The Lab in Action: Media Gallery

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.

Reimagining Single Moms Success: A Window into the Design Challenge

The Single Moms Success Design Challenge is a two-year, student-centered design and prototype process led by the Lab. Through this challenge, four regionally accredited, public community colleges from across the country will design, launch and test scalable interventions aimed at dramatically improving attainment rates for single mothers who seek to obtain a degree or high-quality credential from a community college.

Learn More About Single Moms Success

The National Kick-off Convening

The Single Moms Success Design Challenge aims to help community colleges address the obstacles faced by single mother learners in the pursuit of degree and credential attainment. See how the Lab engaged four leading community colleges in a design experience to reimagine single moms success at our National Convening in June 2019.

From Kick-Off to Pilot Launch: An Inside Look at the Seamless Transfer Pathways Initiative

Eighty percent of students who enroll each year in a community college aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree. But only 1 in 4 students make the leap to a four-year institution within five years. See how the Seamless Transfer Pathways cohort aimed to address this by exploring the question: How might community colleges and four-year universities dramatically improve transfer and baccalaureate attainment rates by reframing the end-to-end experience from the student’s point of view?

Pilots launched in fall 2018; results will be tracked through 2024.

Learn More About Seamless Transfer Pathways

Webinar: Insights to Action

In this webinar, we’ll take a deep dive into the Lab’s Seamless Transfer Pathways Design Challenge. Learn about new approaches to transfer pathway design and institutional change management from four transfer partnerships. They will share their experiences designing new models for underserved learners and offer practical guidance to help you take action on your campus. This webinar was held on June 5, 2019.

The National Kick-off Convening

In this video, we share a look into a core phase of our Seamless Transfer Pathways initiative: convening nine institutions from across the country to put their learners at the center of new programming.

Building Understanding + Ideation

Take a look into a core phase of the Seamless Transfer Pathways work: building understanding through a gallery walk exercise and using that understanding to generate concepts that address each team’s end goal.

Building New Program Prototypes

View the Seamless Transfer Pathways prototyping process for taking ideas to standalone concepts that could be tested with learners.

Building + Launching a Pilot

Watch how each Seamless Transfer Pathways team built out and iterated on their prototypes to develop pilots that could scale across campuses.

The Learner Revolution

We started the Education Design Lab six years ago on the belief that only education could turn the tide on the growing income gap in the United States—but that the democratic promise of higher education required new thinking and fundamental change. In the years since, we have seen a revolution take hold that places learners’ needs front and center, along with the demands of the industries looking to hire them. In 2014, we named this shift the “Learner Revolution,” as we saw a future where power would shift away from institutions that define degrees to consumers and employers who are beginning to measure learning by other yardsticks.

Learn More + Download the White Paper

Discussion

On Tuesday, March 19, 2019, we celebrated the Education Design Lab’s five year anniversary by hosting a dinner and discussion about the future of work and the demand for new postsecondary education-to-workforce solutions.

Moderated by Kathleen deLaski (Education Design Lab), Ángel Cabrera (George Mason University), Ken Eisner (Amazon Web Services).

Discussants include Goodwill Industries International Senior Vice President of Strategy and Advancement, Wendi Copeland, Penn Foster CEO, Frank Britt, League for Innovation in the Community College President and CEO, and Lab board member, Rufus Glasper.

Micro-credentialing + 21st Century Skills

We are leading pilots with employers, colleges, learners, and workers to unlock and translate degrees into skills; to capture and credential all learning and make it visible to learners and employers. We put a special focus on 21st century skills, which are the biggest drivers of success and mobility, and the least credentialed.

We help learning providers and employers operationalize a micro-credential strategy to make learning more visible, portable, stackable, career-enhancing and, importantly, machine-readable.

Learn More About Our Micro-credentialing Work

Explaining the Lab’s 21st Century Skills Micro-credentials

After years of research and on-the-ground work with academia, students, employers, assessment providers, and technologists, the Lab designed a rigorous set of eight micro-credentials that transform the way learners recognize, activate, and display in-demand skills. This video takes a deep dive into a few core questions: What are digital badges, or micro-credentials? Why are they important? How did the Lab develop its core eight micro-credentials?

Stay connected. Join our Innovator Network.