Suggestions for training students in using the internet for career counseling. (Effective Techniques).

The Internet is increasingly important for career counseling; however, there are few suggestions for training graduate counseling students how to use this technology. This project sought to address that lack by having graduate counseling students use a structured interview with undergraduate volunteer clients to assess which needs could be met using the Internet. Graduate students then identified relevant Web sites and explored these in a meeting with the volunteer clients. Results of class surveys indicated that participants encountered few obstacles using the Internet and perceived this intervention to be useful. Implications for training graduate students in using the Internet for career counseling are discussed.

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Although predicting the long-range impact of the Internet on the counseling field is challenging, it is an important task for career counseling practitioners to undertake (Harris-Bowlsbey, Dikel, & Sampson, 1998; Stevens & Lundberg, 1998). First, the Internet radically affects the accessibility of career-related information in ways that are important for career counselors and their clients. Second, the Internet can profoundly alter the process of career counseling by allowing instant communication among counselors, clients, and even employers through electronic mail, postings on Web sites, and videoconferencing (Sampson, 1999). Although a number of resources exist that document the explosive proliferation of career-related Web sites currently available (Koonce, 1997), there has as yet been little systematic exploration of their usefulness as it applies to career counseling (Sampson, Kolodinsky, & Greeno, 1997). In addition, despite the increasing body of literature pertaining to integrating the Internet into the classroom (Kahn, 1997), there are few suggestions for training career counselors in the use of the Internet.

Because the Internet vastly increases the accessibility of information, some have wondered whether career counselors will find themselves by-passed as clients increasingly conduct their own career searches online (Noll & Graves, 1996). However, Noll and Graves (1998) argued that career counselors who successfully integrated the Internet into their interventions would not be left behind. Rather, the services of career counselors may become ever more important as the amount of information available online expands exponentially. Although using the Internet as part of one-to-one, face-to-face counseling with clients is more time intensive than using it in other modalities (for example, as part of group interventions or as a homework assignment completed outside of session), this approach may pay substantial dividends in helping clients manage the potentially overwhelming amount of information that is available online. Because career-related information on the Internet is constantly changing and expanding, trainin g in its use for one-on-one interventions may also provide a unique opportunity for counselors-in-training to learn about these resources and their relative utility for clients.

Harris-Bowlsbey et al. (1998) have identified four broad categories of career resources on the Internet: assessment services, communication Web sites, occupational information, and career-related databases. However, as Stevens and Lundberg (1998) pointed out, seekers of information on the Internet today are confronted with much the same task as those using libraries before the advent of the Dewey decimal system: Vast amounts of information are available, but not necessarily organized in a coherent manner. In fact, the ease with which individuals who are surfing the Web can become mired in the sheer volume of information available has been cited as one of the main barriers to the Internet's effective use (Presno, 1998). Career counselors can be of great service to their clients by helping them overcome the possible discouragement associated with not finding relevant information (Offer & Watts, 1997). This, of course, means that the counselor must first be familiar with the various types of information that exi st on the Internet and the best ways to find it. The latter can be accomplished with the various search engines now available to navigate the Internet (Gilster, 1997).

Purpose of the Study

Because the Internet offers both considerable promise and numerous challenges for career development activities, this study was designed as an exploratory investigation of the possible benefits and obstacles in its use for one-on-one career counseling. The intervention was designed to serve two purposes: (a) to develop graduate counseling students' Internet career counseling skills and (b) to facilitate the use of these skills with volunteer undergraduate clients. To accomplish the first goal, the graduate counseling students developed their facility with the Internet by learning how to use various search engines to find career information and then assisting in the design of a class Web page containing links to relevant career resources. The second goal was accomplished by having the counseling students use a structured interview with undergraduate volunteers, assess which of their needs could be met through the Internet, and then use Internet resources (with the class Web page serving as a starting point) as part of face-to-face meetings with their clients.

Two main research questions were therefore explored: (a) How effective was this intervention perceived to be by both the graduate counseling students delivering the intervention and the undergraduate students they worked with? and (b) What barriers to using the Internet were encountered by both groups? We adapted quantitative surveys to use in finding the answers to both questions. Semistructured focus groups were also conducted with the graduate counseling students after the intervention to probe for information that might not have been conveyed in the quantitative surveys. In the following sections, we provide a description of the implementation of this project as part of a graduate-level career counseling class. The results of the project are then presented, along with a summary of the project's implications for training graduate students in the use of the Internet for career interventions and suggestions for future research.

Method

Participants

Participants in this study were 14 counselor education students enrolled in a graduate-level career counseling course and 20 undergraduate students enrolled in an undergraduate Career Planning course. Before participating in this project, both groups were surveyed regarding the amount of time they spent using computers for school, work, and educational purposes. Most reported using computers frequently for at least two of the above three categories, but few had any experience in constructing Web pages. Both groups are described in more detail in the following sections.

Graduate students. Thirteen of the 14 counselors-in-training who participated in this project were female, 7 were European American, 4 were Asian American, 2 were African American, and 2 were Latino/a. The average age of these participants was 27.5 years, and all but 1 student were in the 1st year of a 2-year graduate counselor education program at a large southwestern university (the remaining student was in a doctoral program in counseling psychology). Each of these students worked with 1 or 2 undergraduate students as part of this investigation.

Undergraduate students. These participants were enrolled in an undergraduate Career Planning course, which is an upper division elective designed for students seeking to learn more about their own career development. Of the undergraduate participants, 76% were female and 24% male, 48% were juniors and 52% were seniors, and the average age was 22 years. Regarding ethnic background, the undergraduate participants were 67% European American, 19% Latino/a, and 14% Asian American.

We recruited the undergraduate participants from the Career Planning classes, and as an incentive, they were allowed to substitute this activity for another class assignment. The nature of the project was described to the prospective participants, including the fact that they would receive a two-session structured counseling experience. These students were asked to volunteer only if they had specific career concerns that fit within the scope of this project.

Procedure

Training graduate students in the Internet career intervention. The career development class in which the graduate students were enrolled was a 3-semester-hour, graduate-level course that is required for students in counselor education. During the first half of the semester, the focus of the course was primarily academic and the nature of instruction was mainly lecture and small group activity. This section of the class included a review of the main theoretical approaches to career development.

The second half of the class focused mainly on the application of course content to working with clients, and the nature of instruction was more experiential. Students learned how to conduct a career interview using Gysbers and Moore's (1987) Life Career Assessment (LCA) structured interview. The LCA is based on the Individual Psychology of Adler and is designed to assess the interviewee's level of functioning in various life roles (including the worker, learner, and personal roles), as well as to yield information about how the client negotiates his or her environment (Gysbers & Moore, 1987). The interview consists of a structured format for obtaining information about a client's work and educational experiences, as well as obtaining a client's estimation of his or her skills and abilities. The counselor can then collaborate with the client to use this information in understanding the client's approach to life, in general, and to career development, in particular. There are four major sections of the LCA: ca reer assessment (e.g., current and previous work, education, and recreational experiences), review of the client's typical day (e.g., interpersonal style and daily routine), identification of strengths and obstacles (e.g., personal resources, perceived obstacles to personal growth), and a summary of the material covered in the interview and its relation to the client's career development goals.

In addition to learning about the use of the LCA, during the second half of the semester the graduate students also received training in the various resources available on the Internet for career development, the use of search engines to find information on the Internet, and an overview of Web-page development. To develop the graduate counseling students' abilities to locate and evaluate career resources on the Web, one of the class meetings early in the second half of the semester was held in a technology lab that provided each student with access to a computer work station with a high-speed Internet connection. Prior to that class, students were assigned readings about the use of Internet search engines from Gilster's (1997) book The Web Navigator. At the beginning of this class, students were given a tutorial on the use of search engines to find specific types of information. They were then given an assignment similar to that suggested by Stevens and Lundberg (1998), in which they were paired and asked to identify a particular client group (i.e., resources for a Latino/a person who is seeking a job in business or for women who are looking for careers in science).

Each pair of graduate students was then asked to find specific resources relevant to the concerns and needs of their chosen client group in several categories similar to those proposed by Harris-Bowlsbey et al. (1998). As suggested by Stevens and Lundberg (1998), the differential quality of various Internet resources was discussed, including the idea that some sites are not consistently updated and that some are primarily commercial in nature. By the end of this class meeting, each pair of graduate students was asked to find at least 10 relevant Web sites and to provide a brief evaluation of the type of information each site contained.

Developing a class Web page containing links to the various resources identified by the students seemed the most logical way to organize this information so it could later serve as a starting point for the use of the Internet with the volunteer clients. Because the construction of Web pages was relatively new to most of the students and the literature cautions against overloading students with too much new information about the Internet (Sherman, 1998), the students in this course were not involved in the actual construction of the class Web page. Instead, they provided the Web addresses for the links they found and the descriptions of the Web sites to the course instructor.

These links were then used to construct a Web page for the class. The design of the Web page was relatively simple, with a home page containing general information about the structure of the Web site and links to other pages organized according to the type of information they contained. Each page contained links to various career Web sites that had been found by the students, as well as a description of the type and quality of information that could be found on the site. When the final version of the Web page was completed, students were given the Web page address and asked to familiarize themselves with the Web site before meeting with their undergraduate client volunteers.

Implementation of the project with undergraduate client volunteers. Toward the end of the semester, each of the 14 graduate students was assigned 2 undergraduate volunteers to meet with twice for 30 minutes each time (because some of the volunteers dropped out of the study, some of the graduate students ended up working with only 1 student). During the initial meeting, one counselor-in-training met with a volunteer client, and another graduate student was assigned to observe their interaction. During this initial contact, the counselor-in-training used the LCA to interview his or her client and to identify specific career development goals that might be met through the use of the Internet regarding the four broad categories of career resources available: assessment services, communication Web sites, occupational information, and career-related databases (Harris-Bowlsbey et al., 1998). After the initial meeting with the volunteer client, the counselor-in-training then met with the graduate student who had obse rved the session and reviewed their evaluations of the client's goals.

A variety of client goals were identified through this process. For example, some of the undergraduates had specific careers in mind and were mainly interested in searching for position openings, finding the cost of living and housing opportunities in a given geographical region, investigating salary information, and contacting workers and prospective employers in particular vocations. Other students were interested in exploring options for internships and volunteer work that would help them narrow their occupational prospects, whereas still others sought to research various graduate programs across the United States. Additional goals included exploration of opportunities for ethnic minorities in various fields, resources for self-assessment in areas such as interests and values, and relating college majors to employment opportunities.

To help develop these goals and relate them to Internet resources, the graduate student counselors-in-training also met with the instructor to evaluate their clients' concerns and to decide how to approach their second meeting. At this point, the career counselors-in-training were all encouraged to begin by examining the career resources available on the class Web page with their client, but it was emphasized that this Web page would serve mainly as a starting point to find other resources on the Internet that were appropriate for their client's unique needs.

To enable the counselors-in-training who were working with the undergraduate volunteer clients to use the Internet during the second meeting, they met their clients in a lab equipped with computers with high-speed Internet access. To provide some degree of confidentiality, this lab was reserved and restricted to class participants, and counselor--client pairs worked at nonadjoining computers. The counselors-in-training reviewed relevant Web sites posted on the class Web page and the additional Web resources that they had identified for their client. Through this process, they also helped the clients evaluate the information discovered regarding their specific career goals. As the meeting drew to a close, each graduate student counselor-in-training made sure that his or her client had an electronic or hard copy listing of the various Web sites that were visited as well as suggestions for further exploration. As a final step, all of the counselors-in-training and undergraduate student volunteer clients complete d a questionnaire that asked them to evaluate their experiences.

Evaluation methods. After the completion of the project, self-report questionnaires were used to evaluate the two research questions posed: (a) What barriers did both the counselors-in-training and their volunteer clients encounter? and (b) How effective was this intervention perceived to be by both groups?

To answer the first question, both the counselors-in-training and their clients were asked to respond to a five-item Internet Barriers Questionnaire in which they were asked to identify the degree to which they experienced specific barriers to using the Internet on a 6-point scale (0 = not at all, 5 = very much). We adapted this questionnaire, included in the Appendix, from similar surveys developed by Varnhagen, Drake, and Finley (1997) and Presno (1998). As can be seen in the Appendix, questions covered such topics as whether participants felt inadequately prepared to use computers, became lost in Web pages, or were delayed by the slow downloading of information.

A second self-report questionnaire evaluating the usefulness of the Internet in career counseling was used to answer the second research question and is also included in the Appendix. The seven questions in this section were developed after reviewing several surveys assessing the use of the Internet as an instructional tool (Pychyl, Clarke, & Abarbanel, 1999; Warnke, 1996). Both the graduate student counselors-in-training and their volunteer clients were asked to evaluate their experience using the Internet by responding to 7 evaluative statements using a 6-point scale (0 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). As can be seen in the Appendix, questions included the perceived value of using the Internet, whether the Web sites that had been used had high-quality information, and whether the respondent would want to use the Internet again to fulfill career development goals.

Semistructured focus groups were also used with the 14 graduate student counselors-in-training to provide additional insight into the effectiveness of this intervention. We conducted these focus groups with groups of 4 to 5 graduate students at a time for approximately 30 minutes. Each focus group meeting started with two scripted questions that pertained to the use of the internet as a career intervention: (a) "What, in your view, were the most favorable aspects of using the Internet in this project?" and (b) "What factors interfered with the effectiveness of your use of the Internet with your client?" The focus group leaders used the responses to these questions to facilitate a broader discussion of the overall merits and drawbacks of using this approach with college students.

Results

The results of the questionnaires given to both the counselors-in-training and the undergraduates who volunteered to be their clients suggested that few barriers were encountered in using the Internet for this career intervention and that the overall project was viewed as useful by both groups. In addition, the results of the focus groups conducted with the counselors-in-training added information about the effectiveness of this project.

Research Question 1: Perceived Barriers to Using the Internet

The means and standard deviations reported by the project participants on the questionnaire about Internet barriers are provided in Table 1. An inspection of these results reveals that both the graduate student counselors-in-training and their volunteer clients reported few difficulties in the areas assessed by this measure, because average ratings for most categories were slightly above 1 or lower. The only exceptions were the average ratings closer to 2 reported by both groups for the item that assessed difficulties associated with the slow downloading of Web pages.

The results of the focus group discussions about these barriers shed further light on this topic. Even though a high-speed Internet connection was used for the career counseling sessions, a number of the graduate students came across Web pages that took relatively longer to download. Although the actual delays experienced may have only lasted a few seconds, they were troublesome, given the relatively short amount of time (30 minutes) devoted to the meeting as well as the "awkward" feeling described by several counselors-in-training as they and their clients stared at a blank computer screen waiting for a Web page to appear.

Another difficulty that surfaced in the focus group discussions was that of getting "lost" in some Web sites. Several of the counselors-in-training reported visiting Web sites with their clients and becoming disoriented as they explored the multiple links contained on the site. This problem seemed particularly acute when exploring the Web sites of large government or corporate organizations, and several students found it necessary to "bookmark" the main Web page at a given site before following various links. According to one focus group participant, "some Web sites do a good job of making it easy to find your way out, but sometimes you had to mark your own trail."

Two other barriers that emerged during the focus group discussions were the perceived scarcity of information on work-related internships and the difficulty experienced by some of the counselors-in-training in finding highly specific career information for their volunteer clients. Regarding the first difficulty, several of the undergraduates who participated in the project were interested in securing unpaid internships in a variety of occupations and locations, but the counselors-in-training working with them were unable to find relevant information on the Internet in this particular area. Also, several of the counselors-in-training reported difficulties in obtaining relevant information for clients who had very specific needs. For example, one client was interested in obtaining employment in one particular city in a nonprofit organization dealing with children with disabilities. In this case, the counselor-in-training worked with the undergraduate student to try to identify suitable organizations in the city in which she wanted to work, but found few useful resources.

Despite the notable exceptions previously described, overall the participants in this project reported few major obstacles to using the Internet. However, it does not necessarily follow that this intervention was uniformly effective with each of the participants.

Research Question 2: Overall Effectiveness of the Project

The means and standard deviations for all items on the Internet evaluation questionnaire for both the counselors-in-training and their undergraduate clients are presented in Table 2. Overall, the results of this questionnaire suggest that the participants in this project had a generally favorable impression of the use of the Internet in their meetings, with average ratings ranging from 4.21 to 4.42 across all items. The focus group discussions that we conducted allowed for further insight into the experience of the graduate student counselors-in-training who participated in this project.

Participants in the focus groups consistently expressed favorable reactions to working with "real" clients as part of the class. More pertinently, almost all found this exercise in using the Internet to be beneficial both to their own professional development and to their clients. For example, one graduate student commented, "The most significant thing I will take away from this project is how many resources exist, even for careers in counseling, on the Internet." Whereas both groups of students who participated in this study, graduate and undergraduate, had used the Internet previously for various purposes, most seemed unaware of the vast and varied reservoir of career-related information that is currently available online. The focus group participants also reported that engaging in the activities that were a part of this project, including the identification of Internet links for the class Web page, forced them to critically examine these resources and to evaluate which were most relevant to career developm ent activities.

Several of the graduate student counselors-in-training commented about the usefulness of spreading their contact with the client across two meetings in this project. The weeklong interval between their first interview (using the LGA) with a client and their second contact (in which the Internet was used) gave the counselors-in-training time to explore the class Web page, search out resources that seemed most pertinent to their clients' needs, consult with other people in the class, and decide how to best present this information to their volunteer clients. The perceived importance of using this time may underscore a potentially important role of the career counselor as a "guide" in locating and using Internet information-a role that career specialists are accustomed to playing regarding other vocational resources.

The introduction of this form of technology into a counseling activity generated considerable discussion in all of the focus groups that we conducted. Many students reported being enthusiastic about using something "cutting edge" like the Internet as part of their service delivery. However, this was balanced by a few students who were initially concerned about the impact on the counseling relationship of using computers. For example, one student commented about being concerned that using computers would "get in the way" of the work with a client. However, after concluding the project, most of the focus group participants came to view the Internet as a useful tool that could be used to supplement, rather than replace, the counselor-client relationship.

A number of the perceived drawbacks to this project identified in the focus groups were associated with the way that it was implemented as part of the graduate-level career counseling class. For example, because of the time constraints associated with the class schedule, both sessions conducted with the volunteer clients were limited to 30 minutes, and several of the graduate student counselors-in-training reported wishing that they had had more time to spend with their clients. In addition, several students reported concerns that the technical difficulties that occasionally arose (such as the slow downloading of Web pages described in the results for the first research question) undermined their effectiveness.

Discussion

The focus group discussions also made it clear that the Internet served only as a starting place in addressing many clients' concerns. For example, although a number of the counselors in the project were able to help their clients find information about graduate schools on the Internet, it was still im portant that the volunteer clients take an active role in evaluating this information and deciding how best to use it. Although not unexpected, this finding may underscore the importance of regarding the Internet as just one potentially valuable tool in the career counselor's repertoire. In addition, the focus group discussions accentuated the fact that career-related Web sites varied widely in the depth and accuracy of information contained. Almost every Internet search yielded information of varying quality and reliability. For example, several of the commercial Web sites encountered in this project seemed more concerned with drawing in customers than providing useful information.

Overall, the evaluation data seem to suggest that both the counselors-in-training and their volunteer clients found the use of the Internet in this project to be beneficial. Proficiency in the use of the Internet can provide a highly interactive platform for career counselors to help clients find potentially up-to-the-minute information in a relatively brief amount of time (Harris-Bowlsbey et al., 1998). Using the Internet for face-to-face meetings can allow counselors to provide encouragement and support to their clients as they sort through the vast amounts of information available online. Because the Internet is so flexible and user-friendly, the chance that a client will continue to use it for his or her career needs after meeting with a counselor seems greatly enhanced. We next review specific suggestions, based on our experiences with this intervention, for training career counselors in the use of the Internet and after acknowledging the limitations of this exploratory study, suggest avenues for future research.

Suggestions for Training

Regarding the classroom training of counselors, using the Internet for any educational purpose often demands initially high levels of investment on the part of educators (Sherman, 1998). As an example from this project, we found that arranging for Internet demonstrations and for students to use computer facilities and developing the class Web page took considerable effort above and beyond the normal preparation associated with the class. In this project, the favorable response of participants indicated that the benefits of this "investment" in terms of counselor training and client learning more than offset the cost. However, the Internet is increasingly being used to promote career development in ways, including career center Web pages that provide "distance" career counseling, that take far less time and effort on the part of the counselor (Sampson, 1999). Therefore, it seems quite likely that similar projects conducted in the future will be able to make use of preexisting Web resources that will require le ss preparation time.

A second recommendation, based on our experience in this project, for training career counselors in the use of the Internet is to emphasize proficiency in finding and sorting through Web resources. Thousands of Web sites that contain career-related information already exist, and this project added yet one more. Finding accurate, relevant information may, therefore, continue to be a significant challenge. Although recommendations for quality control of Internet-based career assessment have been suggested (Prince, Chartrand, & Silver, 2000; Sampson & Lumsden, 2000), this is but one of the many types of career information and planning services available online. Providing guidance to clients in evaluating the quality and accuracy of Internet information may represent an increasingly important counselor function in the future.

In recent years, various professional helping organizations have established guidelines for the ethical provision of Internet services (American Psychological Association [APA], 1997; National Board for Certified Counselors and the Center for Gredentialing and Education [NBCC], 1997) and for career development in particular (National Career Development Association [NCDA], 1997). Particular attention was paid to the quality and ethical use of online assessment services in a recent special issue of the Journal of Career Assessment devoted to career assessment and the Internet (Chartrand & Oliver, 2000). However, it seems clear that because the Internet is expanding and changing at such a dramatic pace, it will become increasingly burdensome for individual career specialists to keep abreast of the quality of new and known career sites. This point became particularly evident to us as we sought to develop a class Web page in this project. Although it served as an important starting place for both the counselors-in -training and their volunteer clients, we quickly came to realize the difficulties attendant to sorting through and evaluating the sheer mass of information available on the Internet. A longer term solution might entail specific guidelines for evaluating the quality of career Web sites that can be used by counseling professionals and the general public. In addition, there seems to be a growing need for individuals and organizations specializing in evaluating and disseminating information about career Internet sites--in effect, a type of Consumer Reports for the World Wide Web.

A third, related, recommendation would be to educate career counselors-in-training about the practical and ethical problems that arise from using the Internet as a career counseling tool. Concerns about the accuracy and commercial nature of Internet resources identified in this project have also been voiced in the literature (Harris-Bowlsbey et al., 1998; Sampson, 1999; Stevens & Lundberg, 1998), and counselors who are training to use the Internet may need to pay particular attention to the ethical standards described previously for "webcounseling" (APA, 1997; NBCC, 1997; NCDA, 1997). For example, students need to be sensitized to the questionable reliability and validity of some career assessment resources on the Internet (Sampson & Lumsden, 2000), the lack of equal access for all individuals (Robinson, Meyer, Prince, McLean, & Low, 2000), and the limits to confidentiality inherent in the medium (Harris-Bowlsbey et al., 1998).

A fourth recommendation is that training programs include training in one-on-one, face-to-face Internet career counseling whenever feasible. In this regard, support for the counselors-in-training appears important. It seemed particularly useful in this project for the counselors-in-training to have access to consultations with fellow students and the instructor. Providing this opportunity between scheduled meetings with the clients seemed to enhance the ability of the counselors-in-training to provide quality information to their volunteer clients. Although the use of a one-to-one format has been identified as a costly and time-consuming means of using the Internet (Harris-Bowlsbey et al., 1998), the focus groups conducted for this project revealed the value of one-to-one counselor interactions not only in helping clients sort through and evaluate the potentially overwhelming amount of information available online, but also in providing firsthand experience for graduate career counselors in both the advantage s and difficulties of using this technology for career counseling.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

Because this study was an exploratory evaluation of a method for training counselors in how to use the LCA and the Internet in a highly structured and time-limited career counseling experience, we offer several cautionary observations about these results. The evaluations of the project were based on a relatively small sample, and only descriptive information was provided. In addition, although the focus groups conducted with the graduate student counselors-in-training yielded potentially valuable information, evaluation of the effectiveness of the project with the undergraduate volunteer clients was only conducted with the quantitative surveys. Therefore, although this intervention seemed to be of use in providing both counselors-in-training and their volunteer clients with information about the relevance of the Internet for career development, more rigorous research designs using control groups, standardized interventions, and larger samples are needed to determine the extent to which these methods are effec tive.

In addition, future research should evaluate how to best integrate this new technology with current practice. Given the flexibility and constant expansion of the Internet, there is every reason to believe the range of potential career counseling applications will continue to grow. One question that needs to be evaluated in future research is under what circumstances do people who are seeking career counseling benefit most from using the Internet to access career-related information? In this study, the career counselors-in-training worked with clients to explore specific Web sites, and in retrospect, it seemed that many clients benefited from having a counselor present to help them sift through Internet resources. It is possible that, with clients who are "Internet-savvy" and confident about their career decision, it would be just as effective for the career counselor to serve only as a consultant about possible Web sites for the client to explore on his or her own, with a face-to-face meeting reserved for dis cussion of the information discovered. Career resource centers on college campuses and other settings are also making increased use of interactive, Web-based interventions that have evolved from earlier work on simulations and computer-based learning (Clark, Horan, Tompkins-Bjorkman, Kovalski, & Hackett, 2000). Comparison of these interventions with clients from different backgrounds and varied types of career concerns might clarify which method works best for which kinds of clients, depending on their precise needs and the ease with which they can access information online. In particular, studies that compare career outcomes with and without the one-on-one involvement of the counselor seem warranted.

A second related area of inquiry for future research might be to investigate the most effective methods for training graduate students to integrate the resources available online into their practice. Several strategies were used in the current project, including training in the use of search engines, evaluation of Internet sites for a class Web page, and the use of a structured interview with volunteers to identify needs that might be met on the Internet. Despite the favorable ratings given to the overall project by the participants and our suggestion that each component played an important role, it might be efficacious to use only selected parts of it when all of the resources necessary to undertake this project are lacking. For example, Stevens and Lundberg (1998) described a project in which students were asked only to do a series of Internet exercises in which they searched out relevant Internet resources for hypothetical clients with a variety of career development needs. Further research is required to clarify the relative utility of such an approach.

Summary

This exploratory study provided suggestive evidence of the merit of one method of teaching career counseling graduate students how to use the Internet in their practice. On the basis of the study's results, it seems that providing counselors-in-training with the opportunity, first, to seek out sites useful for specific clients and, second, to explore those sites one-to-one with their clients provides a basis for training graduate career counselors-in-training how to use the vast resources of the Internet to further their clients' career development. However, the rapid growth of the Internet, in general, and online career resources, in particular, present both challenges and opportunities for career specialists. Because the Internet will likely continue to pervade modern life, further research is warranted to identify how best to use this technology for career interventions and in training graduate students to be career counselors.

APPENDIX

The following two questionnaires were used with the undergraduate volunteer clients to evaluate the intervention. The graduate student counselors-in-training completed similar questionnaires; the items given here were rephrased as necessary to reflect the counselor's perspective.

Internet Barriers Questionnaire

Please rate on a 6-point scale the extent to which the following were barriers to using the Internet (0 = not at all, 5 = very much).

1. My inadequate training in using computers

2. My discomfort in using the computer

3. Getting lost in World Wide Web pages

4. Computer system crashing

5. Slow download of pages

Usefulness of Internet in Career Counseling Questionnaire

Please rate on a 6-point scale (0 = strongly disagree, 5 strongly agree).

1. I can see the value of using the Internet in career counseling.

2. I found it useful to use the Internet in this session.

3. I thought the Web sites I was shown were relevant to my concerns.

4. I thought the Web sites I was shown had high quality information.

5. I thought the Web sites I was shown had interesting information.

6. I learned new information by using the Internet in this session.

7. I would want to use the Internet again in a career counseling meeting.

TABLE 1

Counselor and Client Ratings of Barriers to Using the Internet

                                     Client Rating         Counselor
                                                            Rating
Evaluative Statement              M           SD        M

1. Inadequate training in        0.68        1.06      0.57
   using computers
2. Discomfort in using computer  0.63        0.83      0.29
3. Getting lost in Web pages     1.06        1.29      0.64
4. Computer crashing             0.68        1.00      1.21
5. Slow download of pages        2.11        1.37      1.86

                                 Counselor
                                   Rating
Evaluative Statement              SD

1. Inadequate training in        1.28
   using computers
2. Discomfort in using computer  0.83
3. Getting lost in Web pages     0.93
4. Computer crashing             1.72
5. Slow download of pages        1.56

Note. 0 = not at all, 5 = very much. For undergraduate volunteer client
group, n = 20; for graduate student counselors-in-training group,
n = 14.

Table 2

Counselor and Client Ratings of Usefulness of Internet Career Counseling
Activity

                                            Client Rating
Evaluative Statement                        M          SD

1. Can see value of Internet career
   counseling                             4.42        0.96
2. Found Internet useful                  4.21        1.07
3. Found Web sites used relevant          4.32        1.27
4. Thought Web sites had quality
   information                            4.21        1.29
5. Thought Web sites interesting          4.30        0.98
6. Learned new information                4.21        1.20
7. Would use Internet again for
    this purpose                          4.25        1.12

                                         CounselorRating
Evaluative Statement                      M         SD

1. Can see value of Internet career
   counseling                           4.57       0.51
2. Found Internet useful                4.57       0.51
3. Found Web sites used relevant        4.14       0.86
4. Thought Web sites had quality
   information                          4.00       0.78
5. Thought Web sites interesting        4.00       0.88
6. Learned new information              4.14       0.86
7. Would use Internet again for
    this purpose                        4.71       0.47

Note. O = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree. For undergraduate
volunteer client group, n = 20; for graduate student
counselors-in-training group, n = 14.

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Christopher J. McCarthy, Naomi Moller, and L. Michelle Beard, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. This project was funded by a Dean's Technology Award from the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin. The author! thank Julian Chapa for the technical assistance he provided to this project. Correspondence concerning this article should he addressed to Christopher J. McCarthy, Department of Educational Psychology, SZB 262G College of Education Building, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78 7121296 (e-mail: [e-mail]).