SkillX

The traditional education system is failing society and doesn’t teach the practical knowledge that workers need to start new careers or advance their current careers. This has created a skills gap where high-skill jobs go unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants. Additionally, higher education isn’t a suitable option for workers to retrain into high-skill jobs due to the time and financial commitment required.

SkillX provides educational content, learning analytics, progress tracking, assignments, and live instructors for live, onsite, online, or blended learning to deliver outcome-driven experiences. With SkillX, organizations have full control and customization of their learning initiatives so they can manage and deliver employee onboarding, reskilling/upskilling programs, and other educational content. 

From content creation and delivery, to program management, tracking, and analytics, SkillX is a bespoke and all-inclusive learning solution that can retrain or upskill the millions of workers who are stuck in the digital economy.

As automation continues to codify tasks and jobs, the middle class is hollowing. Often, workers in middle-skill jobs will “fall” into low-skill jobs rather than gaining the needed skills for higher paying jobs. This is illustrated by the approximately 57 million people working in the gig economy in the USA alone. Meanwhile, Europe’s Digital Economy and Society Index estimates that 35% of European Union residents lack basic skills required for new jobs.

Those left behind in the skills gap are refugees of the digital economy. The issue will crest in five to ten years, when the ranks of digital economy refugees will comprise three distinct segments:

• College grads without STEM skills

• Employees displaced by AI 

• Employment sectors to be run entirely by AI 

This unfortunate, difficult scenario does not need to define our future. But technological development has redrawn the entire roadmap of global industry. What’s needed is a customizable and innovative platform that trains 21st century skill sets to provide economic mobility and meaningful employment.

We serve workers around the world who need to advance their skills, or learn new ones, so they can find better jobs. We’ve gained an understanding of the workers by working with their potential employers - governments, corporations, NGOs, and other organizations. By defining what skills the employer needs in their employees, we’re able to reverse engineer educational curriculum to create the desired outcomes.

With SkillX, workers are able to learn in-demand skills that will help them progress in their current company or find a new career entirely. Meanwhile, companies use SkillX to increase their talent pool to fill crucial job openings, increase employee retention, and lower the cost of recruitment.

SkillX is a cloud-based Learning Management System that can be whitelabelled or licensed by organizations for their learning initiatives. The platform is already used by organizations ranging from universities and governments to Fortune 100 companies, who utilize it to fully manage and deliver their onboarding, reskilling/upskilling programs, and other educational programs.  

SkillX is AI-enabled to provide unmatched insight and management options to Chief Learning Officers or other education-focused professionals. By using entrance exams and surveys, in tandem with machine learning algorithms, we utilize predictive analytics to identify top performers and/or learners who will need extra assistance before the program even starts. 

The machine learning capabilities can also identify where learners are struggling and what content we can improve. By creating heatmaps of time spent on each assignment/task, SkillX enables both a micro and macro view of a program’s success. Surveys and other feedback loops can easily be implemented to gauge participants’ satisfaction levels or suggestions for areas of improvement.

We continually update and iterate tools and technology on SkillX based on programmatic learnings and new technology offerings. Custom machine learning algorithms can be implemented to further boost the platform’s predictive analytics and learning science capabilities.

Current learning solutions on the market lack the all-inclusive feature set and flexibility of SkillX. Organizations are often stuck: they either have branded content they want to deliver, with no platform to use; or, they have a learning platform but lack robust content delivery and outcome analytics capabilities. This leads to organizations piecing their learning initiatives together from multiple vendors, which causes a disjointed experience for learners and administrators. 

SkillX can be adapted to any learning program due to its modular design and ease of use. Administrators, Chief Learning Officers, or other education professionals can host their branded content, or utilize the platform’s existing content to create custom and focused educational programs. Then, they can deliver all of their programs, manage operations, as well as track and analyze program outcomes all in one platform, regardless of the size or scope of their programs.  

We have invested 6 years and millions of dollars into the creation and refinement of SkillX. Years of iteration driven by market feedback has yielded a robust educational experience for our B2C students and our corporate partners. By integrating a learning management system, curriculum, analytics, and instruction into one platform, SkillX provides a seamless experience for both administrators and learners.

We expect our solution to address the problem due to our own customers’ results and feedback. Each of our customers’ needs are different and we’re able to customize the platform and curriculum to create tailor-made programs that reach, and exceed the organization’s goals.

An example Theory of Change model for upskilling/reskilling programs and employee onboarding is below, but the SkillX platform capabilities extend far beyond these two examples.

On the B2C side of our business, we’ve used SkillX to train more than 5,000 students to become software and web developers, regardless of their technical background. On the B2B side, we’ve trained thousands of workers in a variety of ways ranging from onboarding programs, registered apprenticeships, upskilling/reskilling programs, and more. 

Currently, more than 1,000 learners use SkillX on a daily basis. Within five years, we aim to train more than 100,000 workers and empower them to find meaningful and gainful employment.

We aim to grow our partnership network by 30% every year. Our partners and clients range from startups to Fortune 100 companies with tens-of-thousands of employees. By focusing on employers, we can deliver training programs to a large amount of workers while ensuring job placement or career advancement. 

A major goal is to create SkillX-driven registered apprenticeship programs with our B2B customers. The strongest benefit for apprenticeship programs is participants getting paid to learn a new trade without being saddled with excessive student debt repayment. Apprentices receive specialized, on-location instruction that colleges aren’t designed to provide. Having their skills verified and validated by an official program gives employees a huge advantage in the crowded job market.

The new apprenticeship model stands to increase diversity. Previously, apprenticeships were usually reserved for students in the four-year college system or who had easy access to transportation to and from the workplace. These stipulations excluded a wide range of candidates, especially in disadvantaged communities.

Our goal is to create modern apprenticeship programs for individuals with more varied backgrounds. This widened net will allow for more diverse candidates from underserved communities to participate and gain in-demand skills.

Apprenticeships fight an uphill battle for recognition in the U.S. Four-year colleges and universities remain the most “respectable” avenues for establishing a career, and many still consider higher education the only option. The U.S. labor force of the last half-century hasn’t been exposed to apprenticeship programs, instead witnessing the rise of usually unpaid internships.

Additionally, apprenticeship is still perceived as an option exclusively limited to blue-collar occupations. The top industries for apprentices in 2018 included construction (far and away the largest), public administration, manufacturing, transportation, the military and other services. While they’re all necessary, most of the apprenticeships in these industries aren’t focused on 21st century technology jobs.

By educating employers on the values and potential impacts of SkillX-driven apprenticeships, we increase the adoption rate of these programs. As more employers begin using SkillX to deliver their training and/or apprenticeship programs, the public perception of apprenticeship programs will shift and they will be viewed as viable avenues to start new careers. 

In the US, we work with many companies ranging from startups to publicly-traded organizations. 

For example, we partnered with the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership to develop and deliver Chicago Codes. Chicago Codes is an 11-week bootcamp program for underserved individuals on Chicago’s South Side. The program teaches web fundamentals, the full Python programming stack, and is intertwined with career preparation curriculum to produce job-ready graduates and fill the massive talent shortages within the local tech sector.

We also work with members of the Washington Technology Industry Association to deliver onboarding for new employees and reskilling for existing employees via SkillX. We build custom learning tracks inside the platform for each client, allowing the lesson plans to not only address the specific skill set development required, but also allows the client to seed the content with cultural aspects of their company. We’ve provided this training for a wide variety of WTIA members, many of whom are Fortune 100 companies. 

Additionally, we worked with Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) to design and produce a 6 month immersive learning experience. This program currently drives the acquisition of outcome based skills for its constituents and hiring partners. 

Furthermore, MeritAmerica licensed custom designed content and the SkillX platform to deliver cost effective training and reskilled to asynchronous learners to prepare them for a new career. Merit America provides a path to skilled careers for adults without Bachelor’s Degrees. Our programs are fast, flexible, and focused on what employers need most.

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Our team is a seasoned group of engineers, business development executives, learning scientists, marketers, teachers, and other education professionals.

We partner with private and public companies, governments, universities, and other organizations to deliver SkillX-driven learning initiatives.

For example, we recently launched a registered apprenticeship program in the city of Boise, Idaho for developers and software engineers. After receiving hands-on instruction and having their new skills evaluated, students’ resumes are sent to companies looking to take on apprentices. After an apprentice works for a company for a certain amount of time, the company typically ends up hiring the apprentice full time.

Additionally, we work with the country of Chile, which is facing a talent crisis. In order to develop the next generation of talent for the tech sector, the country created a country-wide training program. We worked with the Chilean government to develop the required curriculum, train local instructors, and customize SkillX to deliver the educational experience and retrain the local population.

We also work with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia via workforce development organizations including the Saudi Digital Academy and SITE. Similar to our work with the Chilean government, we have developed computer programming courses and delivered them to local residents via the SkillX platform

Our key customers are organizations in need of retraining and upskilling programs for their employees, those who need to effectively onboard new employees, and those who need to source specific talent for a given role. 

Our primary beneficiaries are both the employees and employers. The workers gain in-demand skills so they can pursue better careers, while the employers expand their talent pool, fill shortages, and lower the cost of recruitment and retention.

SkillX is already a financially sustainable business and used by organizations around the world to deliver their educational content. Revenue is generated through white-labeling and licensing the platform, employee placement fees, curriculum/content development, and program delivery.

We are applying for the Digital Workforce Challenge to evangelize registered apprenticeship programs and highlight the value SkillX can provide organizations. The exposure from the Live Pitch Event and potential media opportunities will help us educate employers on the benefits of apprenticeships and robust feature set of SkillX. Meanwhile, the financial reward will be used to increase our business development efforts and expand our company partnership network and clientbase.

We aim to partner with additional private and public companies, as well as universities, workforce development organizations, NGOs, governments, and more. Every type of company in nearly every industry is in need of upskilling/reskilling programs and smoother employee onboarding. This need will accelerate as automation, AI, and other emerging technologies begin to displace and replace human labor throughout the next decade and beyond.