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About MN FutureWork

Get insight into today's workplace with news and FutureWork articles.

How can these articles help you?

FutureWork articles identify information about:

  • Technology changes
  • Current and future job growth
  • The skills which are necessary to support these changes and this growth
  • The education and training needed to provide these skills

The audience for FutureWork articles include:

  • Educators who use the information for curriculum planning and development
  • Students
  • Business and industry
  • Counselors
  • Faculty
  • Job seekers

FutureWork is a project that is supported by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Academic and Student Affairs Division, with funding from the Carl D. Perkins Act.

What sources of information are used?

FutureWork searches a wide range of information sources to obtain articles in each of these topic areas. In addition they use a variety of internet search engines to identify other articles related to the topics including:

  • National, state, regional economic, occupational and industrial forecasts
  • Occupational Outlook Handbook
  • Local college advisory committees
  • Studies done by government, business, academic organizations
  • Key informants
  • Conferences
  • Industry and trade publications
  • Job placement information
  • Local and regional business publications and newspapers

What is environmental scanning?

Environmental scanning systematically monitors changes in the environment. These changes can be political, economical, technological, or social. The goal is to provide perspective and context for better life planning and decision-making. Many variations of environmental scanning are found in business, education, government and the nonprofit sector.

All formal environmental scanning systems have certain things in common which follow these general guidelines:

  • A defined primary audience and the kinds of information this audience needs to strengthen its planning and decision-making capability
  • Resources to scan (journals, magazines, on-line data bases, newspapers key informants, trade publications, conferences, etc.)
  • People to scan and identify relevant resource articles and prepare written abstracts or scans
  • People to draw implications from the trends and issues that emerge from the scans
  • People to analyze and prioritize these implications as to their implications
  • People to take action on items of importance
  • A designated site with responsibility for coordinating the system