West London College is a Further Education college helping over 10,000 students achieve their career goals each year. The college introduced Pathways in June 2023 to help engage, inspire and inform students on their future career journey.
West London College were working towards the launch of a new website in June 2023 and had a clear vision of being able to inspire prospective students and position themselves as a destination that offered routes to careers, not just courses.
This vision and strategy aligned perfectly with the ethos we have at Pathways. To help students see a future beyond a course.
Working with Steve Bishop, the college’s Director of Marketing and Student Recruitment and their website agency Concept4, Pathways has been successfully integrated in a number of different ways across the college.
Like many colleges, we are looking to inspire and position ourselves as offering careers, not just courses, and Pathways is an integral part of that strategy, showing where a student can go and what they can achieve as they commence their journey of education and training with us.
West London College
Pathways One
Embedded across all course pages, Pathways One sits alongside the course content to demonstrate progression options to a wide range of future careers. Branded to match the website, the tool seamlessly integrates into the page and shows details on salary, workforce growth, video stories, regional insights, live vacancies, routes through higher education and apprenticeship standards.
Integration was carried out using our new automatic mapping processes where a single piece of Pathways code is added to the course page template. This ensures courses are automatically imported into the Pathways system and mapped to a range or careers.
The value of this automatic mapping solution means that Pathways One will always display on every course page, even when new courses are added to the website. No manual administration is required, although further control is available to the college if required.
With the new automated career-to-course mapping system, it’s a really simple and quick process to implement Pathways and we see it as a valuable addition to any college website.
Concept4
Pathways Explore
Our Pathways Explore product is a fantastic way to engage and inspire prospective students through a careers-first approach. Not all learners have a clear idea of which course to study and West London College were keen to make the Explore product highly visible and accessible across the new website.
Their strategy is one that positions the college as offering careers, not just courses and Pathways Explore is a perfect example of this in practice.
Straight from the website homepage, users are given an option to “Search by career”. Whilst a ‘course search’ is commonly the primary component to engage with users, we always recommend offering a second option to “Search by career” for those users who don’t have a clear idea of the right course to study. This takes users straight into Pathways Explore.
Pathways Explore allows the prospective audience to research, explore, enthuse and be inspired by over 850 different careers. Each career offers more detail on skills and knowledge, day-to-day tasks and typical progression once working in the role. Labour Market Information is highlighted, allowing users to see detail on salary, workforce growth and typical qualification level.
The key aspect of the Explore product is that it promotes related courses at West London College. Once someone is engaged in a career, they can click straight through to the related courses that can help them become an ‘Aerospace engineer’, a ‘Midwife’, or a “Beauty therapist”. Careers are now becoming the key driver to getting people through to the college’s course pages.
This career to course mapping is all automatically informed by the embedding of Pathways One in the college’s course pages. When any new courses are added to the website they are automatically imported into Pathways and displayed as related courses against relevant careers.
The Explore product includes a Profile Quiz, where students can answer 30 simple multiple choice questions about their interests. Based on these answers, students are presented with a tailored list of careers that are aligned specifically to their interests.
Analytics
Detailed analytics are always running behind the scenes on all Pathways digital tools allowing West London College to get insight into student-led trends and key data on how people are engaging with careers. User journeys can be tracked from initial career view through to the related courses being click on.
Pathways infographics
The Pathways system allows you to generate and download a range of career infographics. These are saved as image files allowing you can use them in many places including social media, printed and stuck to walls or in course leaflets.
West London College has made great use of the Pathways A4 posters, using them around the college to highlight career options and to help reinforce their strategy of ‘offering careers, not just courses’.
I am super happy with Pathways!
West London College
Let us hear your stories
It’s important to us here at Pathways to understand how you use Pathways. We love to hear your stories, anecdotes and any general feedback. Many of the features you see in Pathways have been built in response to your feedback, so please keep in touch!
