Elements of High Quality WBL

Career Fairs: Events that typically bring multiple employers into one large space. Fairs provide students with opportunities to learn about a wide variety of potential career paths in a short amount of time. Often career fairs serve as the initial awareness of a company or career. Students interact with people in the industry and gather informational handouts for future discussion.

Interest Inventories: Questionnaires that delve into a person’s interests, activities, likes and dislikes to match different types of careers to their aptitudes. The data assists students to better understand themselves and how that understanding can relate to the myriad of career options today.

Mock Interviews: A practice interview with actual questions that may be asked in a real interview. It can help enhance soft skills and reduce stress about the actual interview. The student should prepare by understanding the job and industry, as well as about themselves, in order to answer the interview questions appropriately.

Guest Speakers: Suitable for all grade levels, guest speakers introduce and broaden a student’s awareness of careers and industries. These experiences can provide more in-depth information about specific careers and the education and training required for them, as well as how classroom learning can be applied to real-world careers.

Job Shadows: Brief 1-on-1 visits that allows an interested student to follow and closely observe an employee who is doing the work that the student might be interested in pursuing. It can be natural, with just observation; controlled, to get insight on a specific project; or participatory, with hands on experience.

Field Trips: A larger group excursion to a work site that exposes students to both the company’s product or service and the potential careers involved in making it happen. Field trips are less in depth than tours but can pique the interest of a student to learn more.

Company Tours: More structured and longer than a field trip, a company tour may go further in depth on what a company does, and the careers available. These are usually conducted in small groups, to allow for interaction with current employees, with question-and-answer sessions. Tours may have pre- and post-work for the students to reflect on the experience.

Informational Interviews: An informal conversation with someone working in the career or industry of interest. Purely exploratory, these conversations help students and adults understand the day-to-day responsibilities, the education required and the employment path to get to specific careers.

Internships: A temporary position in which students have a consistent schedule, often consecutive days, for a period of time (usually weeks) working for an employer to test their interest in a career with that industry, occupation, or employer. Internships allow students to develop critical workplace and occupational skills and to “test drive” an occupation to determine if that career is a fit.

Pre-Apprenticeships: Structured program that introduces a person to a specific job, developing the introductory skills to succeed in an entry level position. The instruction often includes industry-based curriculum and hands-on training to prepare a person to enter and succeed in a registered apprenticeship program.

Services Learning: An opportunity to connect classroom learning and theory to needs in the community. Well planned service-learning opportunities results in positive academic, civic and social-emotional outcomes for students.

School-Based Enterprises: Schools operate a business providing goods or services to the in-school population. Students, likely through an organization or club, manage the business and perform other related activities under the supervision of an advisor, often a teacher.

Registered Apprenticeships: Highly structured combination of classroom instruction with paid, on-the-job training that results in an industry recognized credential(s). They can be created for any industry now and can last from 1-5 years.

On-the-Job Training: Separate from an apprenticeship, but also part of it, on-the-job training acquaints a person with job-specific skills in a real workplace. The training should be structured and supervised. With a combination of hand-on experiences and observation, on-the-job training allows a person to learn specific tasks and develop knowledge related to a specific job.

Clinical Experiences: Any medical-related activity where students interact with patients and their care. Many certificate and degree programs require some clinical experience for students to apply their knowledge in a real-world setting.

Transitional Jobs: Often coming in the form of paid summer or part-time work, a transitional job can help young adults gain knowledge and job-specific skills. They help individuals gain confidence, as well as basic employability skills to be successful in future positions. Transitional jobs can also be offered to individuals who have been out of the workforce and need to re-establish a work history.