How Postman Is Building Education-First Student Programs that Empower

During my first week at Postman as director of special initiatives in August of 2020, Postman Co-founder and CEO Abhinav Asthana and I were brainstorming different initiatives that he wanted me to focus on. One of them was building a vibrant student community for Postman. While there were several other ideas on the list, I could sense his passion for this particular initiative. This wasn’t surprising, because when Abhinav was in college he had built a platform to help students connect, called BITS30, and he had seen firsthand how a strong community can truly support students.

Embracing Postman’s company value of “creating with curiosity,” we then embarked on a journey to build a multi-faceted student program that questions the norm. After having hundreds of conversations with students and educators, it was clear that they weren’t interested in another program simply offering them free swag and stickers. Instead, they were looking for programs to learn new skills and help their careers. We decided to provide exactly that by forming a trio of effective programs that teach students imperative API skills.

With 17 million Postman users globally today (and that number rapidly growing), it’s evident that API literacy will increasingly be a crucial skill for students—and leaders of tomorrow. So, naturally, the mission statement for the newly formed Postman Student Programs team became: “Empowering students and educators by promoting API literacy.” These guiding words have helped ensure that any program we start is always focused on a singular goal of teaching students and educators about the power of APIs.

3 Postman programs for students and educators

Postman Student Expert program

The first program we launched earlier this year was the Postman Student Expert program. We conducted multiple webinars as our initial pilot with a group of college students from various countries. These webinars later evolved into a self-paced training that teaches the following core API concepts:

• API requests and responses
• Variables
• Collections
• Scripts
• Running collections

The response has been nothing short of overwhelming, with students across the world finishing the training and sharing their well-earned Postman Open Badges to improve their resumes and portfolios. And, in some cases, these Postman certifications are even helping students get job interviews.

 

Examples of Postman Student Experts sharing their badges on LinkedIn

Postman Student Leader program

More and more, we noticed that many Postman Student Experts wanted to continue their API journey by sharing their knowledge and experiences at their respective schools. So we then launched the Postman Student Leader program for those students who want to take the next step and teach their peers. This program empowers students to become leaders and educators on their campus by providing them with the support, training, and materials they need to host impactful, API-centric events for their peers.

Postman Classroom program

Finally, our platform wouldn’t be complete without a program for the incredible educators who support millions of students around the world. Educators including professors, teachers, librarians, coding boot camp instructors, and everyone in between play a critical role in helping students prepare for their careers. So, we wanted to support them as well. We started the Postman Classroom program to help educators get industry-standard API resources to teach their students. If you’re an educator, this program offers:

• Access to Postman resources to incorporate API and Postman education as part of your curriculum
• Free Postman licenses for you and your students
• Industry talks by the Postman team for your classes

Additional resources for students and educators

Most recently, we launched the Postman Student Community Discord online community. If you’re a student, I highly recommend joining here today. All college, university, and high-school students are welcome without any requirements. It’s a great place to interact with students globally, exchange ideas and resources, and even participate in challenges and giveaways hosted by the Postman team.

Beyond our individualized programs, we’ve also taken strides to help students and educators on campus by offering API 101 industry workshops delivered by the Postman team and Postman Student Leaders. The focus of these workshops is to introduce students to introductory API topics:

• What is an API?
• Why are APIs important?
• Types of API requests
• Demos of basic API requests in Postman

The content and structure of these workshops have been created by our team and have gone through many iterations thanks to the feedback from global attendees. Now, because students and educators have said they’ve gained so much value from the content, we’re delivering a workshop almost every single day around the world.

If you want an API 101 workshop at your campus or class, you can request one here.

Postman Student Summit

We’re excited to gather our community of students and educators online for the first-ever Postman Student Summit, happening this August 7-8, 2021. Stay tuned for more details in an upcoming blog post about this premier API conference designed to help students and educators collaboratively learn, share, and create all things API. You can register for the big event here.

Meet our team

We’re invested in our mission to promote API literacy—a cause we’re genuinely passionate about—and so we’ve grown an awesome team dedicated to helping students and educators globally. Feel free to reach out to any of the following Postman student community managers individually based on your region by emailing studentprogram@postman.com: