Greg Boyd:
Hello everyone and good afternoon. We’re just getting people in the door and seeing lots of names popping up—some familiar, which is always exciting—and we'll give a few others about 30 seconds, and then we'll jump into things here. We're excited to get started.

Dana, just as people are joining and as we're getting set to go. I just wanted to say thanks to you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure getting to know your organization over the course of the past few months professionally. I appreciate the collaboration and conversation today, but also just personally, it's been a delight getting to know so thank you for doing this today.

Dana Stephenson:
Thank you Greg and thank you to the entire Uvaro team. I know the Riipen team over here has thoroughly enjoyed all of our engagements to date and we're super excited about the potential to come out of this conversation and to continue working together. Thanks.

Greg Boyd:
Yeah, let's get started. We have some exciting content to dig into so hello to everyone — I’ll introduce myself in just a moment. This is a conversation that we have been excited to have and I'm going to ask for some feedback in a few moments on what brings you here and what some of the things you are excited about for today, because it is a conversation that we're looking forward to having with each and every one of you. We appreciate you taking some time out of your schedules to spend with us this afternoon.

My name is Greg and ultimately my job here at Uvaro—and we'll talk a little bit about Uvaro, but we'll generally be talking about this primary issue and the opportunity that we're looking for today—my job at Uvaro… We’re a service provider to help people transition into the tech sector, and my role is to help our business access opportunities to drive Workforce Development and make the Canadian economy even stronger than it is already. And I'm joined by my friend and collaborator Dana Stephenson from Riipen. Dana if you could just introduce Riipen and we can get things going.

Dana Stephenson:
I definitely think we can call each other colleagues and friends! Dana Stephenson here, founder and CEO of Riipen. Thrilled to be here having this conversation. For those you don't know too much about Riipe, we’re an education technology platform. We partner with higher education institutions and training providers to increase inclusive access to high-quality high-impact work-integrated learning.

We’re big Believers in learning by offering opportunities for learners—participants of education training programs—to take what they're learning, apply it in the real world, build connections with employers, industry, make an impact out there in the world, build professional connections, and obviously leverage that to find jobs. They are—of course— huge benefits out there for the employers who are participating. Those who know us well, we love supporting our big large enterprise clients, employers, corporate partners, but we also spend an enormous amount of time focusing on bringing more small and medium organizations to the table, ensuring that they're participating and offering high quality work-integrated learning experiences to students. So very  excited for this conversation. Uh, back over to you Greg.

Greg Boyd:
Thank you Dana. And we are enjoying that collaboration. You certainly live to those values in everything you do and I think it'll come through in the conversation as well. So this is an exciting spot to start because I see some familiar names in the list of attendees, those of you who have been to some of our events before. Welcome back. To some new faces, this is exciting. It's great to have a chance to meet you.

Here's what I find: I've said this before. If you come to some of these conversations before, a two o'clock eastern time webinar, post lunchtime, we're in the middle of the week. Energy might be low. This might be an opportunity for you to kickback for an hour and kind of multitask, get what you need to get done. And if that's what you're here to do, that's totally fine. We appreciate you being here, but many of you are probably here to learn something. Yousaw something in the advertising, you know, [about]our organizations and you're trying to get something from the conversation. And so if that's you in this case, then I want to hear what you might be interested in.

So I'm about to walk through what we're going to cover. But beforeI do that, I'd like to direct everyone to sit up. Look at the screen, move your cursor to the bottom-right? And you'll see a triangle, a square and a circle. If you click on that button, I have a menu list pop up. And one of the options is Q&A. So if you click on Q&A, that is the space where you can ask a question through the course of our session today. You are not required to ask a question, but I want to make sure this works andI want to make sure you know how it works. So as I introduce what we're going to cover here.

I would like to just post a thumbs up, a yes, a "dot dot dot", something, please. I want to light up the Q&A section with those of you who are here to see that it's working and show us that you're there, you hear us. But I would love for you just to post quickly in that, so that we know you are comfortable with how to use that section because, we will be referring to it throughout the course of the webinar today and as those requests are coming in, and as I'm describing what we're gonna cover, I will say to those of you who showed up with something you're specifically looking to get out of the conversation, please share that with us.

If there's a specific thing that you'd like to learn something you'd like to get out a question you had for Dana or myself, you will be invited to ask it in this Q&A that you've now most of you have already used, which is great. You'll be able to post in thatQ&A space. But if there's something that isn't a question but a thought, something you'd like to share with us — hey, Greg, Dana, we hope you cover this — please post it. We'll catch it and aim to speak to it through the course of the webinar that we cover today.

00: 05: 00

Greg Boyd:
What we are going to be talking about today is a new approach to education and workforce development, how these things come together. We, Uvaro, have been working with Riipen andbeen developing a solution that we have gotten a good amount of feedback from institutions that there's excitement around this. Fundersare excited about it and we're excited about it as well. So we're pushing this program forward or this approach forward to our higher education partners who are here with us on the call. This is an opportunity for you to hear how you might be able to get involved as well. So we will be looking for feedback and response at the end of the conversation today to what you think of the material that we've covered.

A quick disclaimer: We are not going to be proposing that we replace, in any way, colleges or universities. We will certainly not be coming  in and proposing that higher education needs to go away. We're proposing how we together cansupport institutions as we're goin through a time of a fair bit of change in the market and the economy. So if  you are here from a higher education institution, and you're looking for ways to contribute to the workforce development efforts that are underway, then this is gonna be a great opportunity for you to lean into the conversation. If you're looking for ways to grow your impact without having to reduce costs, potentially grow revenue, then we are going to be offering up a potential solution, a potential way to engage that you'll be able to take action on at the end of this hour. That is our ambition. If you are a funding partner, and you're interested in what the solution is, then this webinar has not been designed for you, but you're gonna get to hear what the conversations and it will help to inform how we're hoping to get involved with you. And we appreciate you being here to participate in this conversation with us and we will have opportunities along the way to dig into this.

So what we'll cover, I'm gonna take it 10, probably about five minutes and just set the stage on what we see the opportunity being for  higher education to play a role in Canada's workforce development strategy. Well, then. Dana and I will be speaking about how and why some of the programs that have been put in place haven't been successful, and what we think might be a more successful approach. Well, then. Just to illustrate and show an example of what this looks like. We've implemented this model before —Riipen has implemented this model before. And now we're looking at bringing it forward in a systematic way. And So we want to talk through what that example would look like and then talk about next steps and how you can get yourself or your institution involved. If this session goes well, we will take the full hour because that will mean that there's dialogue between Dana and There's questions coming in from you that we can interact with along the way. So please expect to spend the full hour. But if it's just me talking, the content will go much more quickly than that. I will say that —well, let's dive in and set the stage where we're gonna start for today.

So if we look as a starting point at where or what is happening in the Canadian marketplace today, the numbers you see on screen — this is the number of new Canadian students that are entering higher education institutions on an annual basis. So 320,000[/yr], 1. 7 million Canadians enrolled in programming. If you add in international students that bumps it up to about 400, 00[/yr] and2. 1 million, but this is — we're talking about Canadian students and of course, there's lots of discussion happening around international students as well, but the whole population let's just say it around 2 million enrolled in different programs. And in many ways, the way programming is delivered in the higher education space today is working quite well and it has been working quite well for a long time.

When you join a higher education institution as an individual, and for you as part of a higher education institution, you take pride in the rich skill development that you offer to the people who come there. We're looking at spending four months, up to four years, maybe even longer, providing this really rich, deep skill development that prepares people to enter the workforce. Speaking personally…  I didn't go to higher education — I went to university, [but] I didn't go specifically with a job in mind, or with a specific goal to get a job. But of course, I went with the idea of getting a job on the other side.

We're seeing more and more people joining institutions to develop specific skills to get into the workforce. And whether it's intuitively or through study, what we do know is that skill development that's provided in these institutions is critical but skill development in and of itself isn't enough. We need to pair that skill development with experience and the experience side of actually taking what you learn, and apply it. And institutions in higher education, you're doing this today. You've invested tremendously in providing opportunities for students to step into the workforce to apply learnings and come back in and bring those skills back to the classroom and enhance those skills and grow them over time. In our existing model, we're seeing higher education just take great strides to make investments here. And Dana, I know talking to you for a moment, this is something you've been very close to. Sojust to give you a moment to reflect because of Riipen's role in actually working with higher education institutions to bridge that gap. You know, what trends have you seen in recent years that shows growing willingness for the institutions that might be here on this call today to embrace this approach?

00: 10: 00

Dana Stephenson:
Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, like you mentioned earlier, schools are doing a great job in this and I acknowledge that this is not a — not a novel concept. Post secondary institutions across Canada Have been investing in co-op and internship programs. And more recently, more creative and innovative work integrated learning programs, like project-based, like Riipen offers. You know, going back as far as really the University of Waterloo, who apparently did this decade ago. I think part of this trend is really due to first and foremost, we're working in a world that revolves around evidence-based practices, since there's an enormous amount of research being released all around the world really from thought leaders in this space, Waterloo, business education roundtable, CWIL, really demonstrating the efficacy, the importance of the outcomes that come — the improved outcomes that come from combining education and work experience.

And of course, you know we have thought leaders who are now building awareness all across Canada around these evidence-based practices. And so — that's having a huge impact. We're seeing that being brought up more and more, which is fantastic. We need more people really looking at the impact and measuring the impact of these types of programs obviously, at Riipen, we're big believers in that, and can help a lot about that. You know, we're seeing performance based funding coming out in certain provinces, and likely more to come, around work-integrated learning driving better outcomes likely based — or most-likely based on this research. And then of course, we've seen something we're gonna be talking about today. We've seen just a huge massive injections of cash, of new funds, across the ecosystem, both federally and provincially to increase access to these high quality, high impact work experiences. Combining the education and the work experience. Again, why? Because it's tied back to the research and the evidence of these practices, demonstrating that this is working. But ultimately, I think a big part of what we're supposed to talk about today. I really think it comes down to learner demand.

You mentioned a little bit about you know, your experience back when you were entering into university. I mean, there's still a long way to go but labour  market information available to prospective students. No matter what their age is, whether they're returning to education or reskilling or upskilling, they're armed with more information, before they choose a program, post secondary institution, or a training program, they are armed with more information than ever before and they know —they're seeing it in the media, they're seeing it from experiences, from hearing from peers, and people who have gone down the pathway before them, they know the job market is tough for entry level talent. How to get a job without experience, how to get experience without a job.

So, learners are demanding work-integrated learning experiences at a level that we've never seen before. And you know, really making sure that they can align that work integrated learning experience with their career goals, with something meaningful, where they feel like they can make an impact in the world, And have a successful —successfully graduate into meaningful employment. And I would say that's only hungrier: The demand is only higher, I should say. The adult learner population, the reskillers, upskillers, they are only hungrier for this type of work experience, when they're choosing an academic pathway.

Greg Boyd:
I'll echo that throughout the course of our conversation with what we offer at Uvaro, people entering into a program to make that transition into the tech sector. It's one of the first questions asked: "when do I get to practice? When do I get the introduction to an employer? When do I get an opportunity to put these skills to the test?"And so I would reiterate that demand is a big driver of this as well. And I think that another part of it is that these two pieces go well together. But it's also just the cycle that we've all lived, seeing our parents —seeing mentors — live in their careers, making that connection when embedded in an education experience. I mean, it isn't natural necessarily, but it's become a norm or a growing norm. As you said, it's not a novel concept. We won't coin that today.

Everyone's sort of nodding along saying yes, Dana, yes, great. We get it. But I think it follows us into the workforce that the idea is to develop the skills at college, university. And Then I enter into the workforce. I get experience, the experience that I developed, builds my skills and actually opens me up to new experiences that I can access. And that cycle just goes around and around and around. And This has been a cycle that's worked for a long time.

00: 15: 00

Greg Boyd:
But where we're standing today and what led us to this conversation is there is this gap and the gap is just getting wider where the experience that I want to get or the experience that I need in order to step into a role is maybe not as tightly connected with the skills thatI have or the skills that I have built, or even the opportunity that I have to build skills, given how the economy is changing. And this is true if you are trying to transition into a different role, so grow your career, if you're trying to make a career change, move to a different industry, but it's also increasingly becoming true for people who are in a role. And many of us here, no, everyone in this call, I'm sure, knew I was really bad movie a couple of years ago. It's All we knew about AI and we sort of had this idea of it, but there's nobody on this call, I presume, who hasn't at least played with or at least doesn't know what ChatGPT is. And that's just one iteration of how AIhas come so quickly into the forefront. And we have leading thinkers on workforce development, analyzing not just what it means to transition into a different role, but what it requires just to stay relevant in the role you have, the need for skills.

And I would say in my own role I have taken training programs just to stay relevant in my own role over the course of the past year and this is increasingly true for people just to sustain the roles that they have and the work that they have. So we're seeing this come through in the fact that companies are posting jobs, and this is in theCanadian market data, where we have companies looking to hire people in customer facing roles in Canada. And there's over 96,000 open roles, people applying for these jobs, the roles remain open and posted because we're not seeing the qualified candidates that are coming in for those opportunities. But it also applies on the industry side. If you don't have people who have the right skills inside an organization, you're going to be challenged to innovate at the pace you need to.

And again, using or staying with an AI example. We see Canada lagging in this way, unfortunately, where we think about innovative technologies, but we struggle to deploy them at the pace that our international competition does and that just is a way to see or we can see laid in front of us, that gap of experience and skills, creating challenges for how we remain competitive economically in Canada and internationally.

Dana Stephenson:
And Greg, if I can just jump in there and just mention that the stats that you were showing earlier around AI adoption, we now know how much lower that is as the organizations get smaller. And obviously Canadians are very likely, with 90% of the workforce being small/medium organizations, are very likely to work in a small/medium organization. And so there's some, there's some huge impact on productivity, innovation, when these new technologies aren't being adopted. And of course, that's not disseminating to the workforce who could be learning these new skills as well.

Greg Boyd:
Totally. So going back to this idea of what's happening in Canada, we've got 320,000 students entering higher education every year, we have higher education institutions servicing 2 million students on an annual basis, preparing individuals for the workforce, pairing education and experience and bringing that forward so that we're preparing people for these roles. However, there's a workforce that is not included in those numbers. That is left largely unaddressed and that's a workforce of 16 million Canadiansthat are in roles performing in higher education, or sorry, performing in full time roles now and seeing and feeling the impact of that skill development challenge. And If higher education is servicing or playing to this population, that doesn't necessarily need to be where the focus is in the future.

We see the opportunity for higher education institutions to step into workforce development, bring the practices of what have been working in that confined highly intensive2 to 4 year period for students, bring that forward into workforce development initiatives so that we have higher impact to the workforce and advance the labor market. As I say that these headlines are not going to be anything new to the audience we have here today.

00: 20: 00

Greg Boyd:
So we're saying higher education institutions, you've got a bigger role to play. This is a pivotal moment for you to step in and have an even bigger impact on the Canadian economy. But we have headwinds that are, that are making it challenging to advance or grow those services. Now, this is nothing new because we actually have seen in recent years, any number of challenges that institutions have needed to overcome. And whenever we're faced with the challenge, there has been innovation and there has beena change to the approach so that that work can continue. But I just wanna, before people start, before people start getting concerned that we're going to spend the rest of the webinar talking about the international student cap, which I'm sure everyone has heard plenty about. I just want to say we're not going to talk to the student cap, but what we are going to talk about now as we switch into solutions: If we say that higher education has a bigger role to play. OK, how do we do that? We want to talk about how organizations can respond to that student cap and how the new challenges that we haven't even conceived of yet are going to be addressed or will be addressed in the years ahead.

So we want to talk about solutions and we want to wanna start that conversation now so you can take a stretch and say, OK, we've got a bigger role to play. Thank you, Greg. My aim here is just to lay out that there are many things that higher education institutions are doing right. That there is a large labor market that is left largely unaddressed with the solutions that are working. And we want to share ideas of how a path forward could open up the opportunity for higher education to play a more impactful role.

Dana, I wasn't — we weren't — too much of a downer?I think we've got everybody staying with us so far. Let's do it, let's get into it. So if higher education in institutions have been playing in this space, servicing a core population, that is not to say that the other 16 million have been left unaddressed. In fact there's lots of money being spent in this area right now, to the tune of billions of dollars, especially through the COVID period to help people develop new skills and get ready for the changes that are coming to the workforce. But we wouldn't be having this conversation if the solutions worked. Largely, workforce development solutions have failed to achieve the impact that many organizations hoped that they would. It doesn't mean they've been failures. It just means they haven't had the impact that we've hoped that they would.

And the reason that we believe that they haven't achieved the impact that we hoped that they would three things. First, in many cases, solutions and specialized training are focused on a very specific niche. They are targeted at specific skill development for a specific part of the economy. The second is, you got a credential from an organization like a Uvaro or a Lighthouse Labs or others that could be meaningful to your industry sector. But maybe it doesn't have as broad market impact as a general credential might. And we see that the model that's used often in developing or delivering workforce development solutions isn't complete. There's some key missing periods. What's cool about this is if we bring higher education to the forefront in a lot of these workforce development solutions, we see two of those three challenges go away relatively quickly. Higher education institutions by their nature can bring curriculum forward, they've got broad appeal or broad access to content expertise and can bring a broad set of curriculum to challenges, and also have that credential and can provide recognition as part of the solutions that they offer.

But on the third part, there is sort of an incomplete model that even if we stand up continuing courses and programs, that it's a six week credential or a six month credential, there's still a missing piece that requires a different way of thinking, about how to deliver that programming and delivering that model or delivering those models. The data, I mean, you're, involved in a lot of conversations with funding bodies and organizations, you know, we're talking here about workforce development but also wanna maybe broaden the context here because workforce development is critical, but you need the other side, industry to be ready for that as well. So if we're saying workforce development hasn't done— so far — what it needs to, what are some of the impact you're hearing from an industry perspective on the other side of that?

00: 25: 00

Dana Stephenson:
Yeah. Great question. And so, I think one of the biggest challenges to this is, often, I think post secondary institutions face this challenge. I think workforce development partners often face this challenge. Often the curriculum is designed, too often the curriculum seems to be designed in isolation. Often there is an opportunity to engage industry. I mean, obviously, if you're partnering with a sector council that represents industry or content expert that represents a very specific industry in that partnership that can be incredibly powerful. We see that program design, you collect labor market information, identify programming, industry advisory boards are created. Industry is consulted, and then curriculum is designed and launched.

I think the reality is what we're learning is that industry is moving and evolving faster than ever before. People are probably tired of hearing it but, you know, take the ChatGPTexample, how quickly that's evolved. I mean, OpenAI just has to sneeze these days and 2, 500 companies are just wiped off because they've really made a huge new release. It's just things are evolving so much faster. The new video content is gonna be unbelievable. So this is happening faster and faster. What we need to make sure that we're doing, I think what we've really learned is, what we need to see in curriculum design, is rapid feedback loops to make sure that there's constant iteration, there's constant adaptation. It's constantly evolving with the unique needs of the learners, the employers and of course, the industry and employment outcomes that that workforce development program is trying to serve.

So I know we're going to talk quite a bit about that. I mean, we're big believers that actually bringing in work experience involving employers who have skin in the game in that program alongside industry content experts, who have skin in the game. Bringing these three different partners together is really a one plus one plus one equals 4, 5, 6 or seven. So I'm excited to continue the conversation.

Greg Boyd:
Nice. And I think we can introduce the model actually in two parts. First is what those three parts are and then let's take everyone through an example of what that could look like. So the first part of building an effective solution is just combining these three players together, funding body, audience holder, and delivery experts, or individuals who are in the higher education space. If I'm in a program or I'm in a four year degree program: I mean, I funded the program myself, or there's government funding for that: scholarships. The high schools, international recruitment, that's your audience holder. And then as a higher education institution, you're the delivery expert. If you translate this into workforce development, it looks a little bit different.

And so we're talking about a workforce that is sort of out there, not immersed in programming. So what these three parts look like change a little bit. So first: who is a delivery expert in this?To your point, Dana, that could be companieslike Uvaro and Riipen. Of course, we should put our hands up for that. That's who we are. We see the challenges, we’re immersed in an industry, and we can adapt content quickly to what an industry sector needs so that we can be targeted in solving a specific set of problems. And that's what a delivery expert does in this context in the case of an audience holder. So whois an audience holder? And when we talk to all of you on the call today, that's you in large part, being able to bring people into this programming through the network that you have. Nine million Canadiansare graduates from some sort of post-secondary institution: That's 60% of our workforce. So we have access to that audience through alumni networks alone as a way to get that started. And this is a huge opportunity to re-engage alumni.

00: 30: 00

Greg Boyd:
It is an opportunity to generate new revenue for your organization. So we see higher education institutions here as the audience holders, and then the third piece to get programming like this off the ground, it needs to be seated, it needs to start with funding partners who can make those investments to kickstart programming so that we have something that individuals can jump into and participate in. Our key learning here is that5, 000 dollars, 10, 000 dollars, even $2000 for somebody to join a program is a big investment to make — Companies and individuals. And so being able to provide access to programming that provides more value, but can be subsidized to start. So the program gets its foundation under it— and then becomes self-sustaining. It's critical. Just to make this whole system run. We got a few examples here. And that's Digital Supercluster, and USED-funded Upscaling for Industry Initiative, a recent example out of the US where the Gottesman Foundation: a billion dollars to an institution to provide free tuition at a Bronx medical school.

And then Dana, the Level Up stipend program as well. This is an opportunity the government provides to give Work-Integrated Learning. And we're going to come to this as a key part of the solution actually. So I think it's a great opportunity for you to speak to that, to introduce it because we're gonna come back to it as a key part of this solution.

Dana Stephenson:
Fantastic. Absolutely. So Level Upis a program we're incredibly proud of. A little bit of the history. There is Canada Employment — Social Development Canada has been investing heavily in creating wage subsidy programs to encourage more small/medium businesses to participate in work integrated learning experiences or full time internships, co-op placements. We realized that, well, that those programs are absolutely fantastic. There are many smaller organizations who would love to participate, but they just don't have the capacity, they don't have the bandwidth, the connections, andeven the paperwork itself, the friction that gets involved in some of these programs to take them on, that in itself can really be a challenge.

So what we proposed was creating a shorter, more flexible part-time, paid, work-integrated learning experience, that's subsidized by the Canadian government. We were very fortunate. I should also say one of the big reasons why we propose this is that while a full-time placement is fantastic for many learners, there are many learners, especially those who are might have other life commitments— they may have another job, they're thinking about changing industry, reskilling, upskilling — they don't necessarily have time to go back and take their education and then go get an internship, then come back and get an education and then go back to workforce. They've got to get the education, the work experience at the sametime, and get right back out there.

So we proposed this flexible, paid, work-integrated learning experience. The innovation here is really that Riipen acts as the employer of record. So rather than the funding flowing directly to the business who then hires the student, then remits their pay stubs to get reimbursed, we actually hire the learner on behalf of the company. We pay thema stipend for the work that they complete as long as it's aligned with the curriculum, aligned with the career interest, they're a registered post-secondary student. And the employer then comes in and verifies and validates the skills. So right now, our Level Up program is live. In fact, we're just about to announce another9, 000 stipends for next year. We've so far delivered nearly 24, 000. And it's about $1, 400 per project based experience. Students today can soup to five per year. It's been a massive success, huge waitlist on both the students and the employer side to participate because it's been so valuable, incredible employment outcomes. We'll maybe talk a little bit about that later. So valuable, in fact, that other funding partners have replicated this model.

So, Upskill Canada Initiative that I think we're gonna be talking a little bit about later. They've actually made it an eligible expense to bringing paid stipends for paid project-based experiences. So, transforming training into earn and learn programs. And of course, the province of Ontario Has actually replicated this model. So we're seeing an enormous trend moving in this direction. And what we've been doing is innovating with partners like Uvaro and other post-secondary institutions and other partners in this, space who want to transform their short-cycle training programs into earn and learn programs. So get the experience, get the education, get the training, get the skills, get the experience, get your first paid experience, at the same time, and be ready to go to the workforce.

00: 35: 00

Greg Boyd:
So super excited about the application here and I think that opportunity, the concept of the opportunity: cost is so key, right? It's perhaps less about the dollars specifically, but it's about the—there's recognition of it, it's an opportunity to step away from something and being able to say there's something to this, there's at least something more than the experience itself that is a signal of value.

Dana Stephenson:
Well, I think what we hear, you know, you hear over and over again is, as we mentioned—I mentioned—at the top of the hour, there's a lot of funding flowing into the space which is a big, I think trend and movement to make, to encourage and incentivize more of these types of programs to exist. But you know, a lot of that funding can be used to subsidize the training, which is a very common use case. Of course, you know, there can often be issues with skin in the game, in that case, it can break down some barriers. But no one ever gets a job for putting that they got a subsidized program or a bursary, a scholarship, on their resume. But you can certainly get a jobby getting a paid work experience that helps you get your first ROI on your training program. Right on your resume. Show that off to future employers and land employment. And that's really what this is all about.

Greg Boyd:
Completely. Agree. The validation of the skill development put together isa huge component. And I think when those three — this is that first part, when we have intentionality about the right delivery partner, see partnering for collaborating with the right audience holder and then the right funding partners and collaborators, you can develop this innovative programming. The second piece we need is we need to approach that programming in the right way because Dana, we spent a lot of time discussing even just having that one stand alone experience of skill development, then work integrated learning. That in and of itself isn't enough. We talked about this a little bit earlier. Educationand experience, making that connection inside institutions has taken time. But it's become something of note where nobody here is a stranger to that concept. And workforce development is still quite broken.

The Idea that you go and develop, do your skill development, come back and tell us what you learned. What if you could integrate those things together?Because it doesn't work when they're disconnected. So step one is to integrate those pieces. And again, this to our audience today isn't overly novel, but in the context of workforce development, it truly is. But if you add a couple other layers to it, it expands the scope of the value and the opportunity by having education and experience, then you pair that with advancement. So, "I just completed a working integrated learning experience. Howdo I apply — and I've developed these skills —how do I apply that to my job search strategy?How do I represent that or reflect that on my resume?"Then further, now I'm in a job search scenario where I'm interviewing and I'm in this industry sector that I've never been in before. How do I approach an interview? How do I approach a conversation when I get a job offer?Is this a good offer or not a good offer?There's additional services that need to be layered on in order to help that transition be done successfully. Now, to many of you listening, you may say, well, OK, you just use different words to describe things we do. Yes, in the higher education context. Certainly. I'm immersed in experience, I'm inside the institution. Absolutely. And that's kind of your job. But as soon as you graduate and go into the world tying all these strings together, that that's not all that easy. And I would argue that probably inside your own organization. This probably has some challenges to it as well. To have faculty connecting with career development and inside an organization may not be seamless in itself.

And so the idea here is let's integrate these different components together into an approach. And then if we can get this flowing as if it's a system. So it's a systematic approach. Each step in that development journey actually reinforces another. And Now that I have security job now I can continue my skill development journey and then I can gain some additional experience and then I canadvance and level up in this program, can become a self-sustaining flywheel in many ways. And we've seen this start to work. Dana, you've got examples. We Have implemented this without collaborators at What Speed, a Palette-funded program, and we're getting this program running where all those different components are covered. WhereWattspeed, an affiliate ofUniversity of Waterloo, is providing skill development and then they have the work integrated learning component and then they have advancement and advice being given as a way to reinforce and drive the value of the program. We think this solution works and we want to replicate that all across the country with all of you who are on the call today.

00: 40: 00

Greg Boyd:
So what I'd like to do is now just take us through an example of what this would look like just to make this more concrete because conceptually, I believe that it probably makes sense. But I would love to just talk about how specifically this approach would look or what it would look like and how it works in the context of what an individual's journey would look like. So whether you're part of a large public institution or a smaller private college, we're gonna work through an example to illustrate what this looks like. Adjust share a little bit of what the journey would be for an individual. So step one of this idea, the concept of, OK, we'd love to, you know, start to engage with with this idea of supporting workforce development efforts. Step one is we've got to find the right content partner and just putting a few examples out there.

 And I know Dana, you worked with all of us to some degree and we've seen these solutions work as I've mentioned already, whereLighthouse labs, we have digital skills and we have very specific development skills, Robo Garden, recently implementing an AI development program and then Uvaro helping to build skill development for customer facing roles. So, you know, what benefits are you seeing as the work-integrated learning partner with different content providers and institutions?What do you see in the benefits when you have this collaboration between higher education and content providers?

Dana Stephenson:
Absolutely. So, just the word innovation partnership, collaboration, I think comes together really clearly, you've got experts on, really on both sides. And you know, what that leads to ultimately, in terms of an outcomes individuals leaving these programs with an academic credential from a trusted program, that has vetted that program, that supports that program, that has made sure that the curriculum is aligned with the learning objectives of the program. You know, it was co-created, the learning. You got a content expert who's put, their names on it, who's keeping very close to industry, adapting extremely quickly. And then of course, you've got the work experience, whichthen creates an external validation of all that learning.

 So the confirmation that yes, you know, Lighthouse Labs or Robo Garden or Uvaro, and the post-secondary institution says that they learn these skills. Well then boom, the employer comes in and says, yeah, do the project for me, I can validate and verify they have these skills. And so, yeah, I loved your slide earlier. I know we talked a lot about that, but the flywheel, the feedback loop going back to that is incredibly important. This we believe, together. believe is one of the best combinations to create that responsiveness. Industry is moving super quickly. We need the combination, the collaboration between the higher education institution, the content industry expert, the employers, the industry partners themselves who have skin in the game, who are invested in the talent, who are providing the project based experience, part of providing part of the curriculum.

So the curriculum is constantly evolving based on the needs of industry. And the last thing I'll just say is, I think the bonusagain is that there's just, it's just new enrollment, untapped pools, potential learners who have either been sitting on the sidelines because maybe the traditional higher education model didn't work for them originally, or maybe they think higher ed postsecondary, you know, been there done that, I don't need to go back to college or university. All of a sudden when you see an innovative — when they see an innovative program like this: "Oh, that makes sense. This is something different than I did previously, " or "this is something different than that that didn't work for me last time. "And so, you know, you're tapping into a whole new pool of potential learners that wouldn't have otherwise come and participated in these programs.

00: 45: 00

Greg Boyd:
Exactly. The question that came in: "How does this help secure more funding?"Funding partners are going to be looking at this as the innovative path to help to advance workforce development, because you can expose people to innovative curriculum. I may want to take a program with a LighthouseLabs, a Robo Garden, or a Uvaro, but I'm concerned about where does the experience piece come in or how does it connect me to a job on the other side? Pairing that with a higher education institutions and building this model out allows you to say I get an academic credential that's respected and regarded. Higher education institutions can capture some revenue from that enrollment as an opportunity to drive re-engagement with alumni or new engagement from Canadians that want to engage. And then we can also have funders come in and invest in those programs to help get them off the ground. So if we walk through this as an example, just to lay that out, let's imagine for our purposes here, we are Uvaro.

So we'll talk about a Uvaro-type example where somebody is interested in a role in the tech sector, customer facing. Be it a sales role, a support role, a customer success role. And where they start is accessing and looking at a continuing education institution or an institution that's promoting programs in the continuing ed space and targeted industry sectors and very specific roles that they want to develop, not just skill building but holistic training. And with keeping an eye to the fact that there's an opportunity to get real access to corporate experience, business experience, and then coaching and advancement that is gonna help you to land that job. So what might that look like? So you enroll in that program?

So on day one you show up and the first thing that you get exposed to is "there's not just metaking this program" and "I'm not just gonna be alone on my computer in my room or in a classroom at that institution, I'm going to go to." But step one is to create a skills profile and I'm part of a community that is on this learning journey together. So it's not just me alone. I actually join a cohort of people who are there to learn and learn and grow together. And I'm filling out a skill profile so that we start to get a picture of who you are, what skills you bring to the table, what experiences you have as a foundation to get you started.

Then we step into the education piece, this first step in our flywheel. So this is a hypothetical example. But we step into that first stage. Let's say I'm taking a tech sales foundations program. I'd like to learn the basic skills. I've heard about business developmentor I've heard about sales. And I'm interested to learn more about that program, learn more about what I would need to do to enter that part of the workforce. So, in our hypothetical, one of many examples, because no two people are the same, this individual is joining that course. And let's call it a two month program where they're going to participate in that learning. They're gonna show up for their online programming courses with their cohort. It's hard to build those foundational skills.

That's step one in their journey. But typically, that would be the end and I paid my money and now it's up to me to go and find my job or find that opportunity and find the next experience. What we're proposing here and how this model starts to become powerful is it goes from OK, I've done my initial learning, but now the experience continues. There's more that I get to do here. My journey isn't done. We've just completed one part of this cycle.

Let's go to step two, the experience component where now I have a work-integrated learning experience where I have workshops that I'm participating in with my cohort or in the community, and look something like this. Where over the course of those months in a program, every week or month, three months, five months, seven, I'm integrating learning with the actual experience, aligned to the job that I want to go out and get. Dana, these experiences: You talked about the $1, 400 stipend. How do you see these different experiences getting woven into an individual's experience over the course of that year?

Dana Stephenson:
And what I love about this is, we started the top of this conversation talking about how the University of Waterloo has pioneered models like co-op. What I love about this model is you're bringing—co-op is not necessarily the right fit for the short-cycle training programs. Obviously, for the same reason we mentioned earlier, but project-based offers a really unique opportunity. You can come and get your education training, go off, do a work-integrated learning experience. Take the learning from the education and training, apply that in a real world setting. Learn from it, fail, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, bring that back into the classroom, get another module, build off of your original learning, build on—scaffold—more skills and then go take another experience and rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, that process several times alongside a community while being coached.

This really is the recipe and of course — thank you for that, as we mentioned earlier, it's not all about the money, butearning alongside which for many individuals removes an opportunity cost that increases access, so that individuals can actually participate in these programs because they know that they'll be earning alongside it, when they forgo forgo something else in their lives.

00: 50: 00

Greg Boyd:
Yeah, I wanted to call that out because I think it is about removing that barrier, about removing, as you said earlier, the opportunity cost, there's going to be, you know, an out of pocket cost of some form for this program. But if I can earn that back, a portion or even the whole amount, and actually have this be a netpositive for me, how does that open up access and open up opportunities for individuals to participate? We believe strongly that this is a huge way to remove that obstacle and barrier.

And those experiences, as you mentioned, get intermingled across the experience. It's up to five in a year. So it's not justone, but it's the one you come back to and you can learn again. And this is where then the cycle is still not over yet. The cycle continues, after I've had that experience component where I've engaged in work-integrated learning experience, nowI come back to the community. I'm getting support from a coach. I have a curriculum directed at me that can help me translate the skills that I developed. The experience that I just had, the validationI have from an employer.

What I've proven I can do, I can put that on my resume and I can get somebody to support me and how I do that. And just illustrated as a potential, right, at month four, I'm starting my job search for some, they might start this sooner. But for some, let's just say it's about month four that I'm starting that search. It's not once and done. I'm doing that work. I'm investing in that job search and I'm getting more experience along the way and continuing to build my profile out until I get to a place where I actually receive that offer. Now that I have an offer in hand for this new industry that I'm trying to approach for this new role that I'm trying to get into. I get feedback on the job offer. Is it a good job offer? Should I negotiate? Should I not? These are key skills and key supports. They can help close that gap and bring somebody in a full circle to step into and participate in that workforce in a really meaningful way. What we're proposing in this hypothetical example, but very real potential opportunity, is you complete this year of programming and you've earned a professional certificate"practical sales development" from a industry-specialized training provider and a certificate of some form from higher education that provides that credibility to the individual.

If you participate in those five experiences. As you talked about Dana, you can earn $7,000 from that experience. Earn cash along the way to help support and offset the cost of the program, the opportunity cost or the real cost to participate. I can articulate through the development that I've received, what those experiences really mean. And thenI've worked with a coach. I built a network among my peers in this cohort that I'm participating in and I'm part of a community and can continue to receive support.

As I enter into this new chapter in my career, it's a holistic way to approach workforce development that involves higher education, does what highereducation does in the context of a four year degree or in a two-year program, or a four-month program. But we can extend that to the entire workforce. Everything is pretty neat.

Dana Stephenson:
I really want to just highlight the coaching side of it, the community and the coaching side of it. I mean, with our Level Up Program, as you know, we've done over 24,000 of these experiences, and the results are phenomenal you know, with 74% of the students coming from equity-deserving groups, which is a huge focus of the program, reaching students, in this particular case, earlier on their education pathway.

So where they have very little experience, we're still seeing over 75% of learners report getting one or more job offers after completing the project. 46% of those participants are getting the job offer directly from the company they did the project with and those are companies who are participating, thousands of them. Over 96% of the employers are now saying that they're gonna continue to use this as the new first step in the recruiting process.

This is a new model that's lightbulb moments for so many involved, but over and over and over again, especially for those who don't get employment right away. But, even those who do, what we constantly hear is, you know, this is an amazing experience. I wanna share this with my community. I'm learning so much. I want to share this with others. Others could benefit from what I'm gaining. Obviously, you know, I'm getting mentorship from my employer, supervision from my employer, butwho's coaching me on how to deal with my employer, who's coaching me on how to turn this project into a job? And so, that's why I'm so excited by this combination.

01: 00: 00

Greg Boyd:
I think it's not one and done. It's a holistic way to approach to ensure that the benefit of that learning is applied. Dana, I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate too, that this is how some people might have felt coming into the conversation. I'm still smiling. I feel like it. We get to talk and we get to just get excited about the concept. We hope that as we've been through the conversation that you're getting excited too. But the idea— and I just wanted to offer some closing thoughts, because as we said, at the end of this hour, it's this opportunity to take action. We have the opportunity now to put these programs into place. We're working with higher education institutions and partners today who are expressing interest in this approach. We're working and speaking with funders who have said we're really interested in making investments in this.

And so if you've heard something today, that is of interest to you, we'd love to hear that from you. Andso we'd invite a conversation. We'll be following up with you after the, the conversation today to hear how this resonates for your audience, for your institution, how this might be something that you specifically want to get invested in or to get involved in. As I mentioned, we have some funders, I believe who are here with us on the call today. And We're thrilled to have you here to listen in the conversation, to see the enthusiasm and the excitement that we bring, and what we're hearing from the market about this opportunity. And we're working toward having funding come in to make this sort of joint participant, something we can jointly participate in together. We have ourselves, Uvaro, and Riipen ready as delivery experts to execute on this program in collaboration with our higher education partners.

But for all of you who are here today in higher education roles, in Continuing Ed, in the Continuing Education Departments, we're looking to get your involvement as well. So we have been talking about this in small groups. This is our first time broadcasting this idea of this message publicly. But we are keen to understand who would like to continue this conversation. So as we reach out, we'd love you to raise your hand and say this is something we'd like to learn more about. We'd like to participate in, whether it opens the door for 50, 100, 200 people to join a program, pay for a program, become part of your target market, and to receive the benefit of this workforce development approach, we think it's a fast track to launch new programming to solve some of those immediate challenges that are there and in front of us right now. So we'd invite you to raise your hand publicly. We'd invite you to speak to us when we follow up with you to let us know how you'd like to participate because we're moving forward on it and we have a number of institutions who have expressed interest. We'd love to have you be part of the conversation as well.

So as the next step, we would look to have you join the waitlist and get us started. What we've always said, we can't do this alone. This is a collaborative approach, us and our partners and friends at Riipen. Dana, I would love, just some closing thoughts as we like to bring things to a conclusion today.

Dana Stephenson:
Well, I think just to point out here that it's an interesting time, things are evolving very quickly. I think there's an interesting question here about however our projects might evolve from disruption from AI. We are already seeing that it's the benefit of it. It's such a flexible model. The flexible approach is really keyhere in this model. But what we're really creating here is trying to create a win/win/win/win: Win for funding body, win for audience, win for delivery expert, but also a win/win in the sense that it's a win for the participants, it's also the win for the employers. That's a big thing that's really important for the funding bodies out there, is that we can create these programs and the skills that are being trained, or actually apply to help businesses grow, to help businesses innovate, to help businesses transform, become more productive, more efficient to continue contributing to our economy and creating jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist, and having the talent to fill those jobs, then there's more funding available to keep the funding and investing in these programs. So, that's what gets us up, keeps us up at night and keeps us super excited thinking about new ideas for these programs and, I would love to explore what that could look like with any of you on this phone.

Greg Boyd:
Thank you, Dana. I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate today, but every day that we've worked together and had the conversations with you and your whole team, as I said, at the start, it's been a delight to get to know you and your organization personally and professionally. So I'm looking forward to working with you to keep this conversation going with the many partners who joined us in the call today, and replicating this in smaller formats and multiple conversations that follow. So thank you, Dana foryour involvement in putting this together.

Dana Stephenson:
Absolutely. Thank you and the entire ALvaro team. It's a ton of fun and thank you to everyone who's come to listen to us today. Looking forward to connecting and hopefully we'll see you very soon.

Greg Boyd:
Awesome. Thanks so much, everyone, that's it for today. We appreciate you joining us. We Will continue this conversation with a follow up that will be sent to you and you can expect to hear from us over the course of the next 48 hours to get your feedback. And our intention is to have you involved in a number of these conversations. So thank you for being here today and we'll talk to you soon.

Dana Stephenson:
Thanks, everyone.

Back to top ⇪