Experiences are hosted by educators seeking to have their learners collaborate with employers on real problems or areas of opportunity for their company. Once a proposed experience is approved 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 objectives and your learner's capabilities
Customize the exact ways you want your experience and the projects within it to run
General
Experience creation
To host an experience on Riipen, you must first submit an experience proposal. Your proposal will be reviewed by our team, and once approved, a draft experience will be created for you to review, edit, and manage on Riipen.
Experiences are generated from your course or program description, and can be refined from scratch or based on past experiences. Each experience is made up of several key components, including:
Details - your experience name and description, combining your goals and the types of projects you are looking for.
Tags & meta data - Categories related to your experience, the skills learners will need or develop while completing the project, 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.
Generated experiences
Educators can easily generate draft experience by entering a quick summary of their course, learners, or program when creating a new experience. Below are some examples of summaries which can be used to generate great experiences:
An introductory course for cyber security students.
A 3rd year course focused on marketing strategy skills such as consumer insights, brand management, and market analysis.
A co-curricular program for learners in humanities and social sciences to apply their transferable skills to a project provided by a non-profit or social enterprise.
Upon submission, your summary will translated into a full experience. This process considers your course / program and any information you provide about subject matter, learning objectives, or skills.
How to
Propose an experience
To propose an experience:
Click the "My experiences" tab in the main navigation.
Click the "Propose experience" button.
Answer a few questions about your proposed experience in the form.
You will be notified if your experience proposal is approved, or if the team has questions or feedback
If approved, you will be invited to a draft experience and will be able to configure your experience details.
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 needs 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 requests 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.