Purpose of the Study
This study designs a facilitated program that helps Information Systems students and recent graduates decide what to work on, act on it, and keep going. It then refines that program based on what participants need and what turns out to help.
Who Is Part of the Team
Maria Espinoza
Researcher and facilitator
An Information Systems lecturer at Cal State LA, an IT manager, and a doctoral student at Claremont Graduate University. She designed the program, will facilitate the cohort meetings, and is conducting the research as part of her dissertation.
Dr. Itamar Shabtai, Faculty Supervisor
Dr. Arun Aryal, Committee Member
What the Study Needs
Approximately seven participants who can commit to a 12-week cohort with seven in-person meetings at Cal State LA.
See Participation Criteria for the full list.
Program Elements
Part 1
During the Cohort
- Facilitated cohort Seven in-person meetings, February 8 to May 3.
- Office hours between sessions Optional, by appointment, online or in person.
- Supporting site and chatbot A study website, and an optional AI chatbot between meetings.
Part 2
After the Cohort
- Follow-up questionnaires At approximately 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9 months, about 20 minutes each.
- Optional guidance Brief career guidance or referrals, on request.
During the Cohort
The Schedule
Cohort 1 is planned to begin the week of February 8, 2027, and to finish with a closing meeting the week of May 3, 2027.
- Length
- Twelve weeks from the first session to the closing meeting, February 8 to May 3.
- Meetings
- Six facilitated sessions and one closing meeting, for seven meetings total, every other week.
- Where
- In person at Cal State LA.
- Each meeting
- Approximately two hours.
- Office hours
- Optional, on the weeks between sessions, by appointment, online or in person. Please request an appointment at least 48 hours in advance. There are no office hours the week of March 29, during spring break.
The day and time of the meetings will be set from eligible volunteers’ availability and confirmed before enrollment.
Preparation between meetings. Expect approximately one to two hours per week for exercises, reflections, action-tracker updates, and career-preparation activities. Time will vary with your goals and chosen activities. Travel and optional activities may require additional time.
Costs. There is no participation fee or charge for the study website or chatbot. Participants cover their own transportation, parking, and usual internet or device costs. No reimbursement is planned. Optional outside activities may involve expenses, but no purchases, paid services, certifications, or paid events are required. There is no payment or other incentive for taking part. The guidance, activities, and resources are what participation offers, not compensation.
The Facilitated Cohort
A small group of students and alumni will meet in person at Cal State LA to clarify career goals, identify preparation priorities, and put plans into action.
The program combines structured activities with personalized guidance and ongoing support to help participants follow through.
Together we will work on:
- Clarifying career goals and identifying target roles.
- Prioritizing preparation activities based on your situation.
- Creating plans and setting manageable commitments.
- Communicating your experience through résumés, LinkedIn, and STAR stories.
- Connecting with campus and industry resources.
- Building peer support and accountability.
Specific exercises will be informed by stakeholder interviews and participant needs, so activities may evolve.
Some activities may involve giving feedback on one another’s work or working in teams. You will know when sharing is involved and may choose what to share or decline to share private materials.
Selected meetings may include guests, such as industry professionals, university career-support staff, or students and alumni, sharing career experiences and resources. Guests’ comments will not be collected or quoted for research analysis. Your feedback, reflections, and actions following these sessions may be used to understand your experience and improve the program. Guest discussions will not be recorded or transcribed.
You may identify additional preparation activities, such as training, projects, or certifications, based on your goals. These are your choices and are not requirements for participating in the cohort.
You may choose to explore mentoring opportunities and reach out to someone whose experience relates to your career interests. The facilitator can help identify potential mentors, prepare outreach, and plan conversations. Finding a mentor is optional and is not required or guaranteed. You may reflect on guidance you received and what you did with it. Please avoid including unnecessary private information about a mentor.
You may choose to attend career-related events, such as networking events, career fairs, or university workshops, as part of your preparation. These events are optional and are separate from the seven cohort meetings. Reflections on what you learned and any resulting actions may be collected as research data. Please avoid including identifying or private information about other attendees.
Optional activities may include guidance on LinkedIn profiles and sharing career-related experiences online. Participants decide whether to update their profiles or post content. The researcher will collect feedback and self-reported actions rather than photographs or social media posts.
The Study Site
You will have your own account on the study website to access and complete exercises and organize preparation materials, including plans, résumés, STAR stories, and reflections. You will also complete questionnaires there. An action tracker will let you record preparation commitments, intended completion dates, and progress using statuses such as not started, in progress, completed, blocked, or revised. Brief notes will help you describe what helped, what got in the way, what support you need, and what you want to do next. These entries will be collected as research data to understand your preparation and support needs and improve the program.
The Chatbot
An optional, career-focused AI chatbot you can ask for help with career preparation between meetings. You can take part in everything else without using it.
- You can view your own AI-generated interaction summaries.
- The researcher will access and analyze those summaries rather than full conversation histories.
- The AI provider processes the messages needed to generate responses and summaries.
- Provider-specific privacy and retention practices will be explained before chatbot use begins.
After the Cohort
Follow-up Questionnaires
You will be invited to complete follow-up questionnaires at approximately 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9 months, each taking about 20 minutes. These are separate from the seven in-person meetings.
You may skip any of them, or stop completing them altogether, without penalty.
Optional Guidance
During follow-up you may ask for brief career guidance or referrals. This is on request, not scheduled, and it is separate from the questionnaires.
Declining the questionnaires, or stopping part way, does not affect your access to it.
If you withdraw from all further research participation, any later guidance you request will not be documented or analyzed as research data.
Taking Part
Participation Criteria
You may be eligible if you:
- Are 18 or older.
- Are a current Cal State LA Information Systems student or earned your Information Systems degree there within the past five years.
- Are preparing for or seeking an entry-level Information Systems role, including if you are unemployed, working outside the field, or working in a role that does not align with your qualifications or goals.
- Are willing and able to attend seven in-person meetings over approximately 12 weeks.
- Are initially willing to complete the scheduled questionnaires.
- Can understand the study information and provide informed consent.
You cannot take part while the researcher is teaching, grading, or otherwise evaluating you. That holds both now, when you would be screening, and during the cohort itself. It exists so that nobody feels any pressure to volunteer.
- Currently taking a course with the researcher? You may review the study information, but please wait to complete the screening form until the teaching and grading relationship has ended and final grades have been submitted. For a Fall 2026 course, that is on or after December 24, 2026.
Waiting costs you nothing. Screening closes January 7, 2027, everyone who applies by then is considered together, and applying earlier gives no advantage.
Having taken a course with her before does not rule you out, including in Fall 2026. What matters is that the relationship is over before you screen, and that it will not restart while the cohort is running. These boundaries help reduce pressure to participate.
Selection Process
- Review this page and the consent form (Word document).
- Complete a short screening form with your eligibility information, contact details, and availability.
- The researcher will identify a meeting schedule that accommodates the greatest number of eligible volunteers.
- Eligible volunteers will receive the proposed meeting schedule and confirm their availability before final selection.
- If the number who confirm exceeds capacity, selection will be random.
- Selected individuals will complete the informed consent process before beginning cohort activities.
Key dates
- Screening opens
- Expected November 2026, once the required approvals and site permissions are in place.
- Fall 2026 students
- From December 24, 2026, once final grades have been submitted.
- Screening closes
- January 7, 2027, for everyone.
- Proposed schedule
- Sent to eligible volunteers January 8.
- Availability confirmed
- By January 15.
- Selection notices
- January 19 to 22, with the consent form.
- Consent and onboarding
- Completed before the first meeting.
- Cohort runs
- Week of February 8 to the closing meeting the week of May 3, 2027.
These dates depend on the required approvals being in place. They will be confirmed before screening opens.
Approximately seven participants will join Cohort 1. Completing the screening form does not enroll you in the study or guarantee a place.
Everyone who applies by January 7 is considered together. Applying earlier does not improve your chances.
You will be notified of the selection outcome. With your permission, you may be considered for a later cohort if you are not selected.
Random selection determines who receives a place. There is no control group, and participants are not randomly assigned to different program versions.
Your Information
Information Collected
Cohort participants will complete:
- A questionnaire before the program about perceived career readiness, taking approximately 30 minutes.
- Brief feedback after each facilitated session, taking approximately three to five minutes.
- An end-of-program questionnaire, taking approximately 30 minutes.
- Exercises, reflections, and action-tracker updates, including reflections on optional career-related events you attend.
- Follow-up questionnaires, each taking approximately 20 minutes.
The researcher will also collect career-preparation documents you create or upload, such as résumés and STAR stories, and summaries of chatbot interactions if you use the chatbot.
These materials will be used to understand participants’ needs, personalize support, and examine what helps and what needs improvement.
The questionnaires before and after the program will ask about your career direction, understanding of your strengths and preparation needs, knowledge of potential roles and the job-search process, confidence in taking next steps, and access to support. Your action-tracker updates and reflections will help explain what you attempted, completed, or changed along the way.
During follow-up, you may request brief career guidance or referrals. The researcher will document the types of assistance requested and provided to understand ongoing support needs.
Privacy Protections
Participation is confidential rather than anonymous because accounts and materials may include your name and identifying information.
You will be assigned a study ID. Research responses and analysis files will use this ID instead of your name wherever practical. A separate table will link your ID to your name and contact information. Both will be protected by the study’s access controls. Original documents, such as your résumé, may keep your name so they can be used for personalized support.
Materials will be stored on a study website using a managed cloud database and storage service. Planned safeguards include:
- Individual authenticated accounts.
- Access controls separating participants’ private records.
- Restricted administrative access.
- Encryption in transit and at rest.
These protections will be verified before participant data are collected.
Research-team access to identifiable information will be limited to the researcher and faculty supervisor as needed for the study.
The facilitator develops the program’s lesson ideas and exercises, informed by existing research, stakeholder interviews, and participant needs. Cloud and AI tools may support study administration, website development, maintenance and troubleshooting, participant support, and research analysis.
Information shared with these tools will be limited to what is needed, using synthetic or de-identified information whenever practical. Before research information is submitted for AI-assisted analysis, names, contact information, and unnecessary identifying details will be removed. The table linking study IDs to identities will not be uploaded to AI services. Removing identifying details may not prevent recognition from context.
The researcher will check AI-assisted outputs against the original information and make the final interpretations. Selected account arrangements will be checked to exclude submitted research information from model training. This does not prevent providers from processing or retaining information.
Findings may include group summaries, descriptions of individual participants’ progress, and quotations from written responses, reflections, or accurately documented interview statements. When individual experiences or quotations appear in the dissertation, presentations, or publications, real names will be replaced with pseudonyms, or fake names. Other potentially identifying details in those examples will be removed or generalized as needed. Because the cohort is small, someone familiar with the group may still recognize a participant from context.
During meetings, you decide what to share. You will be informed before invited guests attend and may choose what personal information to share. Guests will not have access to your private website records or materials. Participants and guests will be asked to respect one another’s privacy and obtain permission before identifying another person or sharing their work or experiences outside the group. Confidentiality among participants and guests cannot be guaranteed.
No audio or video recording of cohort meetings is planned. Participants control any photographs or LinkedIn content they create or publish. The researcher will not collect these materials for research.
Keeping and removing information
Research records will be kept securely for three years after study completion, or longer if institutional requirements apply. Study completion is anticipated by August 2028. Administrative contact information and the table linking names to study IDs will be deleted within 90 days after study completion, once linked analysis and outstanding requests are addressed, unless required for recordkeeping. Identifying information may still remain in protected research documents and consent records.
Uploaded résumés and other personal career-preparation documents will be removed from the study website within 30 days after your final scheduled follow-up, unless earlier removal is requested under the withdrawal procedures. Removing documents from the website does not delete research copies already collected. Provider backups may retain information according to their retention procedures.
Stopping participation
Participation is voluntary. Taking part, skipping questions or activities, or stopping altogether has no effect on your grades, your standing, or your access to any university service. You may stop participation or further research contact at any time without giving a reason. This stops new research data collection from you. Information already collected may still be retained and used. You may request removal of your personal documents from the website, but this does not automatically delete retained research copies. You will have an opportunity to obtain your personal preparation materials before website access ends.
Benefits and Risks
Potential Benefits
Participation May Help You
- Clarify your career goals and next steps.
- Develop useful career-preparation materials.
- Receive personalized guidance and feedback.
- Follow through with support from peers and a facilitator.
- Connect with relevant resources.
- Communicate your experience and skills.
These benefits are not guaranteed. Participation does not guarantee interviews, offers, or employment.
Potential Risks
- Time and inconvenience: Meetings, activities, and questionnaires may compete with other responsibilities.
- Discomfort: Discussing career challenges or setbacks may cause frustration, embarrassment, or discomfort.
- Loss of confidentiality: Information could be accessed or shared beyond the intended audience, despite safeguards.
- AI-related risks: Chatbot guidance or summaries may be inaccurate, biased, or misleading.
- Risks to others: Documents or discussions could disclose private or confidential information about other people.
The study is expected to involve no more than minimal risk, subject to IRB assessment.