Pathstream Digital Skills Certificates

Adults in low skills jobs today have few options to enter the modern economy other than pursuing lengthy degrees or expensive alternative education programs. Pathstream creates curriculum that allows these students to learn a new skill like data analytics or digital marketing in 3-6 months. Our programs are developed with leading technology companies so that they are industry-relevant and implemented with higher education institutions so students can earn credit for these certificates that count towards degrees. Our curriculum is hosted on our custom platform that integrates directly with college learning management systems and features lab environments where learners can practice using new software in a step-by-step way. Students complete project-based assignments aligned with real job tasks so that they emerge ready for employment. Our programs are fully online, require a commitment of only 10-15 hours per week, and are fully asynchronous to fit the lifestyle of working adults.

The supply of digitally skilled workers is not meeting demand in the U.S., and workers have few options to upskill. Eighty two percent of middle skills jobs are now digitally intensive (source: Burning Glass), and estimates show 30% of the workforce may need to learn new skills and find new work by 2030. This is a result of automation and advanced technology, the changing higher education landscape, and hiring managers’ difficulty to recognize signals that would indicate someone is prepared for a job. Most employers agree that it is difficult to find workers with the right skills today (one estimate by WSJ says 89%).

To gain critical skills, adults are often forced to choose between lengthy and expensive degree programs that do not directly prepare them for jobs or alternative programs like bootcamps or apprenticeships. At Pathstream, we believe partnering with accredited higher education institutions and technology companies to offer affordable certificates can help us provide learners with the best of both worlds. Our programs are industry-relevant and delivered through community colleges and online four-year universities to ensure they are accessible to students outside of major cities and are financial-aid eligible and offered for-credit for those who need it.

We are serving a wide range of adults who need to reskill or upskill to have successful careers. Our current students range from a single father pursuing a new career at a community college in New Mexico to a woman in northern California looking to reenter the workforce after ten years of caregiving responsibilities. Pathstream has conducted extensive user research with potential, past, and current students to understand their goals and what type of learning experience would best address their needs. We solicit feedback from both students and instructors on our curriculum to understand if it helped them achieve their goals, and track performance and outcomes.

Our solution addresses their needs by offering an effective, fast, and affordable path to growing career areas in today’s economy. In 3-6 months, learners gain practical skills, build a portfolio of work to showcase to future employers, and earn a Certificate of Completion branded with a college or university partner and a leading technology company. Our programs are flexible to fit the schedule of working adults and parents, are accessible to learners with no prior digital skills, and are available in different formats with different partners to serve a range of learners.

Pathstream has built five certificate programs that consist of between three to six college-level courses. Our programs are built in a proprietary online learning environment that utilizes active learning, student/instructor interaction, and embedded labs so students can practice technical skills in the platform itself. Our application integrates directly with a college’s learning management system and we offer 24/7 help desk support.

Our curriculum includes text, video, external resources, practice labs, and graded projects. Through our application we are able to track student performance, measure time spent in platform, collect student feedback, and troubleshoot technical needs.

The Pathstream team includes over 15 learning designers who build our programs from start to finish in partnership with industry experts. Learning outcomes and curriculum are determined through backwards design from a job-task analysis to ensure relevance to students’ career goals and are co-developed with our technology partners and with subject matter experts who have experience in the careers we prepare students for. 

Our programs are piloted with select colleges to collect extensive feedback before launching with multiple higher education partners. Many of these partners have elected to take the curriculum provided by Pathstream through the the full accreditation review process (internal governance and regional accreditor approval) so Pathstream courses can be financial aid eligible and for-credit at these accredited Higher Education institutions.

We have served over 1,500 students so far, and our solution has proven to give adults the practical skills they need to reskill or upskill for better career outcomes. In 2020, Pathstream will focus on piloting opportunities to help our students find jobs through partnerships with job boards and staffing agencies in addition to building more programs and securing more partnerships.

Our programs and corresponding job titles are as follows:

1. Facebook Digital Marketing Certificate: Digital Marketer, Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Marketer, Marketing Analyst

2. Tableau Business and Data Analytics Certificate: Business Analyst, Data Analyst

3. CRM Essentials Certificate: Salesforce Administrator, CRM Administrator

4. Unity VR/AR 3D Design Certificate: 3D Designer, Computer Aided Designer, 3D Animator

5. Asana Project Management Certificate: Project Manager, Project Coordinator, IT Project Manager

Our solution is innovative for its learning design, its platform, and its partnerships. Our curriculum is designed to be a best-in-class learning experience for adult learners who require flexibility and real-time practice and who may not have prior higher education experience or exposure to digital skills. Many of our college partners do not have the resources to continuously update their own curricula to keep it relevant as technology evolves; by partnering with Pathstream some of them have seen significant upticks in enrollment numbers in their workforce education programs. Adjunct faculty who teach courses at community colleges and are often strapped for resources and time tell us they feel much more equipped to deliver relevant learning experiences thanks to the curriculum Pathstream provides.

Furthermore, our learning platform integrates directly with college learning management systems and allows students to practice their skills through embedded labs that integrate the software we’re teaching. This seamless integration with a college’s existing systems is rare, but critical to successful partnership with higher ed. The majority of established online course providers do not integrate directly with college systems and many faculty members and higher education leaders tell us that we are filling a critical gap in the market. Our partnerships give our certificates credibility that students can use to stand out in a pool of applicants. This combination addresses the unmet problem of giving adults the opportunity to reskill or upskill in a way that is efficient, effective, and practical.

Pathstream creates quality curriculum in partnership with leading technology companies. This curriculum is then delivered by higher education partners including community colleges and four-year online universities where it can be broadly accessed by learners across the country. The curriculum integrates with the existing learning management systems of colleges and universities to ensure seamless integration and delivery. Trained faculty deliver the certificate programs to ensure that students master necessary skills and receive feedback on their assignments as they progress through the courses. Students who successfully complete the certificate programs can opt into Career Services offered by Pathstream to be connected with staffing agencies, job boards, and hiring managers to help them successfully interview for and land a job that utilizes their newly acquired digital skills. We anticipate that candidates who successfully complete Pathstream certificates will be better able to obtain jobs in a related field, achieve economic mobility, and maintain relevance in the modern economy.

In the two years since Pathstream has started, we have served over 1,500 students. In one year we anticipate serving 7,000 students.

We hope to expand the number of students using Pathstream and continue to establish partnerships to reliably connect them to job opportunities in the next year.

We need to build out the capabilities and partnerships to continue to increase the number of students using Pathstream. We also need to scalably connect students to job opportunities so that the value of our credentials is reinforced in the market. 

We are continuing to innovate on our technological capabilities and are forging initial partnerships with key intermediaries in the job market including staffing agencies and job boards. This will ensure that our distributed network of students have access to partners who can provide onramps to jobs.  

Our curriculum is delivered through higher education partners based in the United States.

We have 44 full-time employees and 5 part-time employees.

Our team includes educators, people who have pursued alternative education paths, higher education professionals, business professionals, and more. With a diverse set of backgrounds and skills, we’re able to tackle problems effectively and understand each stakeholder’s needs. A significant portion of the learning designers creating the curriculum have been students at community colleges or pursued alternative education pathways themselves and so are uniquely positioned to understand the needs of some of our target learners.

We currently partners with five technology partners - Facebook, Tableau, Salesforce, Asana, and Unity. These partners have sponsored our curriculum development and given us access to their platforms so we can teach related skills to students.

We are partnered with over 20 colleges and universities around the U.S. where we offer our programs fully online or in a hybrid model. 

We are additionally pursuing partnerships with job boards, staffing agencies, and skills assessors to understand how best to help our students with job placement.

Pathstream offers services to a variety of partners in the digital skills ecosystem, and our business model varies by institution and the services provided.

Pathstream is rapidly expanding the number of distribution partners we work with. We recently initiated partnerships with online four-year universities and anticipate expanding to reach frontline workers who need digital skills training by mid-2020. Our rapidly growing user base will help us generate the revenue necessary to achieving financial sustainability. Additionally, we have signed new tech partners who are sponsoring training and apprenticeship programs for learners.

We are applying to the Digital Workforce Challenge to help build momentum as we seek to scale - we would greatly benefit from opportunities to generate media, pursue additional partnerships, and learn how others are successfully helping their students find new jobs.

We would like to partner with additional technology partners to sponsor the development of additional programs, with higher education institutions to increase our number of delivery partners, and with partners that will assist us in our job placement strategy.