“Imagine an on-ramp to degrees that is designed for learners with no college experience.

Through carefully scaffolded learning experiences it not only gives learners general education knowledge but helps them develop the skills they need to be successful in an online higher education environment. An intuitive platform gently acclimates them to a complex ecosystem of learning, credentials, and processes, while supporting them through nudges, celebrations, and proactive human supports. Free from the constraints of traditional credit-bearing experiences, this pre-admission program flexes and adapts to build confidence in learners while giving them pathways to earn badges that equate to credit later.

The Learner:

Having been referred to the program by their admissions rep, our learner accesses the platform via a simple URL, enters a few basic contact details to verify their account, and establishes a password to make return visits easier. Our learner also reviews some overview language that explains the program and how they can earn college credit equivalency through their work. Once their account is established, there is no onboarding or cumbersome processes, instead, our learner lands right in the experience. Through an intuitive interface, our learner can view all the learning content and assessments they will engage with as part of their program, manage their profile, contact support, and jump right into learning.

Our learner doesn’t have any experience with higher education, and they worried that it would feel overwhelming and insurmountable. Much to their relief, the learning experiences are broken down into small pieces that they can engage with one at a time, making the whole thing seem much more doable. Our learner takes a minute to explore the learning pathway visualization, which shows them exactly how many of these small pieces they need to do. They see that the pieces are clustered into three groups, and that they can look at the second and third cluster, but the platform points them to the first one to begin. With a deep breath, our learner clicks on cluster one.

With one click, our learner is transported into the learning experience, where they are met with two groups of competencies and a content recommender for each. At a glance, it’s clear that this interactive tool will help our learner see how their existing knowledge might help them move through some content more quickly, while showing our learner where their time might be better spent. After a few minutes spent on the interactive, the recommender suggests that our learner has already mastered some skills related to the second competency. 

As they enter the learning experience, the skill-related content they’ve already mastered will be identified, allowing them to move past what they already know and focus more energy on things they have yet to master. Our learner smiles to themselves, feeling much more confident now that they know they have some of the skills already needed to succeed. A few minutes later, our learner gets a communication from staff, “Wow! You seem to have a lot of knowledge that is going to help you in this section. If you run into any difficulties, remember, you can always go back and explore any of the content in this section, and I’m just a quick chat away!” (If our learner had little previous knowledge of these competencies, they would have gotten an equally supportive note that coached them on where to begin, and how to manage the work!)

Feeling confident and ready to start, our learner engages with the content – there are readings, videos, audio files, and even interactives to explore. Quick quizzes and other knowledge checks along the way help our learner continue forward with confidence. Every now and then, they get a nudge from staff, “Nice job on that last one, you’re on a roll!” which really helps our learner feel less isolated. The learning experience points out explicit connections between the learning content and relevance in their career, which does help our learner understand why this learning is important. Our learner gets a prompt to reflect on this workplace relevance with some other learners in the program and easily moves into an asynchronous thread where they add some notes to the discussion.”