Future of Work Game

The current U.S. education employment ecosystem fails to equitably include and value the knowledge, skills and experiences of marginalized populations. Fathom's team is developing a culturally responsive, career navigation and work-based learning game to complement learners and workers at any stage in their career continuum. Learners are guided through blended offline and online challenges, while exploring diverse career pathways, developing transferable skills, earning badges and building out portfolios to showcase tangible artifacts of learning, skills and work experiences. This, in turn, creates personalized metrics around learning/work outcomes which, with the learners' permission, can be securely shared with their teachers, counselors and case managers. This connects critical data feedback loops and improves personalized service delivery. At scale, this solution has the potential to bridge gaps in the school to workforce pipeline, fostering more flexible, open learning and career service delivery for the expansion of more equitable, inclusive on-ramps to high-quality careers.  

By failing to equitably serve and include all learners and earners, the current education employment ecosystem in the United States reinforces, rather than intervenes upon, existing socioeconomic disparities. This is exacerbated by a massively disjointed ecosystem in which agencies are siloed and education and trainings are misaligned. Furthermore, the front-line providers who are perhaps in the greatest position to intervene, are overburdened and under-resourced in their ability to delivery high quality outcomes for all stakeholders. Low-income and marginalized populations bear the burden of these systems failures across their lifespans, encountering constant contradictions in their experiences and outcomes with those proclaimed in the promises of education and full-labor participation in the U.S. This manifests in the 5 million young adults who are out of work at any given time in America, carrying a lifetime risk of lower earnings and limited economic mobility; in the growing number of low-income working students who struggle to balance their immediate financial and long-term career needs; in the underemployed recent college graduates who are permanently detoured from attaining high-quality career opportunities; and in the 9.8 million post-traditional learners and 45 million working poor in the United States whose learning, skills and experiences are under-utilized and under-valued. 

Fathom's team is developing an immersive work-based learning game incorporating interoperable learning records for learners, workers and career changers. By completing career readiness and navigation challenges aligned with open learning standards for skill competencies, learners are guided to build out their interoperable Learning Employment Records (LERs) stored on the blockchain while simultaneously being trained and empowered as self-sovereign agents of their own data. To better demonstrate learning and skill development, these records are linked to off-chain user-curated evidence of learning portfolios, showcasing tangible artifacts of learners’ competency and skill development across formal, informal and non-formal contexts. Furthermore, this innovation addresses data silos through an ecosystem-first approach which optimizes interoperable data sharing for front-line providers including educators, counselors, case managers, and trainers. Recognizing the critical importance of meaningful relationship and capacity-building for client success, this innovation streamlines the delivery of more personalized and integral client data to support front-line providers in better allocating their time and resources to the human-centered tasks they do best. At scale, this solution has the potential to bridge critical gaps in the school to workforce pipeline for marginalized learners and workers, fostering a culture of lifelong learning and pathways to socioeconomic mobility. 

Our solution is designed with and for populations most underserved by existing education and workforce development systems. Specifically, groups include Black, brown and low-income youth ages 13-18 in need of early high quality work-based learning experiences; young adults 18-24 disconnected and in need of re-entry into the world of education and employment; low-income working college students and underemployed recent college graduates in need of more flexible and open learning modules to equitably access high-quality career pathways; and post-traditional learners in need of connecting their formal, non-formal and informal learning, skills and experiences toward their improved socioeconomic mobility. This solution is tailored to serve those groups of non-traditional lifelong learners with more flexible, equitable and culturally relevant solutions to personalized career development. 

To date, we have worked with diverse groups of young adults ages 13-21 in Nashville, TN to provide in-person work-based learning experiences and internships. Through this work we have consistently engaged young adults in creating and improving transformative, culturally-relevant learning experiences. For the proposed solution, we are conducting a participatory user-design project to transform the existing game-based learning prototype to co-design the integration of blockchain technology and ecosystem processes for improved service delivery and case management. 

The proposed solution overlaps several challenge dimensions, with a primary focus on competency-based models for lifelong learning. Fathom is seeking more inclusive ways to value the skills, knowledge and experiences of historically excluded and underserved populations. Fathom's solution pairs innovative technologies for game-based learning, open skills documentation and interoperable learning employment records to train, equip and incentivize learners and workers at all stages to assess and document their own learning while owning and effectively leveraging these records toward personal career advancement. Through an ecosystem approach, this solution provides more open, learner-centered protocols for qualitatively documenting and verifying lifelong skills-in-action. 

We are working with workforce development boards in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama with aims to pilot test the existing prototype via a participatory user-design study with diverse cohorts of young adults and case managers.  While we do eventually plan to nation-wide, we have a specific interest and opportunity in focusing on Southeastern states to address the major socioeconomic gaps for youth and adults in this region. In our customer discovery interviews we consistently learned of challenges in balancing the continuous cycles of brain drain as they simultaneously struggle to attract and retain high-skill local talent, employers and industry. This cycle directly stagnates local economic development across the region with large disparities for Black, brown and working-class youth and adults.

Workforce development spans sectors of education, human capital management, job training and counseling, among others with braided public and private funding across the ecosystem. We have specifically narrowed down to focus on federally funded workforce development agencies who serve underemployed and disconnected populations in these states. The market opportunity here is to use this tool to support streamlining and improving mandated service-delivery and case management follow-up and outcome reporting which was identified as major pain points for these customers. Starting with this particular customer and region, we can reach an estimated 2 million users (and even more due to current crises) and capture around $208M/year, with plenty of room to scale to other use cases, customers, industries and geographic regions. Scaling nationally extends this to 4 million clients and 400 M/year. 

3 full time staff

3 part-time staff

2 contractors

Fathom's founding team is a testament to the possible innovation and impact when communities with shared adversities, diverse experiences and cultural backgrounds are given the opportunity to leverage their talents to solve the problems they are engulfed in. This formula inevitably exposes fault lines in the existing systems, reveals opportunities for transformative change and paves a path forward for innovative, equitable and sustainable organizations. From this understanding, Fathom as an organization has and always will intentionally recruit based on value alignment, closeness and commitment to the problem we are solving and the people we serve. This practice as policy ensures not only that we have a diverse, equitable and inclusive organization but also that we consistently co-develop and deliver products and services that are culturally relevant, community-owned, and meeting the needs and desires of our beneficiaries. 

The Future of Work game is innovative in its human-centered approach to deliver high-quality, personalized work-based learning and career counseling via mediums of game-based learning. Learner's gameplay builds out individual-owned and managed Learning Employment Records (LERs) stored and shared via blockchain integrated digital wallets and off-chain portfolios. While Blockchain is predicted to disrupt education and workforce development for more equitable, non-linear and flexible models, without mass adoption, these solutions remain disjointed, limited to specific institutions, and fail to meet criteria for interoperability, decentralized authority and individual data agency and ownership. This not only prevents mass adoption but threatens to further widen existing socioeconomic and digital access disparities for vulnerable and marginalized groups. Recognizing the wide-scale adoption of gaming for diverse populations across the United States and the literature supporting the benefits of gaming to maximize motivation, engagement, learning and skill development, we hypothesize this solution has the potential to unlock the benefits of blockchain technology and an underlying infrastructure to support lifelong learning and personalized career pathing. 

Competitors offering aspects of this solution include: LRNG, Workday Credentials, and Pistis's "Lifelong Learning Profiles." LRNG, while 'gamifying' the badge earning process in partnership with corporate sponsors, has failed to successfully be adopted by users and has not scaled as an ecosystem solution. Workday Credentials and Pistis, while offering interesting examples of utilizing blockchain for lifelong learning and personal data agency, fail to adopt an ecosystem-first approach, with limited adoption by learners already in high-quality education and employment ecosystem. 

Core technologies for the proposed solution include 1) Fathom's personal career navigation game-based learning intervention and integrated skills framework delivered via ThriveCast's interactive platform paired with 2) interoperable LER wallets and linked IPFS portfolios delivered via IBM's Hyperledger blockchain and Learning Credential Network. Together, these technologies support the flow of data from user-generated gameplay and real-time skills assessment to be evaluated against competency standards, and translated to skills badges connected to proof of learning artifacts which are stored and shared via learner-owned and managed wallets and portfolios. Furthermore, learners are able to submit and link evidence of skills and credentials to be endorsed and verified by trusted ecosystem stakeholders-- the front-line providers serving clients across the education employment ecosystem. 

Based on our customer discovery research, client adoption is a major challenge, requiring improved service delivery models and intuitive tools which seamlessly integrate into everyday realities. To support the integration of this technology as a cognitive partner for improved career pathing, we have developed a learner-centered conceptual framework illustrating how this technology applies to diverse learning contexts (school, trainings, work, life, community engagement, etc), connects data across the education to employment pipeline, and streamlines case management. Together, this technology can improve human-centered processes in education and workforce development. This presents a unique business opportunity to offer more effective solutions for the on-boarding, service delivery, follow-up and outcome reporting associated with federally funded workforce development services including CTE programs, registered apprenticeships, WIOA youth/adult services, and American Job Center career counseling, among others. 

Serious games and other digital game-based learning mediums leveraging immersive game play have shown success in optimizing learning, behavior change and other characterizing goals. Game elements which make gaming ideal for education and workforce development include: delivery of content via storytelling and narrative; the balance of increasing challenge and skill levels; the integration of assessments, immediate feedback and personalization of content; and the immersion into virtual worlds as infinite spaces for creative problem-solving, collaboration, risk-taking and experimentation when it may otherwise be too costly, dangerous or impractical. The use of gaming for career development has predominately been limited to specific disciplines, but there is growing use of virtual worlds and open learning environments including virtual career counseling and virtual internship placements. Through principles of universal, human-centered, and learning experience design, these technologies provide more open, flexible, and accessible models to better serve groups for whom the current "front-loaded," linear, traditional education model is not working. 

Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential disrupter to decentralize education and empower self-sovereign learners. Use cases and advances in education like Blockcerts, Open Badges and open standards have the potential to document, verify and support more equitable valuing of lifelong learning and give learners increased agency and ownership over their data, identities and records of learning. However, blockchain technology faces major challenges in its mass adoption, integration into existing systems, and empowering of individuals to take full advantage of its potentials. 

Links and summaries to supporting literature can be found here. 

When integrated to improve existing processes and programs, this solution has the potential to bridge critical gaps in the education employment ecosystem, leading to long-term impacts for socioeconomic mobility and a future-ready workforce. 

The proposed technology represents the theory's inputs-- an open, interactive learning environment and personal learning management system. Learners' activities are paired to complement and synchronize with real-life education and training. Activities include 1) on-boarding-- program intake, needs assessments and other diagnostics, 2) completion of career navigation and skill development challenges, 3) documentation of experiences and exemplars of skills, 4) training in concepts for digital literacy, personal data ownership and management, 5) accessing career counseling services and receiving rapid feedback, 6) curating and maintaining portfolios, and 7) managing digital wallets to share credentials with needed verifiers including employers and case managers. 

Learners' activities lead to immediate outputs including: personal data collected; badges and skill exemplars; interactions and data feedback loops; an aggregation of learner artifacts including personal career pathing maps, self-assessment and diagnostic results, personal branding materials, and curated portfolios. 

We theorize that the game-based learning experience combined with the continued use and maintenance of the digital wallets and portfolios will support the following interconnected short and long-term outcomes leading to lasting social impacts: 

1) transversal skill development and equitable value and recognition these skills leading to improved opportunities for high-quality work experience,  clear on-ramps to high-quality career pathways, and socioeconomic mobility

2) more personalized service delivery and data-informed case management to support career alignment centered on individual passions, purpose and problem-solving; This contributes to improved autonomy, job satisfaction, retention and productivity. 

3) improved data feedback loops informing quality improvement and labor market alignment of education and training; supporting the improved capacity of front-line providers to better serve clients and build employer/community relationships; contributing to a holistic, client-centered education and workforce development ecosystem. 

4) cultivating a culture of lifelong learning through more open, flexible and accessible learning systems, inclusive of the diverse talents of all learners; better equipping and preparing a more agile, future-ready workforce to tackle the most pressing systemic problems of the 21st century. 

Goals for the next year are focused on R&D for the proposed innovation. Within the first six months, we will co-design and user-test the development of a feasible MVP ready to pilot with customers concentrated in Southeast U.S. Criteria for this MVP are two-sided-- first, to meet adoption criteria for young adult clients while improving their advancement opportunities; secondly, adoption by case managers/ counselors and meeting criteria for data interoperability and client outcome reporting. To accomplish this goal, we have designed a participatory user design study to invite cohorts of young adults and case managers as co-designers for the proposed solution-- transforming existing game-based curricula and data collection prototypes to meet criteria for mass adoption, usability and impact. 

Recognizing the need for culturally relevant and locally owned solutions, we aim to incorporate these cycles of iteration/adaptation to the diverse needs of communities and local labor markets. We plan to begin pilots in January 2021 with cohorts in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, serving around 250 clients in each state. Scaling across these states within the first year will allow us the potential reach of nearly 400,000 clients. Scaling to the remaining Southeastern states, extends a reach of nearly 4 million people and brings opportunity to a geographic region which is often the last to benefit from national innovations. Continuing to scale nationally within the next five years, we can reach 9 million clients in workforce development, while beginning to scale horizontally to other sectors including K-12 education and talent management. 

Financial barriers- To successfully scale, we will need to raise a large amount of capital. Immersive gaming and blockchain expertise can be costly and time intensive. The sector of education and workforce development are drastically underinvested, despite urgent needs. 

Technical barriers- Immersive game development is time intensive but with high potential to drive adoption needed for this solution. Also, blockchain in this sector is an emerging field. As we grow, it is critical to find the right talent to ensure we meet needed use case criteria for adoption in education and workforce development. There are inherent risks and unintended consequences which must be mitigated to secure the data and privacy of clients and particularly the protection of vulnerable individuals. 

Legal barriers- We will need to seek legal advisory around the proposed technology and standards for privacy and data. Working across many sectors with varying standards for compliance means we must have a breadth of expertise in these areas.  

Cultural barriers- Long-standing existing structures of public schooling and higher education, workforce development, and corporate employers are often resistant to change and threatened by the changing client demands for more flexible, modular learning and work opportunities. Cross-discipline partnerships will be critical to drive needed behavior change. 

Market barriers- Sales cycles in this sector can be very slow. Also, with the pandemic many companies may be introducing solutions to meet market demand in this sector. They may be adopted out of urgency but fail to appropriately integrate evidence, pedagogy or a systems approach. 

Financial: We are exploring braided funding strategies including SBIRs and other grant funding, revenue via government contracts, expansion to other customer segments and rounds of investment. Together these would support our blended needs for R&D and scalability.  

Technical: We are recruiting team members for upcoming projects and partnering with organizations like Games for Change. For pilot rounds of our co-design project, we will initially deliver our prototype with low-cost and openly available tools and engage in continuous rounds of prototyping and product iteration. When possible, we will use openly available standards and tools, reducing workload and increasing interoperability.  

Legal: We currently have corporate legal advisory. We will need to seek specific advisory associated with data compliance and handling of federal contracts. 

Cultural: We will work closely with stakeholders across sectors, specifically front-line providers like educators, case managers and counselors, to ensure this innovation seamlessly integrates and improves their processes and outcomes. Better integrating into these existing institutions and their processes by engaging them as partners will ensure this solution is a complementing value-add and not a threat to their business models or additional burden or disrupter to their day-to-day processes. 

Market: our main strategy to address market barriers is to focus on user-centered approaches and outcomes in best interest of the populations we serve. From our perspective, most solutions fail to achieve impact in this space because they do not provide value-add for users and therefore fail to be adopted by the stakeholder whose buy-in matters the most. 

To date we have been delivering in-person services supported with pieced together technology for pre and post data collection. Most data we are currently able to collect is related to immediate outputs of programming. While we have found unique ways to demonstrate and document skill development, we are interested in collecting more longitudinal data to understand the longer term outcomes our programming has on the lives of participants. We suffer from a similar problem as the case managers and customers we are seeking to serve in that program follow-up and outcome reporting are extremely challenging once programs end. By developing a solution which streamlines this process, we will be able to monitor participants' long-term outcomes associated with employment retention, career and educational advancement, socioeconomic mobility, quality life improvements, and the nuanced ways in which they use their developed skills to solve critical problems in their own communities, schools and workplaces. 

Fathom’s team has consistently focused on young people as our users and beneficiaries. Our diverse experiences in this space have allowed us to thoroughly research, develop our networks and build meaningful products to serve young people and the communities where they live, learn and work. We have and always will build with and for the populations we serve, a commitment to youth-centered innovation and school to workforce transformation. As a team we took the time to do the hard work in building out engaging curriculum, content and learning experiences. Many in this space build platforms without quality, relevant content. And those who develop and provide quality, relevant programming and content often do not have the capacity or technical know how to utilize technology to scale these solutions and local impacts. We are in a position to seamlessly do both. We bring to this solution the missing piece that others attempting to impact in this space often lack— a closeness to the problem, people and places we serve and a holistic set of experiences, skills and opportunities that inform our theory, program development, organizational strategies and the proposed solution to revolutionize workforce development. Fathom’s founders and extending team members truly exemplify what is possible when marginalized young people are positioned to pave paths forward for themselves toward world-class careers. We used our opportunity to pave those same paths forward for the next generation.

In the past for the delivery of our in-person work-based learning programming we have worked with clients to provide paid internships and work-based learning experiences to their clients who have included diverse groups of young adults ranging in ages 13-21. These organizations have included the Nashville Career Advancement Center and its Opportunity NOW initiative, Metro Action Commission, Nashville Technology Council, Y-CAP, Lausanne Learning Institute, Tennessee State University, Knowledge Academies, and Antioch High School. We have also partnered with organizations like the Wond'ry Innovation Center at Vanderbilt University to participate in startup development and customer discovery research. 

As we have transitioned into research and development for the proposed innovation we have begun to formalize partnerships with organizations that will serve in piloting and co-building this solution. This includes regional and state workforce development boards in the states of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama and the Youth Interagency Working group. We are currently working with these partners to formalize pilot plans, adapt the existing prototype to meet these pilot criteria and integrate into their existing processes. Beginning in January 2021, we will work closely with these partners to begin the process of piloting, co-designing and iterating the existing prototype with aims of developing a feasible MVP for scale. 

Fathom’s experience in the NSF I-Corps program led the team to identify a clear, scalable market opportunity for the proposed innovation within the workforce development sector. Specifically, we have identified state and regional workforce development directors to be the economic buyers for this innovation. These are purchasers and decision makers for technology utilized within WIOA funded workforce development agencies. In our research, these customers have echoed the challenges associated with WIOA funded case management which result in major breakdowns in data continuity and integrity and significant wastes of staff time utilizing existing underperforming tools for case management and outcome reporting. Of the interviews with over 50 workforce development directors who would fit the customer profile, there was overwhelming support and interest in purchasing a tool which provides clients personalized career navigation with case management value adds to 1) improve post-program follow-up to 75%, 2) automate participant outcome reporting for up to 48 months and 3) streamline case managers’ jobs to save and reallocate an average of 10 hours per week per case manager. With the rise of the pandemic and national workforce crisis, our customer discovery research reflected the urgent need for this solution as so much of what these providers do is traditionally offered only in-person. We are currently working with directors to develop pilots beginning in January 2021 for the states of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. 

We have identified a braided funding strategy to support our path to financial sustainability. This includes blending funds through grants, earned revenue and investments capital. 

Grants will support the R&D and customer development while we are in our piloting phase and through continuous monitoring and evaluation of outcomes. Viable grants and funding include NSF SBIR, NSF Convergence, Department of Education, American Council on Education, and challenges like this one. 

We will earn revenue through government contracts secured through state bids and RFPs. These customers include workforce development directors who support the distribution of this tool to their clients and employees. Through I-Corp's customer discovery research, we identified workforce development as a beachhead market with a viable revenue stream and opportunity to capture significant market share. After securing revenue through this sector, we aim to scale to other viable markets including K-12 public education, higher education, talent management and large nationwide non-profits and coalitions in the space of workforce development such as the Corp Network, Youth Builds and others. 

To grow and scale we recognize we will eventually need to raise investment capital. We are especially interested in impact investors with aligned missions to support socioeconomic mobility for marginalized groups in the United States. 

We have earned revenue through contracts to provide youth workforce development service delivery and programming totaling around $95,000 over the last 12 months. Other funding includes $50,000 customer discovery research grant from the National Science Foundation (January 2020), micro-grants from the Wond'ry Innovation Center at Vanderbilt University totally around $5,000 (April 2019) and winnings from pitch competitions for around $7500 (November 2018 and January 2019). 

We are seeking to raise both grant and equity funding. We are currently working with advisors on our pitch deck and business mode to understand our current evaluation, expenses and needed capital influx to advance this solution.

Our estimated expenses for 2021 are just under $1 million. 

For the first six months of R&D and pilot testing, we estimate a budget of $223K. Expenses include $194K in salaries and subcontracted work for positions to successfully execute this pilot. This includes project/grant management, partner management, learning experience/instructional design, blockchain development, subcontracted game design services, and implementation staff including cohort support staff and research assistants. 

The remaining six months will reflect the beginning of a traditional business cycle for our company. We estimate expenses of approximately $765K, $640K of which is in salaries. This includes a $240K customer acquisition cost per state workforce development (one for first year), blockchain and game developers, data scientists, learning/instructional designers, marketing and social media. We have projected expenses for future based on these numbers, accounting for increases in staff to manage increasing numbers of clients as we on-board more states. 

We are applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge because of its alignment with our short and long-term objectives to scale equitable employment and advancement opportunities to marginalized populations in the U.S. Funding and resources made available to challenge winners would be a major support to us in advancing the proposed solution. Funding and support for the implementation of a pilot validation phase aligns directly with our timeline and customer segment of workforce development boards. This funding would thus provide support needed for a successful pilot incorporating participatory design principles for the development of a feasible MVP. The offered IBM credits and technical support could also be a cost-effective means to host our blockchain technology. We plan to use Hyperledger for proof of concept and piloting, which can be compatibly hosted on IBM's cloud services. Furthermore, partnerships with organizations like the Morgridge Family Foundation and New Profit also directly align with our mission and provide access to expertise for growing and scaling our company and initiatives. Overcoming the financial and technical barriers to advance this solution are the most pressing, and this challenge provides access to capital, support for pilot validation and technical expertise and support needed to advance this solution to success. 

We are seeking solution technology partnerships and support as we are entering into a huge R&D phase. In this phase we need expertise to rapidly assess and iterate product development in response to continuous findings. 

Advisory and mentorship in funding is critical, specifically in the areas of building and maintaining relationships with investors in alignment with our long-term goals. 

As we enter into governments contracts and due to the nature of our work and the amount of data collected, we need significant levels of expertise on matters of legality and compliance. 

Marketing is another critical area of need to foster adoption by our target users. In the past we have struggled to find marketing and design talent to meet our requirements for culturally relevant designs. Also, as our product is targeting many user groups, finding the right messaging and media to communicate our product offering is critical. 

JFF is one organization that we are very interested in partnering with. We had the opportunity to interview their staff during our customer discovery research and find many areas of alignment and potential for partnership. In addition to being a respected thought leader driving change in the sector of workforce development, they have many resources which would support us in advancing this solution. For example, their ETF@JFFLabs provides seed funding and support in developing and scaling tech-based solutions toward improving employment opportunities. 

Arizona State University's Center for Games and Impact is another strategic partnership we have identified. We have been in consultation with game-based learning researcher, Sasha Barab who is also advising on this project. The Center for Games and Impact at ASU provides a strategic R&D partnership particularly with their services including ThriveCast, an interactive LMS we have used to develop the described prototype, and their Transformative Play game engine framework we will be using to frame our participatory design of an immersive work-based learning game experience.

Additionally, networks like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's T3 Innovation Network may be important partners to work with in their efforts to support ecosystem approaches to interoperable learning and employment data and records. Additionally, to support our integrated skills mapping framework, we have be in conversations with EMSI and considering ways we can work with them and integrate their open skills libraries and APIs. 

Continuous partnership development with workforce development boards, agency providers, employers and other expert stakeholders is also of major importance.