Our Approach | Minerva Project

Our Process

Our learning experts guide you through a comprehensive three-phase process. This structured approach ensures the successful launch of programs that combine foundational skills, learning science, and hybrid technology.

We work with your leadership and instructional designers to conceive new programs and curricula that align with your institutional vision, culture, and brand; we work with your teaching faculty to help them adopt new instruction methods, based in learning science; and we support your staff, faculty, and administration in developing their own capacity for ongoing innovation.

Design

Define & Plan
We start our process in close collaboration with you. We help articulate your vision, positioning, and objectives for the program, as well as define a custom learning taxonomy and curriculum architecture. These are then documented in a cohesive design plan.

Develop

Build & Prepare
In this phase, we begin executing the design plan. We work with your teams to construct each component of the learning journey and prepare your institution — including instructors, administrators, and learners — for program launch.

Deliver

Support & Measure
We help launch your programs with ongoing technical, academic, experiential, and operational support, which are sustained for the lifetime of our partnership. Following launch, our impact measurement services provide insight into program quality, which inform program refinement and expansion.

Design

Develop

Deliver

SKILLS-FOCUSED CURRICULUM

Custom Learning Taxonomies

We help you define a hierarchy of learning outcomes, including high-level competencies such as critical thinking, sub-competencies like data analysis, and specific, teachable, and measurable skills. For example, techniques for identifying high- and low-quality sources of data can be taught, practiced, and assessed. We then ensure that these granular skills are woven throughout the curriculum, so every class, course, and course sequence incorporates the intended learning outcomes.

Interdisciplinary Program Architectures

The programs we help you design are deliberately structured to cut across disciplinary boundaries, introducing your learners to durable, transferable skills and continually reinforcing them over time — and across different courses — then requiring learners to practice them in new situations. By building the curriculum in this manner, we help your instructors focus on skill development rather than information dissemination.

Integrated Academic and Experiential Learning

We help your curriculum designers connect all aspects of each course, from pre-class readings and recorded lectures to in-class activities to assignments, projects, and on-site experiences. By integrating academic learning with experiential engagements, such as field research, community projects, and employer work-study programs, your courses enable learners to apply their skills in diverse contexts.

FULLY ACTIVE LEARNING

Evidence-Based Pedagogy and Instructional Design

All Minerva courses are built upon the science of learning. From active class engagement to interleaved concepts to deliberate, spaced practice, our approach uses evidence to inform our methodology, which has been honed over nearly a decade at Minerva University. We train and support your faculty in these best practices, providing them with a remarkably effective way to teach.

Engaging Instruction Across Modalities

Whether you are creating an online program or a new hybrid institution, participation is crucial to learning. We help train your faculty in active learning techniques that can be applied to diverse modalities, across virtual and in-person settings. Ensuring that learners are equitably engaged leads to more dynamic classes, better individual outcomes, and improved institutional impact.

Systematic Formative Feedback and Assessment

Instead of using high-stakes assignments and exams, we reorient the evaluation of your learners around their performance over time. Through frequent feedback from your instructors and long-term formative assessment of specific learning outcomes, we help your learners focus on developing their skills, rather than obsessing over summative letter grades.

FORUM HYBRID ECOSYSTEM

Course Builder™

The Course Builder module enables your curriculum designers and instructional faculty to develop detailed lesson plans and syllabi for every course. Each lesson incorporates specific skills from your Learning Taxonomy, with a structured Timeline to ensure Fully Active Learning in each class session. The Minerva team supports your teams every step of the way, advising on optimal modalities, activities, and concepts to include.

Class Experience & Tools

Forum offers unparalleled functionality for conducting Fully Active Learning classes. For example, the TalkTime™ feature prompts your instructors to engage learners, including those who are more reticent, enabling equitable class participation. Learner performance data is also gathered in every class session, offering insight into when and how learners utilize the skills being taught.

Impact Measurement

The robust feedback and assessment dashboards in Forum give your instructors detailed rubrics for scoring each of the outcomes in your Learning Taxonomy. These scores are applied to class participation, assignments, and projects, providing an evolving view of each learner’s progress. In addition, Minerva offers regular qualitative studies, including instructor and learner comments, to evaluate the overall impact and efficacy of your programs.