A “Pathway Mapper” web application to assist community college students in planning their coursework
Gladeo is an inclusive career navigation platform that strives to create a more inclusive, equitable, and prepared workforce by providing high-quality career guidance to anyone, anywhere. Their website features videos of relatable role models that have been historically underrepresented, pathway-specific career guidance, and resources to help users find reputable career-building opportunities.
Approximately 70% of California community college students fail to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution.
Community college (CC) students commonly struggle with navigating their academic coursework to successfully graduate from their CC and align with their career goals. Students have found that they either require prior knowledge or face extreme pressure to be resourceful to understand how to plan their coursework to ensure success graduating on time.
Rather than having a readily available class planner, community college students rely on a limited number of counselors to figure out what classes to take and when they are able to take them. Furthermore, nearly 40% of community college students balance classes with one or more full-time jobs, making it even more difficult to plan classes.
Nova is currently working with Gladeo on a Pathway Mapper, providing a simple, streamlined process for community college students to plan their coursework and meet graduation requirements, using data relevant to their school and their goals.
A high-fidelity design for the Pathway Mapper, displaying courses in a student's academic plan and potential courses to be added.
The Pathway Mapper will allow users to customize the path they wish to take, show course offerings related to the user's path, then allow the user to plan our their coursework. For its initial release, Gladeo and Nova will be teaming up with Foothill Community College in Palo Alto to integrate the Pathway Mapper with Foothill's curriculum.
We would like to thank Ellie Cheng from UCLA for discussions that have aided the development of this project.