CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Career counseling is a process that aims at providing
individuals with a clearer understanding of themselves and their potentials for
future career development. It provides quality information, advice and guidance
to young people in order to overcome any potential barriers that may expose
their personal and professional development. Career choice counseling
contributes to greater efficiency in the labor market, which is reflected in a
greater employability and mobility of the workforce and the increased
percentage of successful schooling. Man in search of comfort struggle to meet
up with good career and for this to be achieved, it has to be started as early
as possible. From the time man is born, expectations abound to know what likely
he will be able to do as he grows up. This has to do with his natural behavior
and mental exercise display. This continues in family/parents and other peer
group acting as counseling unit until the child goes in to school. In school
the teacher takes over the counseling, it is a continuous exercise until one
finds one’s feet, then he can continue from there and equally be in a position
to guide and counsel others. The stages where much work is carried out on
counseling is in secondary schools .This is a stage when a child is grown to be
able to understand maturely and when the child’s attitude is fully studied in
line with academic performance . In all secondary school across the country,
there exist guidance and counselor offices where people knowledgeable in the
area of psychology are employed in order to help advice the younger ones in
school which way forward to their future career. There, people through class
visitation, observing students during recreation and calling on them at
intervals for questioning, came to know the students better and be able to
guide and counsel them in their future career probably in university or in any
other area of endeavor. The job of counseling in secondary school is not an
easy job, taking into consideration the number of students involved with
respect to the number of staff involved. It is always very difficult to handle
all the students and to remember everything about the students. This Counseling
exercise needs a sophisticated system for the operation of counseling and
tackling some of the problem associated with the exercise. Carrying out this
counseling electronically provides vast advantages over manual methods. When
implemented properly, electronic counseling is often faster, secured and more
convenient than the manual methods of counseling. Career choice counseling
contributes to greater efficiency in the labor market, which is reflected in a
greater employability and mobility of the workforce and the increased
percentage of successful schooling (decreases drop out).
Windy and Mary (2006), was able to develop systems
theory framework of career choice counseling but was not able to develop the
software. These challenge therefore brought about the need for introduction of
a computerized career choice counseling system for an efficient and
satisfactory way of counseling students. For the purpose of this study, this
project work focused on how to develop a counseling software for secondary
schools with view of creating awareness of the use of computer in counseling
with due consideration of this new technology advancement. This system, when
implemented will secure student information, saves student data and delay in
decision taking as it can be done within a short time.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS
On the course of research, it was discovered that
the existing career choice counseling system being manually operated is
characterized with a lot of problem such as
i.
Loss of data.
ii.
Delay in taking decision of
students concerning their future career.
iii.
Insecurity.
iv.
Apply guess work.
1.3
AIM AND OBJECTVES
The aim of this project work is to provide lasting
solution to the problem affecting counseling exercise in Elshadai Academy,
Nsukka. The following objectives below are:
v.
To develop a system that will store
student information for future
reference.
vi.
To maintain adequate observed
information on students for quick decision taking.
vii.
To produce a security system that will
encrypt each student information.
viii.
To eliminate guess work.
1.4
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This
study is of immense importance to the guidance and counselor department and the
society in general in different ways:
i.
It will help the counselor to always
direct the students in their best career area with happiness because it will be
result oriented.
ii.
It will also help to eliminate the word
frustration among the people which is very common in the society.
iii.
It will ease of the stress of the
counselor using his/her brain trying to store information about different
students in their large number and each student’s area of interest he/she is
fit for.
iv.
Using an automated system in this
situation would be very efficient especially in information storage.
SCOPE
OF THE STUDY
The scope of this project is limited to
the offices of career choice counseling as regards Elshadai Academy, Nsukka and
their other branches that need it. However, the project will be able to work at
other secondary schools.
1.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
A lot is needed to be on this study, but due to
certain limitation constraints, the researcher could not do it. Some of such
constraints and limitations are as follows:
i.
TIME
CONSTRAINTS: enough time is needed to carryout a
detailed research work in order to collect data and other important facts that
will be useful to the study. The researcher being a
final year student had to share her time for this research. She allotted some
of her time to other courses offered in the semester, some to her seminar and
the remaining time for this research work (project). At the end, she was
restricted to a small sample of information and materials.
ii.
FINANCIAL
CONSTRAINTS: this was
another limitation to this work because money is needed to carry out a detailed
research work which is not easily born by every student. Because of lack of
finance, she was also restricted to a small sample of material.
iii.
NON-AVAILABILITY
OF MATERIAL: In this project work, it was noticed
that required materials needed for the project are not properly documented. And
the documented ones lacked storage facilities where they can be reached.
1.7
DEFINITION OF TERMS
CAREER: Individual journey through
learning, works and other aspect of life.
CHOICE: The fact of picking or
deciding between two or more possibilities or opportunity to choose between two
or more possibilities.
COUNSELLING:
To give advice to another.
SYSTEM: This is the collection of related devices or
units that can work together to achieve a common goal.
INFORMATION: These are facts
organized or arranged in a useful form. It is normally the result of a
processed data.
MANAGEMENT:
It is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and
objectives using available resources.
SOCIETY:
This is an organized group of people living together and having things
together.
PSYCHOLOGY:
The study of mind and its function
DATA:
This is a raw and unprocessed facts and figures obtained from experiments,
research, surveys etc. used to develop something or make decision.
RECORD:
To write down event so that it can be remember
COMPUTER:
This is an electronic device that accepts raw facts as data and processes it to
give useful information.
GUIDANCE: Advice
or information aimed at resolving a problem or difficulty especially as given
by someone in authority.
COUNSELORS: A
person who gives counsel.
FUTURE: A
period of time following the moment of speaking or writing/time regarded as
still to come.