Fanshawe is proud to announce a partnership with Riipen, the world's largest online work-integrated learning (WIL) marketplace, to bring accessible WIL experiences into the curriculum for students in Ontario. The College was selected as one of 30 post-secondary institutions to receive funding from RBC Future Launch.

“Canada’s future workforce is graduating into an economy still in recovery, and it is our mission to support these students in their transition from learning to work. Over 90 per cent of students on Riipen report feeling a positive impact on their employability in areas such as career readiness, professionalism and critical thinking,” said Dana Stephenson, CEO of Riipen. “We are excited to partner with Fanshawe College to deliver even more experiences this year with funding from RBC Future Launch.”

Riipen’s marketplace platform matches courses submitted by professors with projects submitted by Riipen’s vetted network of 19,000 employers, including small businesses and non-profits. Throughout the Riipen project, employers will provide Fanshawe students with professional feedback and insights on the real-world application of their knowledge, while students can offer employers their expertise and ideas on a variety of subjects such as marketing, business planning and IT, while earning course credits.

“It has been my pleasure to champion and help promote the Riipen Pilot Project at Fanshawe College. Through our Innovation Village initiative, we are highlighting the importance of, and expanding the opportunities for, experiential learning to better prepare our students for the workforce of the future,” said Annette Markvoort, manager, Innovation Village. “Riipen is a valuable platform to help connect the world of remote work experiences through project initiatives needed by our community and industry partners. The engagement tools embedded in the platform just make the experience richer for all partners involved; student, faculty and industry lead. To date Riipen has helped to orchestrate 770 Fanshawe student experiences through 149 industry projects with 86 partners. We look forward to continuing to work together to deliver many more Signature Innovative Learning Experiences (SILEx) to our students.”

“The Riipen platform has allowed the Advanced Ergonomic Studies program to reach companies and industries that we would never have even known existed,” added Allison Stephens, professor and program coordinator, Advanced Ergonomic Studies at Fanshawe. “This has resulted in more than 50 opportunities for my students. Many took on multiple projects to achieve their 300 hours of placement and sometimes even over 300 hours. The projects were so varied and interesting. I was skeptical about doing ergonomics remotely at first, but these students and companies rose to the challenge and found ways to do it.”

By the end of this year, the Riipen and RBC Future Launch partnership will have delivered 27,000 flexible and scalable curriculum-embedded short-term work-integrated learning experiences to learners across Canada.

For more information about Fanshawe College, please visit Fanshawe's media contact page.