When Barbara Ciaramitaro joined Capella University in 2018, she and her fellow faculty members faced a dilemma—what sort of course work could the online, for-profit university assign students that would also appeal to potential employers.
After months of vetting third-party programs, the university chose Riipen, a Vancouver-based startup that offers a platform where schools listed the expertise and services students could provide and where businesses shared the services they needed. The platform could pair them up for projects, and students would end the project with a presentation of their findings and work to companies in exchange for course credit.
“It quickly demonstrated the value it had for students,” says Ciaramitaro, who chairs Capella’s undergraduate information technology program and provides students with projects through the platform. “It gets them real-world experience. Capella students are in an online environment, where sometimes it’s a challenge to find that experiential learning.”
This partnership with Riipen (pronounced “ripen”) has had such an impact on Capella that the school’s owner has joined a new, $3.75 million round of funding for the startup.
SEI Ventures, the seed-stage venture arm of Capella owner Strategic Education Inc., participated along with Reach Capital, Strada Education Network, EduLab, Entangled Group, Atrium and Arizona State University’s ScaleU. This round brings Riipen’s total funding to date to about $6 million.