Experiences are created by educators seeking to have their learners collaborate with employers on real problems or areas of opportunity for their company. Once an experience is created and published, it can then be matched with projects which are employer facilitated opportunities looking to have work completed by learners. Once appropriate projects meeting the criteria of the experience have been matches, learners are brought into the experience to complete them.
Find appropriate projects for your learners to complete matching your learning objects and your learner's capabilities
Customize the exact ways you want your experience and the projects within it to run
General
Details
Experiences are comprised of several key pieces of information including:
Details - your experience name and description, combining your goals and the types of projects you are looking for.
Tags & meta data - categories your experience is in, skills learners will need or develop while completing it, and more.
Learners - a description of your learners including their applicable program they are in, skill levels, and more.
Companies - the types of companies you are looking to obtain projects from.
Duplication
If an educator is re-running an experience or is running a similar experience to one they have already created and configured, duplicating an existing experience can save a lot of time and effort as all of the existing configuration will be copied over including:
Experience details (name, details, etc)
Custom matchmaking questions
Custom feedback questions
Surveys
How to
Create an experience from scratch
To create an experience from scratch:
Click "Experiences" in the "My Content" group in the main navigation.
Click the "Create Experience" button.
Select the "Create new" option.
You will be directed to a step-by-step process where you will fill in all the relevant details and publish your experience.
If you want to save a draft and come back to it later, click 'Save and continue' before exiting. This action will preserve your progress, allowing you to pick up where you left off when you return.
Duplicate an experience
To duplicate an experience:
Navigate to the experience
Click on the "Duplicate" icon in the top right.
Continue through the next steps to customize and update the experience details to match your new experience needs.
Only the experience content will be duplicated; matches, learners, member, or teams associated with your current experience will not be transferred to the duplicated experience.
Best practices
Remember the audience - The experience on Riipen describes to employers what learners are capable of, what you are hoping they get out of it, and what types of projects are best suited. Avoid using jargon or language that is geared towards academics or learners.
Focus on the benefits for employers - State clearly why companies could benefit from participating. Employers sign up for different reasons: to recruit learners, to create positive brand awareness, to gain insights about business challenges, etc. An experience should relay how this opportunity helps them meet those goals.
Include clear expectations for the employer or company - If the experience need companies to be able to provide certain types of internal data, to make a specific time commitment, or to fit certain parameters (size, type, etc.), make sure to include this information in the custom match request questions. This will help the experience review match request from appropriate projects.
Give specific project examples - Companies provide better projects if they are given concrete examples. Avoid being too general, providing detailed examples will give companies a better idea of learner capabilities, and attract higher quality projects.
Be open to working with different types of companies - If ideal projects are very narrowly defined, experiences may have trouble finding a match. Riipen recommends being open to companies of different sizes and types, and providing 3-5 different project examples that fit the experience subject area. Ultimately, it is important that the experience meets the learning outcomes for the learners, but this should be balanced with the need to attract projects from companies.