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Rize Education, a Manhattan-based firm specializing in providing high-growth major and minor offerings to students at colleges throughout the United States, is currently spearheading a reformation in educational innovation. Collaborating to form skill-based curriculums with subject experts from top universities and hiring managers at multi-billion dollar firms like Google and Unity, Rize has developed classes that not only serve the professional interests of students but also make the experience of learning an engaging, enriching experience.
Although examinations have been used in the past to evaluate students in university courses, many hiring managers have criticized an over-emphasis on testing for failing to prepare students for the kinds of challenges they are likely to face in the workplace. Furthermore, especially in light of changes to the structure of many jobs after the COVID pandemic, employers are increasingly interested in ensuring that new hires are capable of doing remote work in an online, collaborative environment. Rize courses, therefore, deemphasize examinations as a means of assessment and instead prioritize collaborative group projects akin to what students will work on when they eventually join the workforce. These projects, in addition to helping students foster social ties among classmates, double as valuable credentials for use in resumes and professional portfolios.
To further promote student engagement, Rize courses use a flipped classroom method of instruction whereby learning takes place in the student’s personal time and problem sets are worked through with the collaboration of peers and instructors during class time. This innovative, research-informed approach to learning has been unanimously endorsed by Rize students and instructors alike for its ability to foster a mindset of practical problem solving. Moreover, recognizing the varying needs and unique learning styles of individual learners, students enrolled in Rize classes have the option to take classes either synchronously or asynchronously depending on their preference. This flexibility has been very favorably rated by students in post course completion surveys, and ensures an engaged, self-accountable approach to subject mastery.
While the COVID pandemic certainly shone a light on the need for implementing best practices for the creation of online courses (as opposed to just taking the traditional lecture model and doing it online), it also showed that those best practices can lead to online courses that are every bit as fun, engaging, and academically productive as traditional, in-person courses. Rize has already taken great strides to becoming the gold standard in terms of implementing these best practices, with over 75% of students confirming that their experience with Rize-enabled courses was as good as or better than their traditional, in-person classes. Even with those early positive results, Rize is committed to continuing to innovate and improve upon best practices in online course delivery in order to help reduce the cost and increase the accessibility of high quality curricula to students everywhere.
