Viridis Learning Challenge: New Approaches to Improve Employment Outcomes from Career and Technical Education

Career and technical education (CTE) is a term used to describe schools, institutions, and programs that specialize in the applied sciences, modern technologies, skilled trades, and career preparation. Also known as vocational education programs, students are offered opportunities to gain work experience and job-specific skills while also taking traditional academic courses. CTE is just one of many pathways to success, yet employers are still finding it difficult to identify qualified individuals to hire. Viridis Learning believes that stakeholders must be brought together to share data and automate recruitment of candidates each with verified (or verifiable) knowledge, skills, and ability. Thus, they seek new approaches and insights to better address the nation’s skills gap. 

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

The United States has the best education system in the world, but there is universal agreement that it is failing far too many. Students – whether they have successfully matriculated or not – are unable to find work and pay down debt. Despite a record number of young adults pursuing and obtaining postsecondary credentials, employers encounter continued difficulty identifying, hiring, and retaining candidates with skills sufficient to fill vacancies and successfully perform. Federal, state, and local governments, which fund education, are not seeing commensurate improvements in the form of improved tax bases and decreased use of social services. The resulting skills gap represents a key challenge to a thriving American economy. Viridis Learning seeks new approaches and insights to better address the nation’s skills gap and more effectively connect school-to-work so that all learners may most effectively participate in, and benefit from, the American economy. 

This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following unique features:

• There is a guaranteed award.  The award(s) will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $10,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $2,000. 
• The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker.  Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solver grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal, including for promotional purposes.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on April 24, 2017. 

Late submissions will not be considered. 

After the Challenge deadline, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers that submit a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided. 

ABOUT THE SEEKER

Viridis Learning is a cloud-based, SaaS technology company with a platform that integrates with existing student information systems, government databases and labor market information to connect students to employers. The goal is to identify how we can get better at directing learners to pathways which have currency in today’s market, to use technology to more effectively connect them directly to opportunity, and measure the economic impact of that educational investment. 

With the Viridis platform, colleges can create and assess student pathways with the highest precision, leading to a better understanding of their own institutional needs and the needs of their students. Viridis then uses data analytics to match students’ career aspirations and skill sets with employer demand, a data-driven process which represents the future of human capital acquisition and development. To learn more, visit http://www.viridislearning.com/.