The certificate is free. Finishing isn't.
Your learners signed up. We help them finish in four weeks, and hand you a completion count your funder accepts, plus a scored work sample for each finisher.
Your cohortUp to 30of your learners
Our facilitatorThe cohort at a glance
38,300 signed up. Nobody has counted a finish.
By late June the state had 38,300+ sign-ups and no published completions. The people it reached skew 55+, employed and graduate-degreed; Fall River, Lynn and Taunton barely registered. Your learners are the ones the invites missed.
State guidance asks each career center to name one contact who sends the invites and tracks progress, and asks counselors to support learners. It doesn't say how, and it doesn't say what to report.
Sign-up figures: MassLive analysis of MassTech records, Aug 2026. No completion data has been published by MassTech, Google or Coursera for any Google certificate.
Counselors should "prepare learners for online coursework expectations" and "provide ongoing support and check-ins."MassHire DCS issuance 14-623, 27 Feb 2026. mass.gov
Four weeks. Your learners. Google's course. Our finish line.
We add no competing content. The learning is Google's. We add the pace, the practice and the proof.
Your existing group
Up to 30 adults you already serve. We never recruit around you.
Two live labs
75 minutes each. Pacing, practice, and three tasks from real jobs.
Two office hours
For whoever is stuck. A named person, not a ticket queue.
One report, your format
Aggregate numbers, laid out the way your funder asks. Then a 30-day follow-up.
One number for your funder. One for the learner's next job.
Two completions, counted separately. Try the cohort ledger demo (invented data).
Google AI Professional Certificate earned, as shown in Coursera. This is the number your funder asks for.
A real task from the learner's field (Medical Billing, Bookkeeping, Customer Support, Operations), scored on a published 12-point rubric (pass mark: 8/12, zero 0s). This is what they show an employer.
Why not the free link, or Merit America?
Fair questions. Here's the honest answer to both.
| Option | Cost to you | What you get back | What you don't |
|---|---|---|---|
| The free state link, self-paced | $0 | A Coursera login for every resident until Dec 2027. | No count of who finished. Open, free, self-paced courses finish in the low single digits; people with something at stake finish at 46-56%. |
| Merit America, remote (6-16 weeks) | $0 to $5,700 / learner | Online coaching, peer squads, and an 80% completion rate on long career tracks (plus a 6-week online AI track). | Online and individual. Requires US work authorization and a high school diploma or GED (Merit America eligibility, checked Oct 2026). Reports national annual totals, never your local cohort or WIOA denominators. |
| Finish Line cohort | from $7,500 / 30 seats | Your learners, four weeks, ESOL-welcoming labs, a completion count two ways, a scored work sample each, one report in your format. | Job placement promises. The certificate is eight months old. Nobody has those numbers yet, including us. |
Completion figures: Reich & Ruipérez-Valiente, Science, 2019 (3.13% of all registrants; 46-56% of paying learners). Merit America eligibility and track figures from meritamerica.org, checked 14 Oct 2026. The only disclosed cohort of a supported Google certificate finished 29.5% of enrollees and 45.7% of those who started a course (JFF, 2021: 1,325 of 4,497 enrolled, 1,325 of 2,902 who completed a course).
We stack what works. We skip what doesn't.
No single lever does it. Programs that move completion combine several supports at once.
- Fixed weekly deadlines, not "self-paced".
- Live sessions with the same faces each week.
- A named person who notices when someone goes quiet. Someone checking on you was the one nudge whose effect lasted at scale.
- Something at stake: finishing counts for something.
- Reminder nudges on their own. Planning prompts showed no overall effect across four trials.
- Sponsor-funded outcome claims. We don't cite them.
- Job-placement promises. The certificate is eight months old. Nobody has hiring data on it yet.
Sources: MDRC on CUNY ASAP (stacked supports); JFF Google Career Certificates Field Guide, 2023; four planning-prompt trials in online courses (Andor et al., Ruhr Economic Papers 790); Kizilcec et al., PNAS, 2020 (247 courses, about a quarter of a million learners: planning prompts +0.19 points, social accountability the only lasting effect).
Learners never pay. Partners pay for results they can report.
Your procurement rules decide which structure you can use. We'll ask on the first call.
Flat fee for up to 30 learners over four weeks.
- 2 labs, 2 office hours, 3 tasks
- Aggregate report in your funder's format
- 30-day follow-up
If 24 of 30 finish, that is $312 per certificate. We will publish the real number after Cohort #1.
Founding partners keep this price for every cohort they run in 2027 and co-sign the first public completion report. Five seats, then the offer closes for good.
Plan a cohortA base fee plus $175 per learner who earns the certificate. Offered once one cohort has shown the real completion rate. Modelled on outcome contracts like Partner4Work's 50/50 split.
Request outcome pricingThe monthly 45-minute session for staff running AI cohorts. Anyone's cohort, not just ours.
See session format45 minutes. One problem. One template you keep.
For the counselors, instructors and librarians now expected to teach AI with no training budget of their own.
Formats: Liberating Structures 1-2-4-All; School Reform Initiative consultancy protocol, trimmed. Card layout after Harvard Project Zero's Thinking Routines.
It starts after our first cohort report, so the first case is a real one. If two sessions in a row produce nothing anyone reuses, we stop, and we'll say so here.
Already use SABES, COABE, LINCS or the NAWB-Microsoft courses?
Good. Keep them. They teach the content. This is the 45 minutes where you compare what happened when you used it. The DOL AI Literacy Framework calls this preparing "enabling roles", the trainers and counselors who teach AI.
- Purpose
- Bring back a learner who went quiet in week 2.
- When
- No Coursera activity for 7 days.
- Steps
- One text, one question, one 15-minute slot. No guilt, no links.
- Evidence
- Filled in after it has been tried. Blank until then.
- From
- Staff Room session, unnamed.
Public cohort ledger. First report publishes after Circle #1.
We never invent pilot numbers. Circle #1 learner and founding partner seats are open through December 1, 2026. The day Cohort #1 wraps, this ledger publishes five audited figures for every cohort, including what fell short.
Status as of 14 October 2026: Circle #1 forming (30 learner seats, 5 founding partner seats). Misses get published too.
The ones procurement will ask.
Something else? [email protected] gets a reply from a person.
Is this approved by Google, MassTech or the Commonwealth?
No. We help people finish a free certificate the state offers. None of them endorse No Worker Left Behind or ed.cafe.
How can you charge for help with a free course?
Learners never pay, for anything. The partner funds the labs, office hours and reporting, not the course.
Before any cohort starts, we confirm the program terms in writing with the MA AI Hub.
Our people already finish. Do we need this?
Then no. Tell us your completion rate. With your permission, we'll add it to the ledger, unnamed, as proof we were wrong about you.
Are you on the Eligible Training Provider List?
Not today. If your funding requires a listed provider, we'll say so on the first call. Then we'll look at a sponsor-funded cohort instead.
What learner data do you keep?
Reports contain aggregate numbers only. Names stay with you and the learner. We don't sell or share data, and nothing goes to the ed.cafe Council.
Why count completion two ways?
Because the denominator is where honest numbers go to die. Google's "70% positive outcome" counts only graduates. The MOOC studies count everyone who ever clicked enroll. Your funder will ask one or the other, so we report both, on the same page, every cohort.
Does the certificate count as a credential for WIOA?
We don't know yet, and we won't guess. Whether DCS codes it as a recognized credential or a measurable skill gain decides how you enter it in MOSES. We'll ask DCS before the first cohort and put the answer here.
Can learners with limited English join?
Yes. Coursera offers machine translation for the course, and in labs we pair learners who share a language wherever we can. Tell us on the first call which languages your group speaks.
Is this related to Edcafe AI?
No. That's a teacher-tools product by Inknoe. We're a Boston nonprofit running cohorts.
Tell us how many started. We'll help with how many finish.
One email with three numbers is enough to begin.