IU Pathways Career Advisor

Description of the video:

Hi everyone and welcome to our project showcase presentation. We are Team F and today we will be presenting our GPT called IU Pathways Advisor, which is an AI powered resource designed to help students explore careers, build confidence in career planning, and also access personalized guidance in a more approachable way. Our project was created as a part of the Generative AI Student Ambassador Internship Program, where we focus on solving a real student problem through an accessible and user-centered AI resource over the course of a six-week sprint. So one of the biggest challenges many students face is figuring out what career path is right for them. Students often feel overwhelmed by the amount of information online, uncertain about where to begin, or unsure on how their interests and skills connect to a real career opportunity. Traditional career resources may sometimes feel difficult to navigate, too generic, or not personalized enough for students who are still exploring options, especially outside of business hours where humans may not be available. So, we wanted to create something that feels more interactive, supportive, and easier to use, especially for undergraduate students at IU who still may be exploring careers for the first time. So, in order to address this problem, we created the Career Advisor, a conversational AI -based tool that helps students explore careers, identify strengths and interests, and receive guidance based on possible next steps. the tools designed to act like a supportive career exploration assistant that students can chat with students can ask questions in a natural language and receive responses tailored to their goals interests major skills or concerns our main goals were to make the experience accessible easy to understand personalized and ethical and student-centered we also focus on making the resource approachable for students who may not already have a detailed career plan so no matter what part of your process you're in you can get help some of the key features of the career advisor include personalized career suggestions based on interest majors and skills guidance on internships resumes and professional development student -friendly expert explanations and recommendations and ethical considerations including avoiding biased assumptions and encourage and encouraging students to make informed decisions in a conversational interface that makes career exploration feel less intimidating we also refined the prompts and workflow throughout the project based on user testing and feedback now i will briefly demonstrate um the career advisor that aja just talked about so i'll share my screen so here is the iu pathways advisor and a student could click what careers fit my interests and then the career advisor will prompt the student to share a little bit about what they're interested in so in this example the student is interested in coding and working with people i am interested in coding and working with people The career advisor then generates suggestions with explanations about why those careers may be a great fit. The student can continue to ask follow -up questions such as what skills would I develop, what internship should I look for, what entry-level roles match those interests, and the conversational flow just allows students to explore possibilities naturally instead of searching through multiple disconnected resources. So we also worked on improving clarity and usability throughout the semester based on feedback that we got from other students. We refined the wording of prompts, improved organization, made the recommendations easier to understand for first-time users, but our main goal was to just ensure that someone unfamiliar with the project could still use the resource confidently, and thus the simple interface. Yeah, and to add on to that, an important part of our project was considering ethics and responsible AI use, so we recognized that career recommendations can unintentionally include bias or even make assumptions about users and because of that we really focused on creating responses that encourage exploration instead of limiting students to narrow pathways. In addition, we also emphasized transparency by positioning the tool as a guide rather than a replacement for professional advising and so throughout the project we incorporated feedback from user testing, mentor check-ins, and ethical review discussions. These improvements helped us create a more polished, user -centered, final version. So we believe the Career Advisor can help students feel more confident and supported throughout their career exploration. In the future, we would like to expand the tool with more detailed career pathways, integration with internship and job databases, resume and interview preparation features, stronger personalization options, and also additional accessibility improvements. So this project overall showed us how generative AI can be used responsibly to support students in meaningful and practical ways. Thank you all for taking the time to view our presentation and demonstration of the IU Pathways Advisor GPT. We appreciate the opportunity to participate in the Generative AI Student Ambassador Internship Program, and we're very proud of the improvements we've made through the design, testing, and refinement process over these last six weeks. We hope our project can serve as a helpful and accessible resource for students exploring their future careers. Thank you.