Select educational materials or equipment
Little of this can be handed to software today.
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Judgment, authorisation and strategy |
| Jobs that do it | 39 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Models and routing |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 39 occupations that perform it.
- Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks.
- Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks and laboratory equipment.
- Select, order, and maintain materials and supplies for teaching and research, such as textbooks, chemicals, and laboratory equipment.
- Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks or laboratory equipment.
- Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks and performance pieces.
- Select and assemble books, materials, supplies, and equipment for training, courses, or projects.
- Select, order, store, issue, and inventory classroom equipment, materials, and supplies.
- Select, order, and issue books, materials, and supplies for courses or projects.
- Review and evaluate materials, using book reviews, catalogs, faculty recommendations, and current holdings to select and order print, audio-visual, and electronic resources.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for judgment, authorisation and strategy, and what it costs.
There is nothing here worth buying beyond a good assistant. Software assembles the case and recommends an answer, which any $20 assistant already does; the decision is yours, and no product on this page changes that.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
39 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructors
- Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Anthropology and Archeology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary
- Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary
- Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Business Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School
- Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
- Communications Teachers, Postsecondary
- Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary
- Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
- English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Environmental Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Geography Teachers, Postsecondary
- Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary
- History Teachers, Postsecondary
- Law Teachers, Postsecondary
- Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
- Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
- Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary
- Physics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Self-Enrichment Teachers
- Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary
- Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Select materials or equipment for operations or projects”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.