Peer Review

An Online Career-Exploration Resource for Psychology Majors

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Dec 31, 2021 by Psychology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This resource is designed to help Psychology majors learn more about 176 different careers they can enter, what the job entails, what education is needed, projected salaries, and other important considerations. The document is a PDF with over 1000 links to online resources, organized by career.

Type of Material:

Reference Material (PDF format)

Recommended Uses:

This resource is designed for career exploration and advising. The materials could be used as part of an orientation or careers course in psychology or as part of an independent study. Students can work through the seven questions listed in the document to help them reflect on which careers to review further.

Technical Requirements:

The .pdf can be accessed from any browser. Links within the document require Internet access; the reviewers used Google Chrome with no difficulties.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The materials allow students to reflect on their career and academic goals and create an individualized educational plan to help reach those goals.

Target Student Population:

College General Ed
College Lower Division
College Upper Division

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

No prerequisite knowledge or skills are needed.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

This is a very comprehensive list of careers (and information about the careers) that would be helpful to Psychology majors.

The resource includes 258 careers accompanied by over 1,350 Internet sites.
The materials begin with an explanation and a guide for using the resource.
The materials utilize O*NET – the nation’s primary source of occupational information. O*NET includes up to date information on careers, their projected growth, education expectations, salaries, and descriptions of skills and qualities for those in that field.
Links in the document include direct O*NET links and additional sites describing different careers, as well as interviews with those working in many fields.

Concerns:

At the time of the review, a comprehensive examination of the links in this document found that almost 15% of the links were broken or redirected (164 out of 1129 links).

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

"What can you do with a Psychology degree if you don't want to be a therapist?" is a very common question. This resource helps answer that question
The questions in “An Open Letter to Psychology Majors” on page 2 guide students in reflecting on their future. This reflection will support users in effective use of the resource.

Concerns:

None.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

Careers are organized by broad fields/categories, then subdivided by specific career.
A variety of materials are linked under each of the career paths.

Concerns:

The organization is clear and easy to follow, but the colors on one reviewer’s screen were reported as particularly bright and, therefore, distracting.
The document might be easier to use if it were a web site with internal links instead of a PDF, which requires downloading a file and having a PDF reader.
The links are the full URL instead of descriptive links; this makes the document problematic for a blind user.

Other Issues and Comments:: An excellent resource with a purpose to provide all psychology majors—regardless of whether they plan to attend graduate school—with access to the broad panorama of careers they can enter, the nature of these careers, and the skills and knowledge they will need to enter and succeed in these careers.
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