Designing an interactive career guidance learning system using gamification

Abstract

Career counselling is one of the most pressing issues in Namibia. Some youth in Namibia expressed that they do not receive career guidance at all in their high schools. Besides the lack of general career guidance systems, high school students are also not exposed to other sources of information as well as career and educational opportunities. However, given the proliferation of smart mobile phones and cost-effective data plans a gamified career counselling system for mobile devices was developed to complement the existing career systems in Namibia. In this paper we discuss how stakeholders i.e. university and high school students, and career counselors contributed to an interactive career guidance mobile game through participatory co-design workshops. This was done through a game design challenge approach, several workshops and an eventual prototype that will undergo testing in a gameathon soon.