Development of an Information and Reference Application for Vocational

Guidance of Students

Aigerim Sarzhanova

, Rui Pedro Lopes

2,3 a

, Aigul Tungatarova

1,4 b

and Gauchar Borankulova

4 c

IM.Kh.Dulaty Taraz Regional University, Taraz, Kazakhstan

Research Center in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics, Instituto Polit

ecnico de Braganc¸a, Portugal

Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering of Aveiro, University of Aveiro, Portugal

Department of Information Systems, M.Kh.Dulaty Taraz Regional University, Taraz, Kazakhstan

Keywords:

Virtual Assistant, Web Application, Vocational Assistant, Higher Education.

Abstract:

The problem of choosing a specialty and direction when entering higher education, is now more and more

urgent. Every year, according to statistics in Kazakhstan, more than 60% of university graduates do not

work in their speciality of choice. This problem is more often associated with the fact that students choose a

speciality and apply for a grant, and in the process of learning they understand that they do not want to work

as a engineer for example and tries to ﬁnd another work. Some of that problem could have been prevented if

professional orientation in secondary education had been conducted in schools of Kazakhstan. Career guidance

is a number of activities that need to be carried out systematically in primary and high schools. There is a lot of

information available in the Internet, but being a schoolboy, a student of grade 9-10, it is very difﬁcult to ﬁnd

reliable information. Consciously make an admission plan and go step by step to the goal. In my application

there will be one centralized database, which would allow you to ﬁrst undergo diagnostics, then make the

right choice of direction and speciality. As a result, get a plan for admission to a university in any country.

This article reviews the information and reference material, analyzes the market and current specialties in

Kazakhstan for further employment, as well as all the necessary information to diagnose their abilities and

build an individual plan for admission to university.

1 INTRODUCTION

Career guidance is an important aspect of human de-

velopment, largely inﬂuencing the path of profes-

sional development and success, because the choice

of the future profession shapes the individual’s life.

Choosing a profession is an important and respon-

sible stage in the life of a young person. The deﬁni-

tion of the sphere of professional activity means the

choice of future preferences in relation to the circle of

communication, lifestyle, work environment. Career

guidance has the objective of working with students

towards the interaction between the present and the

future for their professional self-determination.

The concepts of choosing a profession and ca-

reer guidance are, by their nature, different processes,

although both unidirectional. The choice of profes-

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9170-5078

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7600-9608

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5701-8074

sion is carried out by each person who is determined

by the sphere of professional activity: this is a pro-

cess of professional self-determination, which is not

necessarily accompanied by career guidance work or-

ganized in a secondary school (Belyakova and Za-

kharova, 2020)

The choice of profession is the result of career

guidance. This result can be considered as a solution

to one of the most important economic problems –

the balance between a limited labor market and labor

resources.

The right choice of profession testiﬁes to the ratio-

nal allocation of labor resources, the improvement of

the institutional environment of the economy, which

acts as an additional incentive for its development.

The goal and main objective of career counselling

is to provide people (usually students) with the skills

and knowledge they need to make important decisions

throughout your life. Career counselling goals and

objectives can shape an individual’s future, change his

outlook on life and his ability to succeed. Career de-

Sarzhanova, A., Lopes, R., Tungatarova, A. and Borankulova, G.

Development of an Information and Reference Application for Vocational Guidance of Students.

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2022) - Volume 2, pages 631-637

ISBN: 978-989-758-562-3; ISSN: 2184-5026

631

velopment is a lifelong process that actually started

with birth. From that day, our likes and dislikes, our

abilities, background, and circumstances will all in-

ﬂuence the type of career we choose. Career coun-

selling is a process with the potential to help under-

standing the person we are, helping making the right

choices, not just for the professional career for also

for life. Career counselling not only helps shaping

the personality but it will help being more organized

and a better person, through various methods. Career

counselling helps you to gain focus which can truly

reﬂect in our deeds and work (The Purpose of Career

Counseling, n.d.).

This paper focus on the development of an online

career counseling application, that will aggregate in-

formation from higher education institutions, profes-

sional orders and other sources. This tool constitutes

an entry point for students, providing information and

answers to their questions and doubts.

The paper is structured in ﬁve sections, starting

with this introduction. Section 2 describes the tools

and research on the area. Section 3 describes a web-

based tool for vocational guiding. The paper contin-

ues in section 4, with some practical scenarios and

ﬁnishes in section 5 with some conclusions.

2 RELATED WORK

During the process of searching and researching the

career counseling subject, it was evident that the prob-

lem of choosing a profession and further employment

is transversal to all countries. The decision on the de-

gree to follow is a fundamental moment of life, as it

affects one’s future (Nesterenko et al., 2021).

According to a report on the state of education in

Italy, presented last year by the Italian Ministry of Ed-

ucation, University and Research, the percentage of

students who enrolls at University right after the con-

clusion of upper secondary education is about 49%

and it has registered a slight decrease during the last

5 years (Barana et al., 2016). Moreover, the academic

path often proves to be harder than expected: only

55% of students pass more than half of the ﬁrst-year

exams and the 18% do not pass any of them. These

results are even more alarming if we focus on engi-

neering and technology faculties: the percentage of

students who collect more than half of the credits af-

ter the ﬁrst year decreases to 47% and the 21% is not

able to pass any exam.

These are, many times, related to bad choices,

due to insufﬁcient information about relevant special-

ties and essential professions and programs. Pursu-

ing popular programs or professions can often lead

to over saturation of the labor market, then lawyers,

then ﬁnanciers, leaving unﬁlled vacancies in other es-

sential professions (e.g. engineers or teachers). Em-

ployers blame the lack of work experience on many

graduates, and students continue to gain “experience”

in Employment Centers and at the Labor Exchange.

Graduates of technical universities enjoy an ad-

vantage in employment – they are much more in de-

mand in the domestic labor market by 75%, while hu-

manities are in demand by slightly more than 50%

(Trudbox, 2021).

Career guidance, like any other independent sci-

ence, has its own history of origin. The history of ca-

reer guidance as a science dates back to the late 1800s

and the dawn of the 20

century. Career consultations

were born in the United States due to a combination

of various socio-economic reasons: the growth of in-

dustry, migration of people from rural areas to cities,

and other changes accompanying rapid industrializa-

tion. The problem of searching for a job, the difﬁculty

of employers selecting the most “suitable” people for

vacant positions was more acute than ever, which led

to an increased need for more organized efforts to help

people ﬁnd work.

The ﬁrst stage of career guidance development

was employment services (1890-1919) (CareerGuid-

ance history, 2021). The founding father of career

guidance is Frank Parsons: Parsons’ career counsel-

ing model was based on simple logic and common

sense and relied on the skills of observation and in-

terviewing a consultant. A little later, psychological

tests became an important factor and a necessary part

of the ﬁrst functional stage in career guidance, that is,

self-assessment.

After monitoring the current situation in Russia,

there are a number of tasks that hinder the correct

professional choice, and therefore it is possible to put

forward the hypothesis “The system of professional

orientation in Russia is not built properly, career de-

cisions for most applicants are often due to the in-

ﬂuence of family, friends, the level of s/p and other

indirect reasons, and as a result, training in a profes-

sion that is not directly correlated with their desires,

opportunities and interests”. This is due to personal,

objective and subjective factors (Aggarwal and Shri-

vastava, 2021).

The survey had the participation of 50 students of

the Financial University under the Government of the

Russian Federation, studying at the 1

, 2

, 3

and

courses of the Faculty of Management, in the di-

rection of training “Personnel Management”: 44 girls

and 6 boys aged 17 to 23 years. The overwhelming

number of respondents graduated from school in a big

city - 34 people (68%), 1 person in rural areas (2%),

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

632

the rest come from medium and small towns.

As a result of the survey conducted on the iden-

tiﬁcation of problems of professional orientation of

young people, it is possible to identify a number

of problems obtained directly empirically (Pulyaeva,

2020).

There is a big problem of insufﬁcient awareness of

young people about the world of professions: about

the content of work, about working conditions, about

the demand and prospects, and even about rare profes-

sions, the existence of which many do not even sus-

pect. It is impossible to say that awareness is com-

pletely absent, since some respondents still replied

that they had sufﬁcient information or searched for

it independently in various sources. The data suggest

that young people get information mainly from the

Internet and ask for advice from parents and relatives,

which, of course, is not the merit of career guidance,

but a common pattern concerning family relations and

the development of information technology. Career

guidance activities should use these mechanisms, but

not be replaced by them.

Despite the fact that career guidance does not pro-

vide relevant information in full, young people do not

show a desire to possess this information when choos-

ing a profession, which is indicated by their inaction.

It is worth noting that applicants highly appreciate

the status of an educational institution, the prestige of

studying at this university, the attitude of employers

to the diploma of this institution, so, one of the prob-

lems today is not only the problem of the functioning

of the entire system of career guidance, but also the

problem of the lack of an explicit desire to engage in

self-orientation, the uncertainty of the goals of self-

determination in the professional sphere, since most

respondents did not even resort to the help of a pro-

fessional consultant.

43.3% of those who passed any methods of diag-

nostics and applied to specialized centers noted that

the results obtained during the study did not coincide

with their real choice, and this is a clear indicator that

people engaged in career guidance work are not com-

petent enough, do not have a specialized education,

but work on the basis of a banal passing of the sim-

plest test, which is available to every user on the In-

ternet, and voicing the automatically obtained result.

All this activity creates only visibility and is carried

out without a signiﬁcant impact.

Students are convinced that after they have entered

the university, it no longer makes sense to change

their profession. This is another indirect problem of

career guidance. Society dictates the rules and crite-

ria for building a successful career, which excludes

making mistakes and their further correction. Finally,

more than half of the students are not sure that they

will work in their specialty.

Summing up the results of the survey as a whole,

it should be noted that according above (section 2) the

hypothesis given earlier are absolutely conﬁrmed by

empirical data. The creation of a concept of psycho-

logical and pedagogical support for self-determined

people, expressed with the real support of experts, sci-

entists, specialist consultants, families, medical insti-

tutions, industries, mass media, government agencies,

etc. signiﬁcantly increase the effectiveness of profes-

sional orientation, and it is also important for elimi-

nating the shortage of staff. To do this, it is necessary

to pay more attention to the proﬁle education of spe-

cialists working in the ﬁeld of career guidance and to

increase the degree of involvement of relevant social

partners-representatives of professions to create an in-

teresting and diverse environment (circles working to-

gether with professionals in their ﬁeld, industrial ex-

cursions, etc.), in the process of teaching and raising

children, starting from kindergarten and ending with

people who already have an education, working in the

profession, but experiencing the painful consequences

of a wrong choice (Pulyaeva, 2020).

A distinctive feature of the career guidance sys-

tem in Japan is that it is almost entirely concentrated

in high school, and not in specialized centers (Ukke,

2021). Career guidance here is deeply integrated into

the educational process and forms the core of the cur-

ricula for secondary schools. In Japan, career guid-

ance begins in the seventh grade. To control the for-

mation of the readiness of 12-14 year-olds to con-

sciously choose their professional path and to prepare

for the profession.

The rector of the University of Asia, Professor Sh.

Fukuyama, has developed a special test to quantify

this ability of schoolchildren (Marsh, 2019). This test

was called the “F-test” (Fukuyama-test) to assess the

ability to methodically choose a profession. Since

1950, it has been repeatedly used in many schools in

Japan, which made it possible to take measures to im-

prove career guidance for this stage of education.

In 1972, the test was published. From this the au-

thor pays special attention to the cross-cultural com-

parison of test results. Thus, a signiﬁcant role was

played by comparing the data of Japanese and Amer-

ican schoolchildren, since it was from the USA that

the new educational system and some signiﬁcant prin-

ciples and methods of career guidance were taken,

which were reﬂected in the basic concepts and spe-

ciﬁc methods of career guidance in Japan. The name

of the test, where “methodical choice” is indicated,

reﬂects the technology, or the procedural characteris-

tic of decision-making, the sequence of actions that

Development of an Information and Reference Application for Vocational Guidance of Students

633

makes it related to “methodological theory of the

choice of professions” by the founder of the Ameri-

can career guidance F. Parsons (Inaba et al., 1992).

Also, external factors may inﬂuence the student

in making decisions for future profession. There are

three main pervasive factors investigated in this study

in inﬂuencing the career decisions of youths in both

individualistic and collectivist societies. In collec-

tivist societies, parental intervention is understood as

a requirement to support their children’s efforts and

equip them to be responsible and economically pro-

ductive. Meanwhile, the standard practice in soci-

ety is for parents to endorse their children’s opinions

and encourage them to choose careers that make them

happy. Overall, further research is imperative to guide

the understanding of parental inﬂuence and diversity

in bicultural and migrant youths’ career prospects and

their ability to use the resources available in their

new environments to attain meaningful future career

goals. Additional research, particularly qualitative, is

required to explore the level of family involvement in

youths’ career choices among migrant families in dif-

ferent cultural settings (Abbas et al., 2021).

However, in practice, most of students make their

decisions with the help of their parents, choosing tra-

ditional professions or following a family dynasty

profession, where their grandfather is a doctor, the fa-

ther also a doctor and so, the son must also choose to

be a doctor. This may hinder or wrongly inﬂuence the

career choice (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018).

To support students to select the higher educa-

tion degree area and to allow them to get information

about the possibilities, a web-based tool was devel-

oped for vocational assistance.

3 WEB-BASED VOCATIONAL

ASSISTANT

A possible solution of the career guidance problem

is the development of an information and reference

application for vocational guidance of students. This

application include a centralized database of universi-

ties from various countries, organizing information by

region and by universities’ requirements. The entry

to the application is a mosaic of the universities and

a search box, that can ﬁlter by country or university

program they need (Figure 1). When the student click

on an item, they can see all the information about that

countries university and their requirements.

The web application also includes diagnostic tests

by different psychologists to identify students incli-

nations and abilities. Then, in the main part of appli-

cation, online support is available, with feedback for

Figure 1: Mosaic of University.

each student (Figure2).

After ﬁnishing the test, students can see the re-

sult listing suitable specialities, according to answers.

The methodology of these tests is based on the classi-

ﬁcation of professional interests. They allow to deter-

mine in which area it is best for a high school student

to choose a specialty in which he will undergo voca-

tional training after school.

According to this classiﬁcation, the world of mod-

ern professions can be divided into 5 main types:

1. “Man is nature” (P). Representatives of these pro-

fessions share one very important quality - love

of nature. But love is not contemplative, which

almost all people possess, considering nature to

be the most favorable environment for recreation,

and the active one is connected with the knowl-

edge of its laws and their application. It is one

thing to love animals and plants, to play with

them, to enjoy them, and quite another thing to

regularly, day after day, take care of them, ob-

serve, treat, walk, regardless of personal time and

plans. A specialist should not just know every-

thing about living organisms, but also predict pos-

sible changes in them and take measures. Initia-

tive and independence in solving speciﬁc tasks,

care, patience and foresight are required from a

person. A person working in the ﬁeld of “man-

nature” should be calm and balanced;

2. “Man-technique” (T). The peculiarity of techni-

cal objects is that, as a rule, they can be accu-

rately measured in many ways. When process-

ing, converting, moving, or evaluating them from

an employee accuracy and certainty of actions

are required. Technology as an object of ore

presents ample opportunities for innovation, in-

vention, creativity. Therefore, qualities such as

practical thinking becomes important. Technical

imagination, the ability to mentally connect and

disconnect technical objects and their parts are

important conditions for success in this ﬁeld;

3. “Man is a sign system” (H). We meet with signs

much more often than we usually imagine. These

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

634

Figure 2: Types of career guidance diagnostics according on request.

are numbers. Codes, conventional signs, natural

or artiﬁcial languages, drawings, formula tables.

In any case, a person perceives a sign as a symbol

of a real object or phenomenon. Therefore, it is

important for a specialist who works with signs to

be able, on the one hand, to abstract from the real

physical, chemical, mechanical properties of ob-

jects, and on the other, to represent and perceive

the characteristics of real phenomena or objects

behind the signs. To work successfully in any pro-

fession of this type, it is necessary to be able to

mentally be immerse in the world of seemingly

dry designations and focus on the information that

they carry in themselves. Special requirements of

this type of profession are imposed on attention;

4. “Man is art” (X). The most important require-

ments imposed by professions related to visual,

musical, literary, artistic, acting and stage activ-

ities of a person are the ability to the arts, cre-

ative imagination, imaginative thinking, talent,

diligence;

5. “Man-man” (H). Even choosing a profession that

is not directly related to communication, the right

thing is usually associated to the attention payed

to sociability and contact. Think about where

you are going and how you address people. Who

would you like to communicate with - yourself or

others? The main content of work in professions

like “man-man” is reduced to the interaction be-

tween people. If this interaction does not improve,

then the work will not improve either. Qualities

necessary for working with people include calm,

good mood in the process of working with peo-

ple, the need for communication, the ability to

mentally put yourself in the place of another per-

son, quickly understand the intentions, thoughts,

mood of people, the ability to understand human

relationships, good memory (the ability to keep in

mind the names and characteristics of many peo-

ple), the ability to ﬁnd a common language with

different people, and patience (Klimov, 2021).

Based on these, an example of a possible test

could point to a “Man-Man” type profession. This

includes professions focusing in communication with

people and their mutual inﬂuence, such as doctor,

teacher, manager, teacher, psychologist, salesman,

coach. An important quality in these professions

is not only the desire, but also the ability to ac-

tively interact with people and communicate produc-

tively. Important speciﬁcs in the preparation are good

knowledge of the professional sphere and developed

communication skills. With this result, the student

could start approaching one of the following profes-

sions: Psychology, SMM Manager, Internet Marketer,

Project Manager, Marketing, Management.

In addition, if individual consultation is necessary,

it should also be possible to access an online bot (vir-

tual counselor), which will use the database of fre-

quently asked questions to select the most acceptable

advice. After analysing all the abilities, grades and

the virtual counselor will show the individual plan to

student with several possible universities, with their

requirements and steps that should student make to

achieve the goal.

Development of an Information and Reference Application for Vocational Guidance of Students

635

Figure 3: Entity–relationship model.

The information is stored in a MySql database,

structured in nine entities (Figure 3).

The web application is being developed in PHP

and technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JS, en-

suring user-friendly interface and functionality. Users

are structured in two roles: an administrator who

has access to all pages, including management pages,

where it is possible to update, add or delete data from

the database using SQL queries; and users, who have

access only to the general functions of the site, such

as the selection of information about universities, ac-

cess to the proﬁle, as well as to the analysis of their

test results (Figure 4).

4 PRACTICAL SCENARIOS

The web application is currently in development and

we expect to have a prototype for testing in Kaza-

khstan. After eventual improvements and corrections,

it will be extended with information from other coun-

tries.

Nowadays there is no such similar application for

secondary schools. This application is the central-

ized data base of all information needed for student

to make decision and best choice of their future spe-

ciality. Using this application gives good support for

high school student. This application is free and has

user friendly interface with opportunity to communi-

cate with online counselor if while the process some

question occur, also it will analyse all students re-

quests and in the end will give more suitable option

and plan for student.

Figure 4: Flowchart.

The beneﬁts of the application is that the all infor-

mation needed will be in one place. Students and their

parents ﬁnd information, answers all the questions us-

ing only this application. Also the main beneﬁt is that

it will be free and all graduates can use it regardless

of social status and other factors.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Each year, one of the main problems of all school

graduates is career choice. Because of sparse infor-

mation, students are prone to wrong choices, thus en-

CSEDU 2022 - 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

636

rolling in areas and institutions that are not suitable

for them and their capabilities.

This paper described the importance and design

of an online career counseling application, for voca-

tional guidance of students. The main goal of this

application is to provide a service for career and uni-

versity selection advice for students, through central-

ized information and virtual vocational assistant for

students. So they can without searching the informa-

tion in different resource, using only this application

make their decisions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been supported by FCT – Fundac¸

para a Ci

encia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope:

UIDB/05757/2020.

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