TPC Journal V8, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

380 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 4 The knowledge generated from this study is useful to school counselors in several ways. First, understanding the intricacies and impact of Naviance could offer school counselors additional ways to support their students’ academic development, college preparedness, and readiness efforts, and to share and provide social and emotional resources to students. Second, knowing which features in Naviance influence career and college-related outcomes at the middle and high school level can improve engagement and communication efforts between school counselors, parents, and teachers. Third, exposing students early to the numerous college readiness features and functionalities in Naviance can increase graduation and college application rates of high school students, which is consistent with literature findings. Fourth, capturing college- and career-related data can help school counselors communicate, gather, analyze, and synthesize information required to meet state accountability standards and evaluate the effectiveness of counseling programs. Recommendations and Future Research Given the benefits of integrating Naviance into the daily practice of school counselors, two recommendations for future practice include leveraging the reports and analytic features to emphasize programmatic effectiveness and student outcomes, and infusing the college-related curriculum into subject matter classes. Although the high school counselor is the primary interpreter of the college preparation, application, and enrollment sources, incorporating college-related information into classroom instruction could be used as a springboard to deliver information on college and career readiness and support the understanding of the relationship between academic performance and college eligibility. This practice could free up time for the high school counselor to have more meaningful and deliberate conversations with students to support their understanding of college norms and expectations and effectively facilitate the college enrollment process. The findings indicate a need to extend TAM by exploring other external factors that influence user acceptance of Naviance. For example, future research could explore the connection between counselor usage and the number of hours trained on Naviance. Low counselor usage could be the result of insufficient training or differences in age. In addition, as many schools, particularly those located in urban settings, focus on increasing college eligibility, future studies should be conducted on Naviance test prep (i.e., ACT, SAT, AP) and student outcomes. Conclusion Research into school counselors’ technology integration and usage has been a focus in the counseling profession since the 1980s and continues to be an important area for investigation today. Most school counselors suggested that Naviance was useful in their role as a school counselor in providing academic, career, college, and personal counseling to students and that actual usage enhanced their job performance, productivity, and proficiency. In addition, many expressed that Naviance was a tool that required minimal effort, if usage was ongoing. Lastly, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use was connected to school counselors’ positive attitude regarding Naviance. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript.