Australia’s first useful careers website for high school students

The purpose of My Big Tomorrow is to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 and 16 year old Australian high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

The Challenge

Students from low socio-economic backgrounds typically find University more challenging than the average student and have higher University drop-out rates.

The Outcome

My Big Tomorrow has been globally awarded for its effectiveness. The first cohort of students will be University eligible at the end of 2017. The site is currently used by high school students, counsellors, teachers and parents Australia wide.

The purpose of My Big Tomorrow is to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 and 16 year old Australian high school students from low socio-economic backgrounds. The ultimate goal is to help them graduate from University. The initiative is sponsored by the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

The My Big Tomorrow website, featuring 93 careers and the real information students need to get there.

After extensive consultation with high school students, we determined that there was a lack of useful resources available to help them understand career choices. This is a problem Australia-wide. My Big Tomorrow was created to fill that void with inspiration, information and education. It is also designed to give them an understanding of the skills they will need in order to succeed in their chosen career.

We licensed 86 films from the ABC for My Big Tomorrow and produced 7 of our own.

The strategy was to connect with students around their interests and open their minds by showing a ‘day in the life’ of careers they probably haven’t heard of. We learned what students were interested in, then matched these characteristics to 93 different careers to help them discover their match. We created our own version of StumbleUpon’s ‘StumbleBar’ (the Career-a-majig) so students could randomly stumble through careers and be surprised.

We produced a series of illustrations used throughout the website.

The website features ‘the good’ and ‘the not so good’ about every career. It’s the real information students need and the pathways to getting there. The website includes relevant exercises for each career for students to sharpen their literacy and numeracy skills. This not only gives them a greater chance of attending University, but also a greater chance of graduation.

See how we created My Big Tomorrow.

The fact that My Big Tomorrow links careers and University courses into school subjects is one of the best things about the website. It allows students to see the relevance of what they’re studying at school now.

Alan Hope, High School Deputy Principal

Our role in My Big Tomorrow: research, strategy, branding, website UX, film production, and launch event.

In partnership with Newism.

mybigtomorrow.com.au

Press

Global Recognition for Locally Developed Resource’ – University of Newcastle

Awards

User Experience Awards 2015 (Global) – Winner, Silver

Australian Web Awards 2015 – Winner, Education

Australian Interactive Media Industry Awards 2015 – Finalist, Education

Net Awards 2015 (Global) – Finalist, Best Collaborative Project

Interaction Awards 2016 (Global) – Shortlisted