WGU Labs built a professional capital framework to help students meet the job market with confidence. This four-part framework has guided our collaborative work with The Christensen Institute on teaching social capital — a skill that doesn’t often make it onto college syllabi.
We collaborated with the Institute to design a survey that captured baseline data on WGU students’ social capital levels. Our findings were meaningful. A majority of students said they felt a strong sense of belonging at the university, but only a minority said they felt connected to other students.
Why connection still matters
Even with the rapid spread of generative AI, social capital remains a key component of long-term student success. That's why we started here. An estimated half of internships and jobs come through personal connections. One-to-one mentorship helps students graduate feeling more prepared. Students with adults encouraging them to pursue their goals are more than twice as likely to reach them. Essentially, relationships are still a major part of what converts degrees into jobs.
That’s one thing WGU has already mastered, albeit in a slightly different area. WGU students learn asynchronously and online. Even so, they frequently credit their strong relationships with their program mentors as critical to their success.
What we’re testing now
Now we’re testing how to build social and network capital development directly into WGU coursework.
That looks like harnessing Lazuli, our AI-powered course design tool, to pilot mini-courses that embed social capital skills, activities, and connections and surveying students about their experiences.
It looks like building a new tool to design and place students in cohorts with peers who are best suited to support one another, both academically and professionally. This is a complement to traditional mentor-driven supports, like the WGU program mentor, rather than a replacement.
It also looks like developing more personalized student support tools by embedding nudges for students using career support chatbots that encourage them to reach out to people in their networks for help and career advice. Interview simulations are another component, intended to build skills and confidence.
These pilots are underway. When the data comes in later this year, we’ll watch how students’ networks and confidence are or aren’t developing over time, and iterate accordingly.
Read more about the first phase of our work with the Christensen Institute.
