CCA seeks to attract a diverse cohort of member institutions to the AI Readiness Consortium. Selection priority will be given to institutions that serve (or seek to serve) students who have historically faced barriers to participating in traditional internships. This includes first-generation students, low-income students, students of color, and students who attend institutions in rural areas. Recognizing the critical role community colleges play in serving traditionally underserved learners, this program is open only to community colleges in the United States.

Community college applicants should name five faculty champions who will each revise one course each year of the pilot. These courses can be drawn from across either academic and professional fields, with the main consideration being if these courses are able to connect learners to career pathways and employers in that career pathway, and have some opportunity for AI-technology to enhance the experiential learning opportunity. In selecting courses and disciplines, applicants should also consider how these courses will serve the student populations who are most likely to face barriers to traditional internship experiences, particularly African-American students, Latina/o students, first-generation students, and students from lower-income households.

Employers on Riipen come from a variety of backgrounds, geographies, and sizes. They’re brought into the Riipen ecosystem from a variety of sources including events, digital ads, partner networks, chambers of commerce, direct outreach, referrals, and search engines. With nearly 30,000 small to mid-sized businesses and charities operating in 31 industries in the ecosystem, as well as familiar names like Deloitte, IMAX, there is a wide variety of employers and projects on the Riipen platform. Riipen is used at more than 400 colleges and universities, ranging in size and locations, state and private and community colleges.

As the Riipen platform integrates work-based learning projects into coursework, these projects are considered part of a student’s course credit and are not compensated. These projects are above all an educational experience for students, with faculty members and employers working together to design projects that help students develop workplace skills and to provide mentorship and network-building opportunities.

For the 5 institutions selected to participate in the AI Readiness Consortium, the Riipen platform will be made available at no cost for the five courses in the 2024-2025 & 2025-2026 academic years.

The grant-funded AI Readiness Consortium is limited to the five faculty champions at the 5 participating institutions, so these are the only courses that will be paid for by the grant or included in the consortium programming. However, institutions are welcome to pay for additional educators to use the Riipen platform and integrate these work-based learning projects into their courses on a case-by-case basis. Contact CCA and Riipen staff for further guidance. Riipen will share a pricing plan with selected institutions who wish to host additional faculty members on Riipen's platform.

Institutions are not required to commit to paying for the Riipen platform after the grant concludes. However, CCA requests that applicants think ahead beyond the grant-funded stage: if this program is a good fit for the institution, how would the expense be covered through the operating budget and/or fundraising.

Projects that students complete on the Riipen platform are vetted, and approved by their educator and curated for them to work on for course credit. Projects vary in scope and duration based on the type of program and how the educator wants to deliver the work-based learning experience in their course. Projects are typically completed in groups, and collaboration with employers is enabled through Riipen communication and collaboration tools. The number of hours required for students for each project is up to their educator, and ranges from 10 hours to 200 hours, however the average is around 40 hours per student over the course of an academic semester. Riipen project marketplace has a very diverse range of categories and types, however the most common include; marketing, strategic consulting, communications, data analytics, software development, website development, digital content strategy, cyber security, human resources, grant writing, and market research. Review live project scopes here.

The first phase of the pilot project will consist of developing AI competencies, which will include focus groups and working sessions, that convene either virtually or in-person, as well as labor market data analysis and AI-integration into institutional priorities. This work will be guided and supported by Complete College America. 

To start using Riipen and have a successful course experience, onboarding and training for first time users is approximately 5-6 hours in total. This would include creating the course page, utilizing the marketplace for projects and connecting with employers as part of the matching process. A huge part of course success is making sure that the relationship and expectations between the faculty and employer are well aligned. Committing to connecting with the employers introduced by Riipen should be considered as a part of that time commitment.

Faculty members will have an onboarding experience that is designed to support how to best utilize the Riipen platform and support their students. The journey starts with pre-onboarding where we gather early stage requirements from faculty such as course materials, employer partner preferences and their ideal timelines. Onboarding is done directly with their assigned Riipen Experience Consultant and walks them through the platform from getting signed up, setting up their course experience page, how to use the marketplace and how to get students into the platform. We’ll also walk through some hand selected employer projects to start the matchmaking process. After onboarding they will continue to work with their Experience Consultant if they need support with troubleshooting or how to use any Riipen features. In addition to this they’ll have 24/7 access to all of the Riipen training materials and guides available online.