Embarc is a Chicago-based non-profit focused on experiential education — providing outside-the-classroom learning opportunities to low-income high school students.
The organization sends students on “Journeys” — hands-on experiences to parts of the city they may have never seen. Journeys focus on themes such as career, college and cooperation and include things like job shadowing at restaurants, collaborating on museum curation, building robots, and tons of additional experiences that expose students to new opportunities.
Embarc is a game changer for often overlooked populations in Chicago’s poorest schools:
Embarc didn’t come to Table XI to create this success — they came to us to scale it.
Bringing kids out of the classroom and into spaces all over Chicago is enriching, but logistically challenging. And with CPS looking to expand Embarc into new areas and entire schools, the non-profit needed a way to enable exponential growth cost-effectively.
Before expansion, Embarc had a three-part process for implementing Journeys:
This approach is both highly-effective and resource intensive. Embarc needed to build a process that would over time give teachers all the necessary expertise and tools to run a successful Journey without needing Embarc staff to be directly involved with each aspect of the experience.
Jim Cohen, Founder of Spark and strategic consultant to Embarc
Imran Kahn, Embarc’s CEO, approached TXI to define a process capable of enabling the organization to exponential scale. Embarc needs to double the number of students participating in their program each year, without doubling staff.
Our work focused on Embarc’s partnership with the newly-opened Englewood STEM High School. The school had committed to a four-year partnership with Embarc that would scale from 400 students in year one to 1,600 students in year four.
We started by locking ourselves in a room with Embac staff and deconstructing all of the steps, systems, content and considerations involved in creating and leading great Journeys.
Jim Cohen, Founder of Spark and strategic consultant to Embarc
Our goal was to enable Englewood STEM teachers to take an increasingly active role in the planning and execution of Journeys. And, in the process, reduce the need for Embarc staff to play a hands-on role.
Together with Embarc staff, we developed the service model using eight steps:
As Embarc expands, the model we defined will enable them to reach far more students and teachers effectively and efficiently. First at Englewood STEM and then across Chicago.
To help Embarc and any future investors get an idea for what a scalable interface could look like, we used all of our research and developed clean and simple idea for them.
The platform prototype was a website that gives educators the tools necessary to run the entire Journey process. Using InVision, we made a wireframe — essentially a basic outline — of what this digital self-service system could look like.
Screens from the Embarc prototype
The platform dashboard is personalized to the teacher, with visual data covering the experiential learning touchpoints as students progress through the Embarc program. The system can potentially use data to recommend other experiences based on students’ previous performance. It also allows teachers to choose an objective like “courage” “curiosity” or “collaboration” and build activities devoted to those goals.
Jim Cohen, Founder of Spark and strategic consultant to Embarc
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