Advize in the Classroom: How Universities Are Integrating Career Exploration Into Curriculum

8 min read (full article below 1-page summary) By Emily McSherry, Founder & CEO, Advize

The Career Education Challenge: Scale Meets Personalization

Career center professionals and faculty across the country face an increasingly familiar scenario: overwhelming numbers of students seeking career guidance during office hours, after class, and in career counseling appointments, with far more students than available staff. This ratio makes it difficult for career teams to scale personalization and meaningful impact across their student populations. But the challenge extends far beyond individual conversations—it's about scaling meaningful career education in classroom settings.

The numbers tell the story. According to a 2025 Industry Survey, 92% of faculty report being asked for career advice by students within their disciplinary area in the past year, while 44% of students report turning to professors for career guidance. But the scaling challenge hits career center leaders particularly hard, especially for those who also teach classes on top of their other responsibilities.

Additionally, career centers who focus on student career education and support don't have easy ways to engage faculty at most universities that don't have required career classes. For those institutions that do have required career courses, we help scale the impact, make it fun and effective.

The Alumni Story Bottleneck

Career center leaders understand that alumni stories represent the most credible proof of educational value and career possibilities. Some classes successfully bring in alumni speakers, which creates powerful moments of connection and inspiration. But how do you scale authentic alumni voices to address every student's diverse interests? How do you ensure students exploring marketing, finance, consulting, and nonprofit work all hear relevant stories within the same course structure?

Traditional approaches create impossible trade-offs: bring in one speaker who resonates with some students but not others, coordinate multiple speakers across a semester (enormous logistical burden), or rely on generic career overviews that lack the authenticity students crave.

The Assignment and Grading Dilemma

Career center professionals need assignments students can complete independently at home while producing tangible, gradeable outcomes. They're managing not just career education but student scheduling, employer relations, event planning, and individual coaching. The last thing they need is another time-intensive program that requires manual coordination or complex grading rubrics.

Yet most career exploration exercises either require extensive one-on-one facilitation (like arranging individual informational interviews) or produce subjective reflections that are difficult to assess consistently across large student populations. More critically, how do you know what is resonating with your students and how are you capturing their learning to nudge them toward "so what" action? Traditional approaches provide no data on student engagement or pathways to convert career exploration into concrete next steps.

Existing Solutions Miss the Mark

Current market solutions create their own challenges. Platforms like Forage offer career simulations that require hours of commitment—helpful for students with specific career goals, but creating barriers for students who aren't sure what they want to do and aren't ready to commit significant time to exploring unfamiliar fields. PeopleGrove provides sort of a niche LinkedIn where students can message alumni and view their profiles, but misses the mark on helping students hear from many alumni effectively to learn what careers actually entail, confirm and gain confidence about what they want to do, and build the skills and confidence to actually reach out and have meaningful conversations.

Critically, there's no "prep stage" with platforms like PeopleGrove unless a career coach, faculty member, or even a parent specifically helps a student prepare to lead one of these conversations. Even faculty, though extremely passionate and valuable, may be outdated with the current job market because they haven't been in the market themselves recently—or ever in some cases.

Faculty possess deep subject matter expertise but often lack systematic ways to connect that knowledge to real-world career applications, while career center professionals have career expertise but need scalable tools to deliver it effectively in classroom settings.

Enter Classroom Integration: Where Academic Learning Meets Career Reality

Universities are solving this challenge by integrating video-based career exploration directly into course curriculum. Instead of treating career guidance as separate from academic learning, institutions are discovering powerful synergies when students explore career applications while studying relevant coursework.

The Networking Preparation Advantage

What makes this approach particularly powerful is how it transforms traditional career research assignments. Many career-focused classes teach the importance of networking and career research, but most exercises only get students talking to one person (if any at all) —which requires tremendous effort and coordination.

Advize helps accelerate the confidence, research, and effectiveness of preparing for live conversations while reducing student anxieties before actually speaking with someone in person. By hearing multiple professionals answer the same questions about their careers, students boost their social capital skills and arrive at networking events or informational interviews with sophisticated questions and realistic expectations. We see students naturally "mimicking" the questions asked during our Advize interviews—simple, open-ended questions that are proven to build relationships and connect with professionals. This approach meets students where they are in today's technology-driven, TikTok, screen-first world, helping them connect the dots between video learning and real-world professional interactions.

The Assignment Tool: Three Steps to Career Integration

The breakthrough came when we developed an assignment functionality that requires zero technical expertise or complex integrations. Faculty can go from decision to deployed assignment in under 15 minutes.

Here's exactly how simple it is:

Step 1: Create Your Assignment (5 minutes)

Visit partner.advizehub.com/login, register with your school email, and click "Create Assignment." Choose from three assignment types:

• Any Advizers: "Watch at least X minutes from at least Y number of professionals"

• Any Playlists: "Complete any X career exploration playlists"

• Specific Playlists: Pre-select exact content for students to watch

Add your assignment name, instructions, and customizable reflection questions such as, "How can you apply what you watched to your own career plan?".

Step 2: Share the Link (2 minutes)

Copy the assignment link and share it anywhere—Canvas, email, course announcement, or learning management system. Any student who visits the link can immediately start the assignment. No downloads, no account setup barriers, no technical complications.

Step 3: Track Results in Real-Time (ongoing)

Monitor student progress, view reflection responses, and export completion data directly to Canvas via CSV download. Students can also export their own PDF results for "Pass/Fail" submission in the same way as any assignments are already being submitted.

The entire system is web-based with nothing to install and seamless LMS integration.

Customizable Reflection Questions That Drive Learning

Every assignment includes reflection prompts that help students process what they've learned and connect video insights to coursework. The platform provides proven reflection questions such as:

• "Why did you watch the videos you did?"

• "What did you learn that surprised/inspired/motivated you the most?"

• "What aspects of your career options/path/goals are you still not confident about? Why?"

• "Which career(s) from the videos felt like a good fit for you? Which were a bad fit? Why?"

• "What did you learn that you can apply to in-person coffee chats/networking?"

Faculty can also add fully customizable reflection questions tailored to their specific course goals and learning objectives.

Measurable Learning Outcomes

Students rate their career understanding and confidence before and after watching assigned content on a 1-5 scale. Faculty receive quantifiable data about student engagement and learning impact. Our average improvement is 35% increase in career confidence and understanding—measurable proof that assignments create learning value.

Perfect for Every Teaching Environment

The beauty of Advize assignments lies in their flexibility across different classroom contexts:

Small, Focused Classes (15-30 students)

In intimate classroom settings, faculty can create highly customized assignments featuring specific professionals that align with course projects. Corporate finance professors use targeted playlists featuring finance professionals, then facilitate class discussions around what students learned. The small class size allows for rich conversations about how video insights connect to coursework.

Popular approach: Assign specific playlists related to weekly topics, then dedicate 10 minutes of each class to discussing what students discovered about real-world applications.

Large Lecture Courses (100+ students)

For professors managing hundreds of students, Advize assignments provide scalable career integration without additional grading burden. At Arizona State University, required career classes often exceed 350 students, with many sections offered online. The career center team uses Advize to help scale impactful career learning in the classroom with specific content highlighting ASU alumni.

Popular approach: Create semester-long assignments where students explore different career paths monthly, using automated CSV export to track completion across large student populations.

Online and Hybrid Classes

Distance learning environments particularly benefit from digital authentic professional voices. Online students often miss networking opportunities and career exposure that on-campus students receive naturally. ASU's online career preparation courses integrate Advize assignments featuring their own alumni, helping remote students connect with professionals in ways that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

Popular approach: Help students prepare for networking conversations or even career fairs by watching people of interest they'd like to talk to, gaining confidence, boosting knowledge, and lowering anxieties before talking to people in person.

The assignment tool adapts seamlessly to each environment—whether you're managing 15 students in a seminar or 500 students across multiple online sections.

Real Results from Real Classrooms

The data demonstrates clear impact across different teaching environments:

A Private University in Texas: The Director of Career Development uses Advize assignments in multiple small career development classes. Using the "Explore Advizers in 20 Minutes" assignment with reflection questions, here are the quantified results from ~20 students:

• 60% chose videos aligned to their interests/majors, while 40% explored new or unfamiliar industries

• 39% were exposed to new industries and broadened their perspective

• 33% gained clarity on day-to-day responsibilities and skills needed

• 30% explicitly said Advize reduced career anxiety by normalizing uncertainty and showing diverse paths

• 28% learned that non-linear career paths are normal and success takes many routes

University of Arizona Marketing Class: A marketing course with 30 students used Advize assignments to help students explore careers they may be interested in and dig deeper into roles they may not have otherwise known or fully understood. Students showed a 44.21% increase in understanding of their selected careers, with an average Advize rating of 4.83 out of 5.

Student reflections reveal powerful learning outcomes: "I was surprised to learn about all of the different positions and companies she worked at throughout college," shared one student exploring public relations. Another noted: "I had a completely different idea of what a product marketing manager was, so this was super helpful to learn what it actually was." Many students discovered non-linear career paths are normal, with 28% of students in similar assignments learning that "success takes many routes."

ASU W. P. Carey School of Business: The career center team integrates Advize assignments into required career preparation courses that often exceed 350 students per section, many offered online. Using custom content featuring ASU alumni, these assignments reach ~5,000-10,000 students annually, with students who complete video playlists showing 40% higher engagement in subsequent career center programming.

"Partnering with Advize has allowed us to let our students explore career opportunities in a fun creative way. Hearing from alumni provides realistic insight to what our students could achieve with their futures," shares Brianna Miloz-Pabst, Associate Director, Career Services Team at ASU W. P. Carey.

Beyond Individual Assignments: Systematic Integration

The most successful implementations go beyond one-off assignments to create systematic career exploration throughout the academic experience:

First-Year Experience Courses

Universities are embedding Advize assignments into required first-year programming to capture where students are in their career thinking and plant seeds early about career exploration. This proactive approach helps students start learning about careers systematically rather than waiting until junior year when career anxiety peaks.

The power lies in both the early engagement and the data capture. Through detailed analytics and qualitative reflection questions, institutions gain unprecedented insights into what their entire first-year class is interested in career-wise—data they would not otherwise have. Students graduate from these courses with clear understanding of multiple career options rather than vague major-related confusion, while universities build comprehensive profiles of student career interests to inform programming and resource allocation.

Internship Preparation

Career readiness courses assign students to watch videos from professionals in their internship fields before starting placements. Students arrive at internships with clearer expectations and more sophisticated questions about career progression.

Capstone and Senior Seminars

Final-year courses use Advize assignments to help students prepare for post-graduation transitions. Students explore videos from recent graduates, learning about job search strategies, interview preparation, and early career navigation from people who recently navigated the same transition.

Faculty Adoption: Building Successful Partnerships

Faculty adoption can be tricky, but we've seen successful strategies emerge through collaboration between faculty and career centers at universities like the University of Texas at Austin, who do "train the teacher" trainings for big initiatives they roll out from the career team to enhance collaboration. The most effective implementations occur when career centers position themselves as partners providing faculty with tools to enhance their existing curriculum rather than asking them to become career counselors.

The positioning to faculty is simple: we're giving them a go-to tool to help with the many students who will come to them for career guidance when they don't have the answers or want to extend their assistance with current career advice from alumni or others in the field.

The reality is that some universities have key faculty partners who champion career integration, while other faculty are against spending any time in their class teaching about careers—which is a shame but something to acknowledge. Some faculty are so passionate about their "economics class" that they won't even give career center staff 5 minutes to talk about a career fair, which I believe is wrong. Success often depends on starting with willing faculty champions and demonstrating measurable impact that can gradually shift institutional culture.

Implementation Made Simple: Zero Technical Barriers

Universities consistently report that Advize classroom integration is one of the easiest, if not the easiest educational technology they've ever deployed:

• Entirely web-based: No downloads, installations, or IT approval needed

• 15-minute setup: From registration to deployed assignment in under a quarter hour

• Universal LMS compatibility: Works with Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, or simple email distribution

• No data sharing agreements: We don't collect student personal information or require institutional integration

• Instant student access: Students click a link and immediately begin their assignment—no account barriers

To complete and test our tool for free today:

1. Visit partner.advizehub.com/login

2. Register with your school email

3. Create assignment in 5 minutes

4. Copy/paste link into your LMS

5. Monitor real-time results

Educator leaders tell us: "I was expecting this to be complicated, but I had my first assignment running in less than 10 minutes."

The Freemium Advantage: Risk-Free Implementation

We believe so strongly in classroom integration that we offer our assignment tool through a freemium model. Faculty can create school logins and test Advize assignments at no cost, aligning with our mission of making career guidance accessible.

This approach allows professors to experiment with different assignment formats and measure student engagement before committing to broader implementation.

Measuring What Matters: Data That Demonstrates Impact

Unlike passive video consumption, our classroom assignments provide measurable learning outcomes:

• 35% average increase in student career confidence and understanding

• Detailed engagement analytics showing which careers students explore most

• Assignment completion data that helps faculty refine their approach

• Reflection question responses that provide insight into student learning and concerns

• Long-term engagement tracking showing increased career center participation

The Future of Career-Integrated Learning

As higher education faces increased pressure to demonstrate career outcomes, the integration of authentic career exploration into curriculum becomes essential rather than optional. Students expect their education to prepare them for professional success, and faculty want tools that support this goal without adding complexity to their workload.

Advize classroom assignments create a bridge between academic learning and career preparation that benefits everyone: students gain career clarity while studying relevant coursework, faculty can provide systematic career guidance without becoming career experts, and career services teams receive more engaged, prepared students.

Ready to Transform Your Classroom?

The question isn't whether career exploration belongs in the classroom—it's whether you're using tools designed to make integration seamless and effective.

With our freemium model, there's no risk in testing how Advize assignments can enhance student engagement and career readiness in your courses. Why not try it this semester and see the difference authentic professional voices can make in your classroom?

Ready to bring real career exploration to your students? Schedule a 30-minute demo to see how Advize assignments can integrate seamlessly into your curriculum and provide measurable learning outcomes for your students.

Because your students deserve career guidance that enhances their academic learning rather than competing with it.

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References:

CFA Institute. "Industry Survey." 2025.

Private Texas University (blinded), Career Development. "Advize Assignment Results Analysis." Internal data, 2025.

University of Arizona, Marketing Course. "Career Exploration Assignment Outcomes." Internal data, 2025.

Arizona State University, W. P. Carey School of Business, Career Services. "Advize

Integration Impact Analysis." Internal data, 2025.

Miloz-Pabst, Brianna. Associate Director, Career Services Team, Arizona State

University W. P. Carey School of Business. Personal communication, 2025.

Sacramento State University, Alumni Association. "Alumni Engagement Through Video Storytelling Program Results." Internal data, 2025.