Experiential learning in 2024: Accomplishments, reflections, and trends.

As 2024 draws to a close, we’d like to thank our partners for an amazing year. Working together, we’ve empowered over 242,000 learners to date with practical experiences and knowledge that will help them find meaningful and successful careers, facilitated matches so that 41,000+ employers could complete essential projects and build their talent pipelines, and collaborated with more than 680 higher education institutions and training organizations to better prepare their students to accomplish their personal and professional goals.  

It’s been a privilege to work with such dedicated stakeholders across the workforce development ecosystem to expand and enhance experiential learning programs. Looking back on what we’ve collectively accomplished and the numerous discussions we’ve had with thought leaders, workforce development experts, and education leaders throughout the year, we’ve seen six trends emerge that we believe will continue into 2025. Below, we’ll share trend details and insights into how Riipen is addressing them.   

Skills-based hiring is on the rise. 

As more employers take a skills-based approach to hiring, it is becoming increasingly important for academic institutions to align with industries around the most in-demand skills and a standardized vocabulary. The challenge for educators is knowing where to turn to obtain this information and how to integrate it into an existing and already packed curriculum. 

To help institutions identify and incorporate these skills in the classroom and experiential learning programs, Riipen partnered with labor market analytics firm Lightcast to integrate 32,000 skills curated from real-world job postings and profiles into its work-integrated learning (WIL) platform. This enhancement will help educators focus on the skills that are in demand, create real-world projects that will give their students experience applying them, and make it easier for learners to translate their educational experiences to job requirements.  

Educators are considering how to best incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) skills into their curricula.

Every day, we hear reports of AI advancements or new applications that will transform the status quo. While the promise of AI has not yet been fully fulfilled, one thing is certain—it is here to stay. So, around the world, educators in every discipline are carefully considering how they can incorporate AI skills into their curriculum to prepare their students for jobs of the future and the ethical impacts the technology may introduce.  

Riipen has been integral to these conversations, joining thought leaders, experts, and educators at 36 industry conferences this year, including EdTech Week, First Work Futures, AI & Education: From Access to Impact Summit, and Complete College America. In addition, we are thrilled to be partnering with Complete College America to create the AI Readiness Consortium, a groundbreaking initiative to integrate AI education and work-based learning into higher education curricula.

Arts & Humanities programs are embracing experiential learning. 

It’s a common myth that work-based learning (WBL) programs are only for business and science majors. While students in these majors certainly benefit from WBL, leading Liberal Arts colleges and universities like the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) see tremendous value in incorporating experiential learning into their curricula. By connecting the skills they teach in the classroom to real-world challenges, their students gain critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills that enhance their professional lives and enrich their personal growth and interactions within their communities.

For example, students studying Spanish at The University of Memphis are using Riipen for an experiential learning project. They are translating content from English to Spanish for a healthcare organization, helping bridge the cultural and linguistic gap to provide critical information that could save lives. Not only are these learners gaining practical experience applying their language skills to a real-world project, but they are seeing first-hand the impact of their efforts on their community.  

Work-based learning benefits employers as well as learners. 

For students enrolling in college right after high school or taking college classes later in life to upskill or reskill, WBL programs provide real-world opportunities to practice their skills and gain valuable experience that will help with their careers. However, WBL programs also positively impact participating businesses and organizations, especially small businesses and non-profits. Employers gain access to skilled individuals to complete short-term projects and fill their talent pipeline. 

That’s why Riipen launched or expanded its partnerships with RBC Future Launch, Calgary Economic Development, Colorado Community College System, JVS Toronto, Lighthouse Labs, RoboGarden, Tech Talent Boost Washington, Washington Tech Workforce Coalition, and Upskill Canada (Connecting to Careers in Advanced Manufacturing, M2M Data Talent, AME UP, Information and Communications Technology Council, and ICT Ignite Cyber), and extended our relationship with the Government of Canada's Innovative Work-Integrated Learning (I-WIL) Initiatives program for the Level UP remote internship program. These initiatives will promote the benefits of WBL to regional employers, facilitating more matches that will benefit both organizations and learners.   

In 2024, we also partnered with 23 new higher education institutions, including International Business University, Monroe University of Business and Accounting, Providence College, Salem State University, and University of West Alabama, so their learners can benefit from WBL experiences. 

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to increase access to experiential learning are growing.  

The benefits of experiential learning are well known, yet countless learners don’t have access to high-quality opportunities. Many are “non-traditional students” juggling work, family, and school or from underserved communities who are unaware of the opportunities, can’t afford to take time off of work to participate, or are unable to spend time on-site working in offices or labs.  

Leading corporations and foundations are supporting WIL programs to help even the playing field and provide access to these valuable experiences for more learners. They include these Riipen partners: 

• The Truist Foundation awarded a grant to the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) to establish support and training for adult learners in the financial service industry, with a focus on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIOPC) communities. 
• Ascent (with support from DELL) facilitated connections between employers and learners to complete digital technology and business & marketing projects. 
• The Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) Future Launch program enabled 27,000 Canadian post-secondary students to participate in WIL experiences thus far. With its commitment to an additional 20,000 placements by 2026, RBC is dedicated to eliminating the “experience gap”. 

Riipen is committed to helping all learners benefit from experiential learning programs, as evidenced by our being named a finalist for the 2024 BC Tech Technology Impact Awards: “Gamechanger – Diversity & Inclusion” award,  and we are looking forward to continuing our partnership with these organizations and others to improve accessibility to WIL opportunities in 2025.

Institutions are leveraging technology to streamline WIL programs.

As busy college and university leaders balance competing priorities and operating budgets, more institutions are turning to education technology partners to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Here at Riipen, we made several platform enhancements in 2024 to streamline the process of launching and maintaining WIL programs for educators, including:

• AI-generated projects & experiences: This tool transforms basic prompts into complete project descriptions tailored to specific learning outcomes or business needs, simplifying the project creation process for employers and educators. 
• Project quality checker: This feature evaluates project drafts against key criteria such as alignment with learning objectives, clarity, and feasibility, guiding users to refine their submissions to ensure that only impactful, well-structured projects are published. 
• Search Upgrade: These enhanced, user-friendly search capabilities empower users to quickly find relevant projects, experiences, or resources by scanning the entire platform including titles, descriptions, tags, and more. 
• Resources: This improvement allows educators to upload and manage tailored materials (e.g., guides, templates, or support documents) for specific experiences or across the entire platform to ensure stakeholders have the tools they need to succeed. 

These platform enhancements are some of the reasons that Riipen was awarded the 2024 EdTech Award in the “Professional skills (workforce, upskilling) solution” category and the EdTech Breakthrough Award in the “Experiential Education Solution of the Year” category.

For a more comprehensive list of recent Riipen platform updates, please download our 2023 Annual Impact Report.

Looking ahead.

As we look ahead to the new year, Riipen stands ready to help our partners meet their goals. We are committed to your success and hope you will take advantage of our open library of resources, which includes several on-demand webinars on these trends that we recorded this year (e.g., “The future of education,”  “How to use labor market data to inform workforce-aligned experiential learning opportunities,” and “Academic Arts & Humanities”), as well as our blog series full of practical tips for launching and managing WIL programs. 

Be sure to pre-register for our 2024 Annual Impact Report to see the full impact of our activities, partnerships, and programs.

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