The first time I saw Degreed, it was magic.
I’d been struggling with the one-size-fits-all experience of requirements-based enterprise learning for years. Then all of a sudden—bam! Something new. A learning system built to help me find what I wanted, in ways that matched my needs and how I wanted to learn. And at the heart of it all? A recognition that learning is personal.
At Degreed, that spirit persists. And it’s why we’re bullish on the AI transformation of learning.
Nothing is more personal than a system that takes people’s input, responds uniquely, and guides them along the way.
It’s why we’ve increasingly invested to stay ahead of the AI curve, to drive innovation, and to do it in a responsible way.
Introducing Degreed Maestro
Over the past year, we asked ourselves a simple question: What if all of your employees had access to the best experts in the world for a set of tasks—subject matter experts, executive coaches, and content curators? How would that change your approach to development?
We found an answer: Degreed Maestro, the next generation of Degreed Assistant.
Maestro takes advantage of developments happening in AI at a frenetic pace—gains in foundational models, new capabilities in voice, and increases in context windows.
When we looked at all these together, we realized that AI can become a personal coach for your entire organization. And not just generically. AI can be tuned for the workforce development use cases your company’s transformation requires.
Over the last six months, many of you have tested AI chat within Degreed. As we explored alongside you, we realized the power of turning one AI agent into a platform for many. Maestro is that platform.
Maestro in Action: Personalized Skill Assessment & Coaching
Maestro is built natively into the Degreed experience you’ve come to know and love, with several out-of-the box coaches focused on career development, leadership development, and skill review.
Soon, we’ll add capabilities that tune these coaches to fit your organization’s specific needs.
What sets these existing and future coaches apart is they retain past conversations. That means every time your people meet with an AI coach, the coach can apply personalized context to each new conversation based on past conversations.
Take the Skill Review Coach, for example. When my conversation begins, I’m prompted to select a skill (I choose public speaking) from my profile. And just like that, we’re assessing my current public speaking skill level.
Here’s a transcript of a conversation I had with Maestro when we announced it to the world at Degreed Vision 2024.
[Coach]: “Hi Nag! I’m your Skill Review Coach from Degreed. Let’s dive into your Public Speaking skills. To start, how have you been using Public Speaking in your current role? Can you share a bit about your experience?”
Nag: “Yes, I’m actually using the skill right now by presenting to thousands of attendees at a webinar Degreed is hosting.”
[Coach]: “That’s impressive, Nag! Presenting to thousands is no small feat. How do you feel about handling such large audiences? Are there specific aspects of public speaking you find challenging or that you’d like to improve?
Nag: “I’ve done lots of preparation and I’m confident the audience will enjoy what I’m sharing today.”
[Coach]: “Preparation indeed can make a huge difference. When you prepare, do you focus on any particular techniques or methods to boost your confidence and ensure a smoother presentation?“
In this small example, you can see that interacting with the coach is just like talking to someone you’ve known for years. The conversation is natural, quick, and informative.
If you’ve had a coaching relationship in the past, you know skill building doesn’t happen during the session; instead, it happens between sessions. That’s why, after each coaching session, Degreed provides a summary of the conversation, recommended learning content to further engage with, and a report that can be exported to PDF and shared with a manager.
Now, let’s switch gears and check out the Career Development Coach. You can see how the coach remembers my previous conversations with it and retains the proper context, so each time I meet with the coach, the discussion is personalized and continuous.
Degreed recognizes that some days I might not feel like talking to a coach. That’s okay, because I can seamlessly switch between text and voice, and each session is transcribed. This also means I can refer back to past coaching I’ve received.
Embedding Personalized Coaches into Learning
AI coaches are being stitched into the fabric of Degreed, which means that, like content, they can be included in Pathways, Plans, and even Academies.
Imagine you’re kicking off an initiative at your product organization to upskill all your people about leadership and strategy. To accomplish this, you’ve created a pathway with relevant internal and external content.
Degreed Maestro becomes an always-on helper.
Add a leadership coach to the Pathway, and it will give your people personalized suggestions— in the context of your skill profile, past accomplishments, current learning progress, and areas of interest.
And that means everything in Degreed immediately becomes much more personal.
One of my favorite parts of Maestro is when, near the end of a Pathway, it immediately recognizes my progress with a skill review.
Maestro can be the engine to recognize skills and build workforce insights for your organization.
Looking Ahead
We’re actively testing Maestro coaches for learning evaluation and practice simulations. And we’re most excited to see how you use and tune our coaches for your upskilling needs.
Maestro will be released into a beta program in October 2024 to a select group of clients eager to co-develop with us. If you’re interested in being a part of this group, contact your Degreed account team.
Transformation never stops, and we’re excited to help you truly deliver personalized learning at a scale never before possible.
Find out more.
Keep reading. Check out Degreed Experiments to stay up to date on our latest AI explorations.
And watch Degreed Vision 2024 on demand for a look at our latest product innovations.
