The design process really affords participants the opportunity to think about things critically, but also provides them the boundlessness to come up with some things that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It really challenges them to think differently. And higher education needs that.
Our Impact
We work with educators and workforce groups to design, implement, and scale equitable approaches that put today’s learners on a trajectory toward meaningful careers and higher wage earnings.
We measure our success by the Lab’s influence in the creation and co-design of scalable education models that are more affordable, more relevant, more visible, and more portable for learners.
Since 2013, we’ve crafted a powerful, structured design + build process for colleges, high schools, employers, and regions to harness the capacity of diverse stakeholders to create living pilots that provide a laboratory for innovation and scalable impact.
The Lab by the Numbers as of December 1, 2022
These numbers cover our work since the Lab’s founding in 2013.
1,190
Institutions and organizations trained in learner-centered design + innovation
1,210
Higher education leaders co-designing solutions
2,100
Education-to-workforce practitioners co-designing solutions
950
Employers co-designing solutions
2,840
Ecosystem stakeholders directly engaged
137K+
Audience members reached
Our Impact Model
The Lab’s impact model tracks progress toward scale with an equity lens. We begin with prototypes, preliminary versions of a learning tool, model, or process that provide a strawman to build upon. We then publish prototypes to share new learner-centered models as they emerge and invite others to take action. Together with our partners, we prepare the highest potential pilots for launch. These structured and deliberate implementations are observed and iterated. Our ultimate goal is to scale the best pilots to reach large numbers of learners, based on evaluation and learner satisfaction.
Explore our Prototype Bank: Learner-centered Models
We believe that sharing ideas, processes, and learnings helps spark opportunities and enable wide-scale adoption of new models. With our Prototype Bank, you can explore and build off of our experience and collection of co-designs.
See the Lab in Action
We’re on the ground, creating proof points and supporting institutions as they transform their models to respond to the changing needs of learners and employers. Explore our growing media gallery for insights and glimpses into our work, alongside explainer videos that breakdown big concepts in the learn-to-work space.