Events

Employers are under pressure to retrain their workforce faster than ever, and many are looking past their usual playbook of catalogs and one-off executive programs. At the same time, partnerships between employers and colleges and universities have been declining, even as demand for workforce learning grows.

The University of Michigan's Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) has built its employer partnerships around a different model: one that starts with an organization's strategy and workforce needs, then builds a coherent, evolving portfolio of learning around it, measured for real impact with employees and return on investment for employers.

This session brings together Michigan's CAI and Noodle to walk through what a long-term learning partnership looks like in practice, and what it takes for an institution to build one.

What We'll Cover

• Why employer partnerships with higher ed are declining even as workforce learning demand grows, and what that means for continuing and professional education leaders

• What separates a long-term learning partnership from a catalog of courses or a one-off executive program

• How to measure what matters to employers: learning, application, and organizational impact, not just completion rates

• How AI-enabled personalization can make learner support more scalable without replacing academic expertise or human guidance

• Practical questions institutions can ask to assess their own readiness to build these partnerships and how to get started

You'll leave with a clear model for what a long-term employer partnership requires and a set of questions to bring back to your own team.

Speakers:
Suzanne Dove, University of Michigan
Alan Mlynek, Noodle