Choosing career paths: The outputs of VTASI teams

Young people in high schools and colleges make critical decisions regarding what to study and which career path to pursue. For various reasons, many of them end up switching to other majors. Such changes are wasteful in time and resources and they produce emotional and economical stresses. Literature is full of references which outline the view of professional adults (e.g., researchers, teachers, governmental personnel, and others) regarding factors affecting such changes. Not much is known how this career selection and switching problem is seen by young people who had just gone through such a process and how this selection process could be further improved in their views. At University at Buffalo, we engaged 52 graduate students during the academic year 2010 - 2011 to brainstorm this problem. The students formed 10 virtual teams with anonymity and structured interactions (VTASIs). In these teams, participants remain anonymous, follow a modified Delphi brain-storming process, communicate with one another asynchronously via electronic means, apply a set of DeepThink idea generation strategies to think creatively, and conduct multiple rounds of structured interactions, under the guidance of a knowledgeable team leader to produce increasingly novel ideas. The DeepThink idea generation strategies rely on nine sets of inquisitive questions to induce inquiry from a variety of perspectives. Both the DeepThink methodologies and the major characteristics of VTASI teams had been reported elsewhere [1]. This study is noteworthy in that all participants have recently gone through the process of selecting their respective career paths and are thus intimately familiar with the project topic at hand. Because many of them decided to study different engineering disciplines and they came from diverse cultural background, their outputs are insightful. Key approaches to facilitate the selection of career paths are presented. The advantages of applying VTASI teams to generate new ideas for any project are summarized. Conclusions are offered.