News & Events

Future Skills has received Government funding for a project which identifies and supports struggling learners.

Future Skills was recently successful in securing funding for its Just in Time App extension via the Accelerating Learner Success Fund (Tūwhitia). The purpose of the fund is to make targeted investments in learner success initiatives to positively impact learners.

The Just in Time App extension will extend Future Skills’ current At-Risk App to identify learners before they become at-risk, to ensure a higher number of successful learners.

Future Skills Technology Solutions Lead, Kanika Hans, says Future Skills currently identifies learner needs and supports them through an At-Risk App. The app identifies learners at risk through triggers like absenteeism, assessment results, and surveys. It was instrumental in successfully supporting over 280 learners in 2023.

“We want to develop a Just in Time extension for this app, which will collect data from our different apps to identify trends and identify learners at risk prior to getting to the stage of the triggers,” says Kanika.

The development of the extension involves identifying key trends or triggers that a learner demonstrates prior to becoming at-risk and then providing alerts to the Student Success Team to deliver interventions to prevent learners from becoming at-risk.

“Then the extension will create alerts when trends are noted, to enable us to provide learner support earlier.”

The experience in 2023, shows us that in addition to the quality of interventions, the timing of interventions is very important.

“The sooner a learner is identified as needing support and interventions are deployed, the higher the chances of successful outcomes. The proposed Just in Time initiative is designed to logically identify learners before they become at-risk and provide support,” says Kanika.