Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


IBM Open P-TECH Helps Students Pick Up Skills, Badges in Current Tech

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/30/20
Open P-Tech badges

IBM has launched Open P-TECH, to help young people and educators pick up the basics in topics including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, as well as soft skills. Up until now, the P-TECH program has been provided as a model affiliated with schools. Now students who are 16 and older can register and participate on their own.

The digital coursework includes videos, readings and classroom activities (some of which require registering on external sites). There's a "recommended learning" display that provides collections or "channels" of activities that have been curated by learning professionals, other users and IBM's own Watson, based on the student's profile, job role or other factors. Students can subscribe to the channels, which cover professional skills, career paths and learning concepts such as design thinking.

As students complete lessons, they have an option of pursuing digital badges, which can be added to their social profiles and used in résumés. The program provides a student progress dashboard to monitor progress and get new assignments.

Partners in the program include Khan Academy, Codecademy, OpenClassrooms, LinkedIn and Duolingo, among others.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Hootsuite

    Beyond the Feed: How Higher Ed Turns Social Media Into a Measurable Enrollment Engine

    More than half of prospective students research programs on social media before visiting a university website, and nearly half will skip applying to a school that looks inactive online. Hootsuite, the all-in-one social OS platform trusted by more than 2,000 higher education institutions, helps campus teams turn everyday posts into measurable outcomes, from applications to alumni giving.

  • A glowing digital brain with neural connections and light trails

    AI Giants Warn It May Be Time to Slow Down

    For years, leaders in the artificial intelligence industry have warned that increasingly capable AI systems could eventually become dangerous, all the while continuing to race to build them. Now, their sentiments have changed.

  • lock icons, shields, and glowing data paths

    Research Studies Suggest AI Is Accelerating Familiar Cyber Attacks

    Research released around the recent Black Hat USA 2026 conference suggests that artificial intelligence is increasing the speed and scale of cybersecurity activity without replacing the attack methods defenders already face.

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.