Meet Frintern: A better way to start and grow in a career you love
Using personalisation algorithms, microlearning principles, mental models and a dash of community spirit, learning becomes like chilling.
Imagine being able to learn any career skill the way you would cook food — by following a set of steps in a recipe cookbook. Frintern is the career accelerator that helps you learn career skills using mental models.
Mental models are your thought processes about how things work in the real world. By creating learning experiences that teach career skills using mental models, we have found people learn career skills like design, project management and growth marketing in hours.
We are using these personalised learning experiences to close the skill gap. Making it as easy as possible for learners to become proficient.
How we create mental models for different skills
Our original plan was to curate free resources for people to learn career skills as an alternative to paying skill schools expensively for them. But as we collated these resources, we stumbled on Stanford’s Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking with which you can learn design thinking in 2 hours.
If a set of steps on how a designer thinks and works can be taught in 2 hours, we figured the same could be done for other skill sets.
Going through how the design thinking course was created, we devised a set of steps to create mental models for different skills.
With this, we curated learning resources that explained these mental models. Arranged them in bit-sizes for learners to go through, while we work on creating similar thinking courses like Stanford’s virtual course on Design Thinking. We have already done this for a few skills.
How learning happens on Frintern
After going through an automated profiler, each learner gets a learning profile. Your learning profile is tailored to show what skills you are naturally good at, and which ones you are not. Now we can see what career paths suit you best. You can save this career path and learning resources for later or access the learning resources straight away.
Each skill has free learning resources that teach the mental model for that skill. As you go through these resources, your learning is tracked. Your progress is visible on your learning dashboard when you are logged in. This lets you learn at your own time and pace. This personalises your learning, increasing engagement and speed.
But there’s more. Learning Labs in our online community give learners different learning experiences. This makes it easier and faster to learn the mental models for skills that fit your learning profile.
On their own, these forms of learning: microlearning, task-based learning, project-based learning, mental models and a few others are very effective. Combining them creates a stronger learning effect. Learners can access these Labs once you opt to save your career path or track your progress on your profile.
Why are we doing this?
The world around us is changing very fast. Keeping up and surviving this change requires lifelong learning, which can be hard and expensive. We want to make it easier by removing the stress of starting and growing in a career you love.
It is hard enough to survive and earn a living, even when you ‘know-how.’ Learning ‘how-to’ shouldn’t be. We are tired of spending so much time trying that at the end of the day, we have no time to actually live. Lifelong learning should be easy, we’re sharing the tools to make it so.
If it sounds daunting or impossible, we have made considerable progress. Learning through Frintern is personalised, fast and fun. As learners grow on the platform, we also help them find the right job. All for free.
We are working hard to make Frintern available to you wherever you are. Currently, it is available in beta via an offline ready app (a PWA).
Start your journey to your dream career here on Frintern.com (Frintern has been sunsetted and is now techstarta.com).
Thanks to Adewale Abati ♠ , Amara Uyanna, Emeka Nnodu, Mohini Ufeli and Babajide Owosakin for their help in making this article read as well as it does.
