The Orión project for guidance counsellors is consolidated with the impetus of Comillas

Choosing a professional career is not easy for students in Secondary School, Baccalaureate or Vocational Training. To facilitate the choice of their future, Comillas Pontifical University has redesigned the Orión project: Mi espacio vocacional, a website that, through a new gamified environment, helps students to obtain information on career guidance and what to study to make their future a reality. It is a unique space in Spain, aimed at schools and families, which in just a decade has already helped 150,000 students and more than 350 educational centres in a personalised way in the academic and professional orientation processes of students in Secondary, Baccalaureate and Vocational Training.

"The project is aimed at schools, families and students, and aims to provide personalised help to students in non-university stages, accompanied by their counsellors or tutors and families, to reflect on some of the most relevant aspects to consider in the academic and professional guidance process", assures Vicente Hernández, researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Comillas Pontifical University (Comillas CIHS). The promoter of Orión stresses that the aim of the project is to "empower students to become aware of their value and talents, and how they can contribute to building a better world through their profession".

The importance of AI in guidance
To underpin the importance of Orión in academic and vocational guidance, the fourth edition of the Meeting on Innovation in Educational Guidance was held, which on this occasion was dedicated to the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic and vocational guidance. The conference brought together guidance counsellors and several experts in consultancy and educational innovation, who analysed the importance of new technologies and the use that can be made of AI to guide young people to make better choices that will facilitate their future employability.

The speakers agreed that "AI solves some problems and tasks that should allow us to devote more time to what is really important and core to our guidance work: accompanying our boys and girls in a personalised way in the configuration of their life project" and that "tools such as Orión: mi espacio vocacional are a real school of education in values supported by the opportunities that AI offers us today in the field of vocational guidance".