For the past 21 years, the National Urban Technology Center (Urban Tech), a nonprofit educational organization, has been equipping students with the technological, financial and interpersonal skills needed to thrive in an increasingly digitized social and professional world. To ensure its learning platforms keep pace with emerging digital platforms, the small, dedicated Urban Tech reached out to Nielsen’s technology and learning experts to help develop strategies to update both the platform and content of its educational modules.
Since the project’s beginning in January, the Nielsen team—led by Lafayette Cope, Senior Vice President, Technology; Leslie Blahnik, Vice President, Web Services; and Lisa Goldstein, Lead, Learning Technology & Effectiveness—has held weekly design review and scope management meetings with Urban Tech staff focused on developing strategies to achieve short-term content update goals, while also building the foundation for the development of a new hosting solution and a complete content redesign. Along with participating on these weekly meetings, our team frequently fields ad hoc questions from the Urban Tech team around design, marketing strategy and technology choices, ensuring the organization is building and updating its library sustainably.
"2017年及以后的学生面临的工作环境将要求他们快速学习新的技术技能，同时还要掌握在新兴数字平台上与同事交流的艺术，"科普说。"城市技术图书馆拥有丰富的宝贵课程，尼尔森的技术和学习专家认为有责任确保不同社区的学生能够继续获得这些课程。"
作为该项目的一部分，尼尔森团队特别关注更新青年领导力学院（YLA）的学习套件。事实证明，这些旨在培养基本金融和技术技能的模块对各个年龄段的学生都很适用。然而，与大多数组织一样，Urban Tech 团队也在努力应对更新技术的开发和采用速度。
迄今为止，尼尔森团队已为 Urban Tech 提供了约 305 个小时的无偿服务，为该组织节省了约 25000 美元的咨询费用。该项目仍在进行中，各团队将继续合作，以实现 Urban Tech 数字教育图书馆的现代化。
我们与 Urban Tech 的合作始于 11 年前，由尼尔森社区参与高级副总裁 Don Lowery 领导。我们致力于支持像 Urban Tech 这样的组织，它们有助于确保我们共同社区中的年轻人掌握在现代职场中取得成功所需的技能。这种与社区的联系是我们整体多元化和包容性战略的重要原则。
"Urban Tech 创始人帕特-布兰斯福德（Pat Bransford）说："我们认为，我们的在线学习课程为参与的学生提供了信息和技能，这些信息和技能对他们的整个学习过程都至关重要，并为他们在工作场所取得成功奠定了基础。"为了确保我们能给学生带来最有影响力的课程，我们依靠尼尔森这样的企业盟友，这样我们的团队就能继续专注于将我们的课程带入更多的课堂"。
Photo: Don Lowery and Pat Bransford at Urban Tech’s Annual Awards Gala
