Students will launch the career expo challenge by examining local job artifacts and community access clues, then create first-draft challenge framing documents that identify the teen end user, define why the issue matters in rural Vermont, and generate inquiry questions to guide deeper research in the next phase.

Students will investigate local career pathways and access barriers, evaluate the quality of their evidence, identify root causes affecting rural teens’ career choices, and use that research to propose a realistic career expo station direction grounded in user needs and local employer context.

Students will turn research from earlier phases into a team-designed career expo station by studying strong examples, making evidence-based design hypotheses, planning materials and roles, building a first low-fidelity version, and revising it after structured peer feedback.

Students will run a short test of their career expo station, collect evidence on clarity and engagement, and document what happened so they can judge effectiveness and identify the most important next revision.

Students will present the impact of their career expo station work by capturing evidence of how their research, testing, revisions, and collaboration shaped a more useful pathway experience for 9th graders and community partners.