Career Coach EZ Lift Procedural Documentation

Career Coach EZ lift is the process created and administered by Enabling Services.

Its purpose: Take the burden off schools in identifying Occupation Codes/Titles to associate with the school’s Academic Programs and Certificates-program by program.

Background: Career Coach is the search tool used in many California Community Colleges. It enables students to search for their desired occupation, and identify academic programs (and the schools offering them) that align with their career aspirations.

Career Coach can also be used to search academic programs, or search for military occupations/associated careers.

We came up with ‘EZ lift’ because schools were intimidated at the daunting task of reviewing all academic programs, and trying to identify the Occupation Codes/Titles that might align with a particular academic pursuit.

The steps:

Enabling Services obtains Career Coach workbook from Lightcast
Enabling Services delivers workbook to school
School reviews their academic programs, making additions, deletions, changes. Jump to the topic
School delivers updated workbook to Enabling Services (keep a copy; it will be used later in the EZ Lift process, noted in step 12)
Enabling Services creates EZ Lift workbook – one worksheet for each academic program. Jump to the topic
Details on creating worksheet tabs are here. Jump to the topic
Academic Programs and occupations associated with them. Jump to the topic
Enabling Services finds Occupation Codes/Occupation Titles aligning with academic programs, adding them to each program worksheet. Jump to the topic
Enabling Services sends EZ Lift workbook to school for review. Jump to the topic
School disseminates worksheets (one for each academic program) to Deans/Department Chairs responsible for assigned disciplines and their associated academic programs.
Deans/Department Chairs review worksheets for their discipline, reviewing Occupation Codes/Titles Enabling Services assigned to each program; they may choose to ‘strike’ some of the Occupation Codes/Titles assigned.
School returns updated EZ Lift workbook to Enabling Services
Enabling Services adds approved Occupation Codes/Occupation Titles to Occupation Mappings worksheet, program by program - within Career Coach workbook (as updated/received by school in item 4) Jump to the topic
Enabling Services sends updated Career Coach workbook to Lightcast
Lightcast makes updates in Career Coach, and sends updated workbook to Enabling Services
Enabling Services delivers updated workbook to school

Once a college is interested in pursuing the benefits of Career Coach, Enabling Services contacts Lightcast (formerly known as EMSI) to obtain the most recent Career Coach workbook for the school; we’ll be sending this workbook to the school for action.

The workbook has a worksheet listing academic programs/certificates-the ‘Programs’ tab. This list must be reviewed by the school for accuracy. They make any additions, deletions, and modifications to the program list.

School reviews their academic programs, making additions, deletions, changes

Once done, they return the updated workbook to Enabling Services.

Enabling Services creates EZ Lift workbook

Enabling Services then creates a new ‘EZ Lift’ workbook, with a worksheet for each academic program/certificate (screenshot below).

Since Excel tab names are limited to 31 characters, it might be helpful to determine how you’re going to name the tab first, then create the worksheets using a tool.

How to name worksheet tabs:

First, determine your abbreviated program names for each worksheet. Here is an example:

Next, create new worksheets programmatically based on values in a cell range-specifically, the range of Abbreviated Program names (as shown above).

Hold down the ALT + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
Click Insert > Module, and paste the following code in the Module Window.
Paste this code in the module window **Note** I changed my cell range to C2:C26 – (evidenced in ‘Screenshot of VB’ code next page), then I clicked on ‘Run’.

Here’s the code to copy:

Sub AddSheets()
'Updateby Extendoffice
Dim xRg As Excel.Range
Dim wSh As Excel.Worksheet
Dim wBk As Excel.Workbook
Set wSh = ActiveSheet
Set wBk = ActiveWorkbook
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
For Each xRg In wSh.Range("A1:A7")
With wBk
.Sheets.Add after:=.Sheets(.Sheets.Count)
On Error Resume Next
ActiveSheet.Name = xRg.Value
If Err.Number = 1004 Then
Debug.Print xRg.Value & " already used as a sheet name"
End If
On Error GoTo 0
End With
Next xRg
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

========================================================

Screenshot of VB code:

Now you see the worksheets created-just as you named them:

For each worksheet, format as indicated below.

In the top line of the worksheet add the name of the school’s program, and school’s credential in columns A, B. In columns C, D, E, F – add Program Name, Credential, Occupation Code, Title; this follows the formatting in the Lightcast/EMSI workbook:

Now you have your foundation set up.

Freeze the top row (View tab, Freeze Panes, Freeze top row).

More on searching Academic Programs and occupations associated with them:

Sometimes you have to ‘think outside the box’. What’s a similar name for a program?

CIS might be an academic program; you might also search for Computer Information Systems, Business Computing, Information Systems, Information Technology…

Administration of Justice might also be known as Criminal Studies, Public Safety.

Kinesiology might also be known as Physical Education, Personal Trainer, Athletics.

Paramedic might be Emergency Medical Services, EMT, Public Health, Firefighter.

Liberal Arts and General Studies are also worth reviewing; they often have various ‘flavors’.

Sometimes, the program name is not enough to go on. You need to review the program description to aid you in the EZ lift process.

Access the school website and their current catalog (Academic Catalog), then find the academic program/certificate, and read the description, and maybe also view the required courses for the program/certificate.

Enabling Services finds Occupation Codes/Occupation Titles aligning with academic programs

We created an extensive workbook located here. We search for an academic program, and identify all the occupation codes/titles associated with that program, leveraging the work already accomplished in other endeavors.

Once the occupation codes/titles have been identified for an academic program, we add the relevant information to the EZ lift workbook and program worksheet for that particular program.

Here is a glimpse of the extensive list of academic programs and associated occupations we’ve utilized in the past:

Copy all the Occupation Codes/Occupation Titles associated with the academic program you’re working on, and paste them into the EZ lift worksheet (into columns C, D) for that particular academic program.

Don’t worry about duplicate jobs you might see; we’ll do a Sort (by Occupation Title) and Advanced Filter ‘Unique Records Only’ to hide duplicates. We don’t want to eliminate duplicates, just hide them.

Rationale: schools might be curious on just what academic programs we checked.

Here is an example of the initial list of programs/jobs, with many duplicates:

Formatting worksheets

Highlight just columns C, D, E, F. Use the Data tab to SORT. Sort by Occupation Title.

Rationale: schools will easily be able to identify the jobs they feel meet the criteria of the Academic Program/Certificate.

Next, we’ll hide the duplicate Occupation Codes/Titles. Highlight just columns E and F, choose ‘Advanced’ in the Data tab, then choose ‘Unique records only’:

Now you have a clean list of information the school can use:

Once this exercise has been completed for each Academic Program, worksheet by worksheet, we’ll be ready to send it to the school for review.

School review process:

Academic Deans are responsible for all the academic programs in their discipline. A discipline is a broad academic ‘school of thought’.

For instance, the ‘Business’ discipline might have academic programs in Accounting, Human Resources, Entrepreneurship, etc.

The Business dean is responsible for all academic programs that fall in this discipline. S/he might work with Department Chairs, Faculty, and Career Center professionals to review the occupations we’ve associated with a particular academic program.

Enabling Services suggests that Deans be given each worksheet that falls into their discipline/area of influence.

Deans will then review each worksheet, and determine if the occupations we paired with the academic program(s) are appropriate. If they feel an occupation listed should not show in Career Coach, they can just color the row red, or use the ‘strikethrough’ tool:

The workbook has received from school; now we need to add occupation codes/titles to the Lightcast occupation mappings page.

Adding the program(s)/credential(s), and occupation codes/titles to Occupation Mappings.

Once the workbook has been received from the school, the next step is to add all the academic programs with their (approved) paired occupation codes/titles to the Lightcast workbook.

This is the workbook we sent to the school and they returned – with their updated list of academic programs (with additions in blue, changes in green, and deletions in red).

We’ll be concentrating on the Occupation Mappings sheet:

We need to make sure we include the new, changed, and deleted programs on the Occupation Mappings sheet. **Note** There is no worksheet for deleted programs in the ‘EZ Lift workbook’.

Start with the first worksheet in the ‘EZ Lift workbook’; our goal is to copy the Academic Program name and credential from the program worksheet into column B and C. Next, copy the paired Occupation Codes and Titles to column D and E.

**Don’t worry about counting the number of occupations and inserting lines, we’re going to completely copy over the information Lightcast/EMSI sent us originally – adding some occupations that may have already existed in this sheet – in addition to the new ones we found (and the school approved).

We’re basically giving the Occupation Mappings worksheet a complete makeover.

Even though the academic program might have already existed, we’re still going to highlight rows in blue, because we’re not sure if all occupation codes/titles were paired with the programs before. This will ensure the academic programs get more adequate exposure when students look for their desired career(s) in Career Coach.

Where a program name might have changed, the Program name/Credential cells are green, but the Occupation Codes/Occupation Titles are blue (to be sure that Lightcast adds all school approved Occupation info to that particular academic program).

Here’s a glimpse of a workbook we already sent to Lightcast/EMSI: