Dear partners and innovators, 

The six colleges and systems in the first cohort of the Lab’s Community College Growth Engine Fund— CCGEF or the Fund, for short — are in pilots for their 30+ micro-pathways with adult learners as their key target audience.

Micro-pathways are two or more stackable credentials (including at least one 21st century skill) which are validated by employers and lead unemployed, displaced, and low-wage workers to median-wage occupations and on a path to a degree.

Marketing this new class of credentials has not been business as usual for the colleges’ marketing and communications departments.

“Our colleges and systems are utilizing a variety of marketing strategies. With micro-pathways being so new, we may not see the promise of some of these right away,” said Dr. Lisa Larson, head of the Community College Growth Engine Fund. “As a human-centered design organization, we realized that one of the best ways to determine optimal marketing strategies is to ask learners.”

To do that, the Lab hosted three, 45-minute virtual marketing feedback sessions open to learners who were completing coursework in their micro-pathways. There was geographic, occupational, gender, and racial diversity across learners engaged in the sessions.

Here's what we learned ...