The Online Workforce College (OWC), a collaborative project of Jones College and the Mississippi Community College Board, offers more than 700 courses within 14 different fields of study. The goal? The post-secondary school aims to improve the quality of life for students, empower businesses, and support the community with an open admissions policy. The result draws 4,000 new students every year.
OWC promises to deliver valuable workforce and economic development resources to benefit its community with better accessibility and credible micro-credentials. The school’s commitment to providing innovative solutions for students and staff creates an atmosphere of enhanced talent and inspiration.
The OWC program helps graduates recognize and embrace the value of engaged learning, community service, entrepreneurship, and a strong work ethic. Taking a new approach to their two-year degree and certification online programs, Jones College began the OWC program to offer more value through micro-credentialing and micropathways—enabling a direct track to better wages and jobs in less time
The college’s online program provides students the chance to continue, or start, their learning journey remotely while earning full credentials that would otherwise be inaccessible.
Accessible digital credentialing
The driving force behind the Online Workforce College is the desire to reach underserved communities in Mississippi. To better serve these learners, administrators needed to find a digital credentialing solution that was accessible, trackable, and credible for job-specific training. The solution needed to give students clear, comprehensive, and visual pathways to help them earn micro-credentials, certifications, and degrees.
Additional requirements included the ability to integrate with the learning management system, Parchment, and the customer relationship management system, Salesforce, in order to host the 700+ courses, with topics ranging from career building and quality control to technical skills, health, and safety.
In our technological world, a web-enabled credentialing ecosystem makes sense. OWC wanted to ensure the selected platform was secure, robust, and aligned with students’ expectations and needs. It would achieve scaling requirements with an easily customizable interface and capabilities of awarding verifiable open badges. The platform also needed to have robust APIs that could adjust based on need and interest.
Parchment Digital Badges’ visualized pathways make it easy for learners, college faculty members, and employers to track students’ progress toward earning microcredentials, certifications, and degrees. It was this unique component that pushed Jones College to select Parchment Digital Badges for its digital credentialing platform.
The Parchment Digital Badges and Online Workforce College partnership solution
As soon as OWC launched its Parchment Digital Badgessupported, online micro-credentialing courses, students reported that the digital credentials they earned held verifiable value. The visual pathways clearly showed the steps they’d completed on their learning journey, the micro-credentials they had yet to earn, and where that journey was taking them. Students found the pathways made sense and provided options for how they wanted their professional future to look.
A true partnership quickly developed as Instructure responded to OWC’s feedback, adjusting the platform to meet administrators’ needs, and troubleshooting any roadblocks that popped up along the way
To ensure OWC program administrators could hit the ground running, the Parchment Digital Badges team provided comprehensive education and training, which included both technical training on the platform’s features and functionality, and program-specific consultation on the design of badges and pathways.
The Online Workforce College was able to map out courses ahead of time and easily plug them into the Parchment Digital Badges system during setup. Because of the seamless integration within Parchment, students and staff are able to communicate and track their progress throughout courses. With Parchment Digital Badges’ analytics, staff is able to track where students drop off from a pathway or shift to other pathways that are of more interest. The flexible structure of courses and pathways across the OWC means students can explore until they find the skills and competencies that are of the most interest to them.
The majority of the OWC online learning community was introduced to Parchment Digital Badges through their freshman orientation. The college communicated that one course would earn students one micro-credential and each digital credential they earned brought them one step closer to their certification.
Thanks to clear communication and certifications, students can feel more confident that the micro-credentials they earn are valid and backed by an accredited institution.
The impact of a clear learning environment
Setting students up for success is every educator’s goal. Recent research highlight the growing importance of student success. For the Jones College and OWC team, helping people out of poverty is their number one priority and “the only metric that matters.” Therefore, the impact of working with Parchment Digital Badges stretched beyond analytics.
Uniting the online learning platform and digital credentials all under one customer relationship management (CRM) system opened the digital doors to anyone with a phone or computer who wanted to learn.
Jones College administrators were thrilled they could see data that was otherwise not easy to digest, such as how micro-credentials were being issued and what purpose they were serving. The analytics also shed light on how students progress through their pathways and what classes they choose to take next. These metrics help administrators decide what courses to add to support the paths students are most engaged with.
Feedback from both employers and students reflects how easily accessible certifications are after a digital credential has been earned. The badges can be retrieved at any time by pulling them up on a mobile device, adding them to a resume, or sharing on a LinkedIn profile—making use of badges easier for the learner, employer, and college.
Because of the accreditation of Jones College online courses, digital credentials are widely accepted by employers. Parchment Digital Badges empowers students to own their education. No longer will students need to call their education institution to get a copy of their coursework. Parchment Digital Badges’ verifiable digital credentials can be easily accessed anywhere, at any time.
As a result of the success of the program, OWC is able to partner with employers to help graduates earn jobs they wouldn’t qualify for without a certification.
OWC not only attracts students who would not typically take advantage of formal postsecondary education, but it also expands delivery options to meet those students where they are. For example, OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 training is available through OWC remotely, so employers can ensure their employees have the training they need without incurring travel expenses. OWC even lets employers bring required courses in-house.
As Jones College and OWC continue work within the Parchment platform, the staff is steadfast in its mission to expand course selection based on interest and connect with learners who want to change their lives through the power of education.
Help learners reach their full credential.
