Guided pathways, 3.8% increase in year-over-year student retention

educationdive | July 30, 2019

At Pearl River Community College PRCC, Mississippi first and oldest two year academic institution, modernization is playing a key role in helping students reach successful outcomes. Committed to improving student success and spurred by a state mandate, PRCC has combined the latest in higher education technology and evidence-based curriculum reform in the form of guided pathways. In its effort to guide more of its students toward successful outcomes— from degree completion to transfer to updated skills leading to gainful employment—PRCC has streamlined its course offerings into eight plans of study, or “meta-majors.” That has helped narrow down the huge array of courses and majors that can be overwhelming and hard to navigate. There are so many students who don’t know what they want to do,” says Martha Lou Smith, vice president for general education and technology services at PRCC. “Too many of them are not ready to make those kinds of decisions. So instead of saying to them, ‘You have to pick a major right now,’ giving them the pathway option helps them realize, ‘Oh, there are a lot of things I might want to do.’” To help students stay on track, the college strengthened its advising and degree-planning processes—two critical elements of the guided pathways model. To transform those services, PRCC implemented Ellucian Degree Works™, an online degree-planning tool that integrates with the college’s Ellucian Banner® student information system (SIS).

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The B2B buyer journey has always been complex. And today, with the ever-changing demands of the modern industry buyer, it has become even more necessary to rethink the buyer journey, creating a future-ready digital experience

Spotlight

The B2B buyer journey has always been complex. And today, with the ever-changing demands of the modern industry buyer, it has become even more necessary to rethink the buyer journey, creating a future-ready digital experience

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Black-Owned Edtech Company Stemuli Announces Merger of Infinity.careers and Oppti, Founders Take on New Roles

PRnewswire | May 02, 2023

Today, Stemuli—a gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development—announced the merger of Infinity.careers and Oppti into Stemuli, with all companies focused on providing career navigation tools to empower students with the skills needed to thrive in the 21st century economy. Stemuli, led by Taylor Shead, Founder & CEO, is a Black and woman-owned company with a mission to provide a pathway to an intellectually and economically fulfilling career for all. Naomi Thomas, Founder of infinity.careers, will take on the role of Head of Digital for Stemuli, while Khiry Kemp, Co-founder of Oppti, will serve as Head of Operations. The company announced the merger was made possible because the three founders met in Jobs for the Future's (JFF) Entrepreneur in Residence incubator, led by JFFLabs, JFF's innovation lab, which brings together talented and driven entrepreneurs to collaborate and solve real-world problems. "Stemuli is a shining example of what can happen when we bring together and incubate talented and driven entrepreneurs to collaborate and catalyze new ways to support people facing systemic barriers to advancement," said Kristina Francis, executive director of JFFLabs, JFF's innovation lab. "We are thrilled to see the success of our program in action, and we look forward to seeing the impact this merger will have on the future of learning." According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, access to capital is a major barrier for black entrepreneurs. Despite making up over 13% of the US population, Black-owned businesses only receive less than 1% of venture capital. The merger of Infinity.careers and Oppti into Stemuli highlights the power of Black founders coming together in a way that hasn't been done before, and demonstrates their commitment to creating new opportunities in the edtech space. "This merger marks an important milestone for both black entrepreneurs and the edtech industry as a whole," said Taylor Shead, Founder and CEO of Stemuli. "We are excited to join forces and bring our collective expertise to create a company that truly empowers students and addresses the needs of the education system. We believe that education is the key to unlocking opportunities and driving social and economic mobility, and we are committed to making that a reality for students across the country." About Stemuli: Stemuli is a Black and woman-owned gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development.Stemuli is a Black and woman-owned gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development. Stemuli connects students to meaningful career development experiences and maintains a portfolio of students’ every achievement, certification, and development milestones to help them showcase the to the marketplace and land the job of their dreams.

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PowerSchool Introduces International Localization Framework to Support Growing Global Customer Base

Businesswire | March 28, 2023

PowerSchool the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced it is in later stage development of localization features for customers to use in their regions developed under PowerSchool’s proprietary international framework. The upcoming release enables out of box support for right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities in three of its Unified Operations solutions, including Unified Operations PowerSchool SIS, Unified Operations PowerSchool Enrollment Express, and Unified Operations PowerSchool Ecollect Forms, as well as its learning management system (LMS), PowerSchool Unified Classroom® Schoology Learning. “This international framework is critical for delivering our world-class solutions to our extensive and growing international customer base,” said Tony Kender, Chief Revenue Officer at PowerSchool. “PowerSchool will continue to prioritize providing our global customers with the tools they need to support their students and improve learning outcomes.” This framework supports localization of a user’s experience (such as right-to-left language support) to empower international educational institutions to deliver tailored instruction to the more than 50 million students in more than 90 countries PowerSchool serves. Additional toolkits will be made available to support localization for other regions and languages for the growing number of students, educators, and families using PowerSchool solutions to achieve their desired learning outcomes worldwide. In the near term, the right-to-left and Arabic language translation toolkit will empower more educators around the world with timesaving, centralized access to the tools they need to deliver tailored instruction, elevate data utilization, and foster family engagement. “As PowerSchool expands globally, including across the UAE, it is important for us to offer right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities,” said Robert Speed, Vice President International Sales at PowerSchool. “With more than 313 million people speaking Arabic around the world, these language supports ensure more educators, students, and families can benefit from the digital transformation of education.” The new language support provides users with multiple benefits including: • Helping educators, students, and families who read right-to-left interact and learn in a more familiar and accessible way. • Providing the opportunity for students to develop collaboration skills in their primary language. • Eliminating manual translation tasks for both educators and students, which can interfere with the learning process. • Ensuring educational institutions support equity and access to a larger proportion of their students and families. PowerSchool customers can also utilize the self-service Language Toolkit feature within PowerSchool SIS, Enrollment Express, and Ecollect Forms to load additional Arabic translations as well as other languages that can be leveraged by any partners across the globe to localize to their regional needs. For Schoology Learning users, PowerSchool directly provides right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities. The right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities will be fully available to PowerSchool customers in late 2023. About PowerSchool PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including over 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in over 90 countries.

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Anthology Launches the Education and Research Center's Actionable Research and Thought Leadership Hub for the Global Education Community

PRnewswire | March 24, 2023

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