what was learned.
A projector can be used to access any of the web pages in front of a group. Then, either that leader or various members of the group can take turns clicking on the buttons to watch and listen to the content. At any point on a page, the leader can initiate a discussion:
What struck you as the most important or new information on this page?
Have you ever experienced problems with any of these issues? How did you resolve them?
Which of these strategies would you like to try? How might you modify them to work for you?
Use the Self-Check pages to have students or employees verbally answer before clicking to get feedback. Then, if the student or employee's answer was different from the suggested answer, discuss why.
This course gives suggestions on how to adapt behavior to become successful in a working environment. If there are issues or behaviors in the course that bring up questions, we suggest that the instructor or business facilitator use those instances to engage in discussion.
What concerns do your students or employees have?
What alternate behaviors do they suggest, and why?
A business facilitator can help drive a discussion about what is expected of each employee at his or her particular institution. An instructor can work with students to discuss how each aspect of career readiness applies to a particular discipline.
Nebraska teachers can add notes, blogs, assignments, and quizzes that can be saved in the school's database for this Moodle course. Check with your Educational Service Unit (ESU) for help in setting this up.