The Education Design Lab designs, tests, and launches and scales new models for higher education, explains Kathleen deLaski, founder and CEO of Education Design Lab. She notes that over the years, the Education Design Lab is shifting some focus onto lifelong learning for people, deLaski describes as “new majority learners, which is basically everyone for whom college was not originally designed.”
The organization is launching a three-year project called XCredit with the goal of giving value, similar to credentials, based on a person’s lived experience.
deLaski explains, “XCredit is short for experience credit, which means how can a worker, or a learner, or a single mom, or someone who has lived experience or work experience, but no degree, get credit for that? And we don’t mean college credit. We mean, how can that count as experience and competency when an employer is considering hiring them?”
Initially, the project will focus on people who have military experience. “We’re working with a partner that is already doing competency translation for military. And we’re working with four or five, at first, employers who military would transition to and trying to set up this translation currency,” says deLaski.
Measuring 21st century skills is being evaluated first, says deLaski. “XCredit is going to offer a way for people to immediately get validated in their creative problem solving or critical thinking skills. Doing a proving ground simulation that companies and employers have helped us design. So, we’re hoping that we can make them universal enough that they’ll be transferable across many fields.”
Click here to learn more about Education Design Lab.
WorkingNation—a collaborating partner of the ASU+GSV Summit—sat down with deLaski in San Diego as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard social media series.
Hear from more innovators in education and tech in the public, private, and nonprofit spheres attending the ASU+GSV Summit 2021 here.
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Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.
Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.
Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.
Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.
Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.
Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.
