Developing Mobile-based Career Counselling Applications: a Tool for Assisting High School Students on Career Decisions Making

Abstract

The difficulties of career-making decisions are experienced by high school students in Indonesia, especially in making choices for advanced education. Mostly, students are still confused about choosing what major is appropriate for continuing their studies in college because they have not yet received sufficient information as a basis for it. The difficulties in obtaining the information can be helped by utilizing information and communication technology (ICT) in career information services for students in the form of mobile-based applications. This study aims to develop mobile-based career counseling to assist students in choosing a major in college. This application can be downloaded by mobile phone. This application has four main features: assessment, study information, career counseling, and other info. The research method used Research and Development (R&D) with the ADDIE model. There are five fundament stages, including analysis, design, develop, implementation and evaluation. Need analysis was conducted on 573 respondents. After the application design was developed, testing was carried out by experts in counseling, experts in software engineering, and users (N = 40) who are students from the school. The results showed that the mobile-based career counseling application is feasible and very helpful for students in making career decisions. It is more efficient in assisting students in determining advanced education options. It will ease the work of school counselors in providing career counseling services. For further study, the need to experiment to compare the effectiveness of career counseling by application and directly counseling.