In this series so far, we’ve explored how massive open online courses (MOOCs) are changing the nature of learning. We’ve looked at how they can help foster learning organizations, promote lifelong learning, facilitate collaboration, and even provide just-in-time performance support. But one of the biggest transformations that has been brought about by MOOCs, online learning, and the Internet in general is a shift in what means to teach a class. The role of the instructor is changing, and while the initial reaction has been one of shock and fear (educators are afraid of losing their jobs), the truth is that this shift is actually very good news—for companies, for employees, and for trainers. Here’s why: If your company is anything like almost every other organization, you have probably noticed a skills gap between what job applicants and employees can do and the skills you need them to have. Likely, you are observing the biggest skills gaps in the areas of computer and mathematical occupations, architecture and engineering occupations, and management occupations. And these gaps are costing you money—a recent CareerBuilder survey showed that "on average, a company loses more than $14,000 for every job that stays vacant for three months or longer" and "that one in six companies loses $25,000 or more." The answer to bridging these gaps is training, but while 80% of college graduates expect that they will be provided with formal training on their first job, only 48% actually receive that training. Clearly more training is needed…and fast. The new role of the instructor in MOOCs means that companies can train more people, more quickly and more effectively, than ever before. The 21st century trainer The 20th century trainer had two main roles: content creation and content delivery. Yes, ideally trainers would serve as facilitators, providing meaningful learning experiences and engaging learners. But be honest, with 100 PowerPoint slides to get through in two hours, how often did that actually happen? Corporate training didn’t get its snooze-worthy reputation from being meaningful and engaging. MOOCs and other digital learning tools have redefined instruction for the 21st century. They allow trainers to spend much less time on content creation and practically no time at all on content delivery, which means that they can spend more time guiding employees through the training, assess their progress, provide remediation when necessary, and overall ensure that the training is resulting in real, meaningful, and actionable learning. Let’s look at how MOOCs have transformed the two main roles of the 20th century trainer: Content creation. In the past, trainers would spend a good deal of time creating content from scratch. Now, at least for more general courses, like Communications Skills, Microsoft Excel 101, and How to Negotiate, content creation is no longer necessary. There are plenty of excellent resources available online, and many of them are free. Rather than creating content, trainers can now spend their time curating it. Not only does curation take less time than developing a course from scratch, but when something in the content needs to be changed (as it so often does), it’s usually a fairly simple matter to find a new online resource and upload it into a MOOC. Content delivery. MOOCs have nearly eliminated this role altogether. When developing MOOCs from scratch, trainers may make videos and tutorials, and put together documents and activities, but then the content is delivered online. The advantage of this is that the marginal cost, in terms of both time and money, of delivering that content to additional learners is functionally zero. Just because trainers’ role in creating and delivering content is changing doesn’t mean half your T&D department is out on the street. Writing for The Evolllution, Kyle Peck from Penn State University, had this to say about the new role of instructors (he’s writing about the higher education space, but his message is equally applicable to corporate training): "Technologies will re-place higher education. I didn’t say ‘replace’; I said ‘re-place’….People can learn without being taught. Technologies can do a better job of conveying information and developing understanding than can lectures….Knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, for success. Employers are looking for people who can and will do things and do them well….the role of the teacher changes, becoming more focused on the development of skills and attributes and on high-quality assessment and comprehensive feedback, rather than on the dissemination of content." In a corporate environment, the message is essentially the same—moving to MOOCs means that trainers can focus on helping employees to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs. Challenges to the changing role of the instructor As with some of the other topics we’ve explored in this series, the main challenge to this trend is changing the attitudes of organizations and of trainers. On the organizational side, moving to a digital environment doesn’t mean that trainers are unnecessary. As Jessica Miller-Merrell wrote on the eSkill blog, "There will always be a need for someone who can interface with employees directly, think strategically about what works best for them, and determine what the training needs are. It’s true that the value proposition for corporate trainers may change, but it won’t go away." On the trainer side, T&D departments need to embrace their new roles, which may be a challenge for some. They also need to let go of the "not invented here" ideology and be willing to use the many excellent resources that are available online. There is no question that the role of the trainer is changing, and that there is a good deal of resistance to this change. But organizations and trainers that embrace the shift will find that when trainers need to do less creating and delivering, they can do more engaging and facilitating, which will lead to more effective training. It’s a win-win-win situation (companies-trainers-learners). Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- offers 25+ years of training and talent management helping executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:Megatrends in MOOCs: #2 Facilitating Learning OrganizationsKey Factors in MOOC Success, Part 2MOOCs and Performance Support13 Megatrends in MOOCsMegatrends in MOOCs: #4 Microlearning Paths(Visited 177 times, 1 visits today)

New forms of education require new types of credentials. But what does it mean when job applicants put digital badges on their resumes or when an employee earns a verified certificate from a free online course? One of the biggest opportunities for MOOCs and other digital learning environments has been in the development of alternative credentials, which may turn out to be even better than traditional degrees at highlighting one’s knowledge and skills. Why do we need alternative credentials? As you are probably well aware, employers in general are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with traditional higher education. This stems from the fact that most business leaders don’t feel that recent graduates are adequately prepared for the workforce: in a recent Gallup survey, only 11% of business leaders strongly agreed that colleges and universities are doing a good job preparing students for work. Only 11%! Most companies want to hire degree holders, and indeed the number of jobs requiring a degree is expected to hit 60% by 2018, but hiring managers are becoming less and less certain about what those degrees actually mean. To solve this problem, alternative credentials are being developed that are more closely tied to specific knowledge and demonstrable skills. What alternative credentials are available? There are basically two types of alternative credentials: non-degree credentials offered by degree-granting institutions (i.e., professional diplomas and certificates) and new credentials that are outside of the traditional higher education system altogether. This article focuses on the latter, as they are the types of credentials that are being developed in conjunction with MOOCs. At the moment most MOOCs, along with other digital learning environments, are unaccredited. So, if your employees take them, how do you know what they’ve learned? And how do you give credit for the MOOCs offered by your own organization? Here are some of the alternative credentials that have been or are being developed by various providers. Verified certificates. Anyone who enrolls in a course from one of the major MOOC providers can earn a certificate of completion, providing they meet the course requirements. Coursera and edX also offer verified certificates for certain courses. These certificates, which cost in the range of $40 to $100, verify the identity of the course taker. Through verified certificates, employers can be certain that it is actually their employees who are taking the courses. Course sequences. Recently, both Coursera and edX have introduced course sequences, which are pathways of three to nine courses on a specific topic, all with verified certificates. These are MOOC versions of professional certificates, and many require a capstone project to complete. Digital badges. Digital badges are becoming extremely popular in many types of alternative education, particularly those that incorporate gamification. Badges are a game element that have been introduced to education via the Mozilla Open Badges project. Digital badges have a couple of major advantages in the alternative credentials market. First, any organization can develop and issue them, and they are being used by companies, government organizations, and higher education institutions alike. Second, they are modular and information-rich, which means that each badge contains information about exactly what learners had to do to earn it. This provides a direct tie between the credential and the competency it represents. Badges can be used by companies in many different ways—to highlight learning, to reward collaboration, and for gamification. As learning becomes increasingly bite-sized and modular, digital badges will become even more widespread. Digital portfolios. Digital portfolios, or e-portfolios, provide flexible ways for learners to showcase their learning. Digital portfolios are powerful because they can combine credentials like degrees and badges with work samples, such as design work or marketing copy. In this way, they allow organizations to assess employees’ formal and informal credentials as well as their marketable skills. Digital portfolios have already become standard forms of enhanced resumes in fields like computer programming. 21st century transcripts. As the lifelong learning trend has developed, several education technology companies are exploring different ways to showcase a person’s entire life’s worth of education. For example, Degreed tracks both formal and informal education in a knowledge graph that can be used as part of a digital portfolio or resume. Accredible is another company that allows learners to create portfolios that represent all of their learning experiences. These are just a few of the initiatives toward creating a new transcript for the 21st century. Challenges to alternative credentials The main challenge to alternative credentials is that many organizations don’t know about them or know what to make of them. Traditional credentials, like degrees, may be too abstract to be as useful as companies would like them to be, but they are still familiar. In terms of usefulness for hiring, alternative credentials have yet to be proven in the marketplace, but that will just take time. As companies start to validate them, their popularity and their reliability will increase. In terms of using alternative credentials internally in a T&D program, the only real challenge is implementation, and it is a minor challenge at most. Mozilla Open Badges are free and easy to create, and most learning management systems support them, so all companies need to do is set up an account and start creating. New models of education like MOOCs aren’t changing just how education is delivered, but the way we think about credentialing as well. Alternative credentials will become much more prevalent in the near future as students, companies, and schools seek new ways to validate learning in these new digital environments. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- offers 25+ years of training and talent management helping executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:Megatrends in MOOCs: #3 Updating the Competency-Based…13 Megatrends in MOOCsMOOCs and Unbundled Training2014: The Year of the Corporate MOOC?How MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILT(Visited 92 times, 1 visits today)

The Millennial generation has posed one of the greatest challenges to the business world over the past few years. Millennials have different ideas from the generations that came before them about what jobs should be (i.e., places to learn and then move on), work-life balance (they believe balance is important), and the place of technology (they grew up with technology and much of their educational and social lives is already spent online). Millennials are changing how business is done, and in particular how workforce education is done. They are also the perfect audience for training MOOCs. What do Millennials want? What are Millennials? Digital natives who now make up more than one-third of the workforce. Tech-savvy self-directed learners. Young people who have spearheaded the rise of the share economy. Recent college grads who both expect and require extensive formal training to be successful in their jobs. Their attitudes toward work and training are fundamentally different from those who came before, and it is essential that organizations both recognize and embrace these differences. As the Allen Communications website puts it: "As learning professionals, we know we have to keep up with our audiences or be left behind. We also hear that Millennials bring an interactive learning style, fluency with new technology, and a sharing culture….Success starts with not viewing new technology in itself as the solution to winning over Millennials, but rather as a tool for creating layered approaches and improved engagement. In other words, with Millennials, you can’t simply rehash old content in a new format and expect improved results." According to Allen Communications, what Millennials want from a training program is "bite-sized learning, immediate feedback, and big-picture relevancy." The firm has identified video-based learning, gamification, and mobile support as the three best strategies for engaging Millennials. Notice that video-based learning is the primary method of content delivery used in many MOOCs and that gamification and mobile support are two major MOOC trends we’ve discussed previously in this series. Learning games company Sweetrush also offers tips for training Millennials. They suggest these four approaches for delivering training to this market: Tell them upfront what is expected and what they need to know. Keep it tech-savvy. Coach and praise along the way. Say it with visuals. Well-designed MOOCs are able to meet all four of these requirements in an engaging, effective learning environment. MOOCs and Millennials Of all of the uses for MOOCs in a corporate environment, training Millennials may be the one where the digital learning format can excel the most. Recent graduates know that they don’t have the specialized skills they will need on the job, and they expect their employers to provide formal training programs so they can acquire those skills. According to Sarah Doll, Accenture’s senior director of talent management, classroom instruction is not the best way to train this generation. These employees want meaningful projects, they want to "feel like they are adding value," and they "will learn faster and be more productive quicker if they do more on-the-job training." Not only are MOOCs an effective way to provide the type of training Millennials want and need, but a recent study by software consulting company Software Advice revealed that this generation may actually prefer this training format. The survey involved assessing the training preferences of 1,500 U.S. workers. Here is what they found: More than half of 18 to 24 year-olds, and nearly the same percentage of 25 to 34 year-olds, said that knowing a company used MOOCs for training "would positively affect their decision to submit an application." Nearly three-quarters of 18 to 24 year-olds, and more than half of 25 to 34 year-olds, said they would participate in a company-sponsored MOOC. Software Advice notes that this is particularly striking since the participation rate for mandatory e-learning is less than 70% and participation in voluntary training is barely over 30%. More than half of both 18 to 24 year-olds and 25 to 34 year-olds said they would be more likely to stay at a company that used MOOCs for initial training and as options for continuing professional development. Based on the survey results, it appears that MOOCs can be effective tools for attracting, training, and retaining Millennial generation workers. Challenges to training Millennials with MOOCs Using MOOCs in training programs actually addresses two of the major challenges many companies are facing today: The skills gap between what recent graduates know and what employers need them to know How to attract and retain fresh talent in an a competitive environment where young people no longer expect to stay at a job for longer than a couple of years The main challenges to actually implementing MOOCs in training programs for Millennials are the same as those to using MOOCs in general—many companies still don’t know what they are, what they can offer, and how to best use new digital learning environments to meet their training needs. But, as with most other aspects of today’s business landscape, this will change as technology continues to improve and more training departments become aware of the tools available. In addition, Millennials themselves will be drivers of this change as they demand more tech-savvy, meaningful, on-the-job training. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- offers 25+ years of training and talent management helping executives, business owners, and top performing sales executives in taking the leap from the ordinary to extraordinary. Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:Training and Education for Millennials through Gamification13 Megatrends in MOOCsMegatrends in MOOCs: #8 Mobile LearningCorporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and ManagersWhy MOOCs? Why Now?(Visited 117 times, 2 visits today)

We have finally come to the end of a long road. We have looked at how MOOCs can foster learning organizations, encourage lifelong learning, and be used in competency-based training. We have explored how gamification, mobile learning, and microlearning are changing ideas and practices surrounding corporate training. And we have seen how MOOCs are changing the role of the instructor and causing us to rethink the credentialing system. Finally, in this last article in the "Megatrends in MOOCs" series, we’ll look at one of the most underestimated, but potentially most powerful, aspects of MOOCs—their role in building relationships: between companies and their current and prospective employees, companies and their customers, and even between business partners. It may see strange to say, but one of the largest impacts MOOCs have on training may not have anything to do with actual training at all. The importance of relationships Contrary to popular opinion, as we become more dependent on technology, our relationships are becoming more important. This is true in our personal dealings, but it is also an essential tenet of business in the current landscape. In an age when customers can sink a business by posting negative reviews, and employees can take to Facebook and Twitter to broadcast their frustrations, relationships are paramount to business success. Strong employer-employee relationships are associated with higher productivity and increased loyalty; positive customer relationships bring not only repeat customers, but also positive reviews on influential social media sites. No business that hopes to succeed today can ignore the importance of building relationships with these various audiences. MOOCs as relationships builders Currently, MOOCs are being used to facilitate relationship-building in organizations in a couple of main ways. First, they can help foster relationships within organizations. Higher education institutions have recently started experimenting with this idea. For example, Harvard now offers MOOCs specifically for its alumni, with the goal of strengthening the relationship between the school and its alumni (and hopefully collecting more alumni donations). As Ovum analyst Navneet Johal writes, "Institutions can use MOOCs to reframe and re-energize the mission of alumni in a way that makes graduates feel valuable as opposed to making them feel like money banks." MOOCs offered to alumni "can also contribute to graduates’ success by offering continued learning through their careers." The MOOCs serve as a way to keep everyone connected—professors, students, alumni. In organizations, MOOCs can play a similar role in fostering connections across teams and departments: they provide a way for employees to collaborate, discuss, and create the personal learning networks that drive learning and innovation. Second, MOOCs can help companies develop relationships with new and potential employees. This also mirrors a movement in higher education, in which MOOCs are being used to prepare students for college before they ever set foot on campus. Companies can offer pre-hiring or pre-start MOOCs so that when new employees arrive for their first day on the job, they are ready and able to dive right into meaningful work. Third, MOOCs are a new type of social media (a recent Ed Tech Magazine article called MOOCs "the next social networking platform") that can not only help companies realize the value of social learning, but also can foster relationships between employees, between companies and customers, and between others on both the public and the private stage. People interact within MOOCs on discussion forums, but also outside of MOOCs on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Often, these social media feeds are incorporated directly into the course, but they can have a life long after the course itself has been completed. In this way, MOOCs help employees build and maintain social networks within and across organizations. They also allow companies to identify potential employees, as well as give businesses an outlet to engage with their customers on a personal level, including publicly responding to customer complaints and requests. Challenges to MOOCs as relationship builders The biggest challenge to using MOOCs effectively in a relationship-building role is that it requires companies and training departments to let go of a certain amount of control and allow training to transcend the classroom. Both traditional e-learning and instructor-led training are usually fairly well-controlled environments, but with MOOCs, you put the courses out there and they often take on a life of their own. Organizations that are willing to embrace a small amount of uncertainty have the potential to be amply rewarded—collaborations between employees can lead to new innovations and advancements that would not otherwise arise, allowing customers to engage with the company via MOOCs can lead to new insights about the target market, and companies willing to look past traditional credentials may find their next star employees in unexpected places. Organizations not willing to take this risk may find themselves out of touch with their customers and unable to attract and retain the next generation of talent. The major MOOC providers (Coursera, edX, and Udacity) have been around for about two years now, and their massive growth during that time has established their place as a force in 21st-century education, with incredible potential in workforce training. MOOCs are still very much in their infancy, but they are evolving quickly. The 13 trends we’ve highlighted in this series represent the major current experiments and future directions MOOCs are likely to take over the coming months and years. But that doesn’t mean you need to wait to implement MOOCs in your own organization. Smart companies are starting now to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this new and evolving digital learning environment. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:13 Megatrends in MOOCsUsing MOOCs: Partner and Customer RelationsMegatrends in MOOCs: #6 More Social, More CollaborativeUsing MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…Megatrends in MOOCS: #5 Lifelong Learning(Visited 52 times, 1 visits today)

Over the course of the past year on this blog, I’ve described several ways MOOCs are already changing training and development. These digital learning environments and the technology-enabled learning tools that power them are making training more engaging, more relevant, and as a result, more effective. In particular, MOOCs have three main advantages over traditional instructor-led training: They allow training departments to easily unbundle content so that employees have access to the information they need when they need it.  They help foster peer learning and the development of personal learning networks within, and even between, organizations. They allow organizations to track and mine training data on a large scale to improve training results, discover relationships between variables, customize training programs, and predict training effectiveness. Looking into the (near future), there is a new technology that will help bring all three of these things together: Tin Can, aka the Experience API. Tin Can is just starting to make significant waves in e-learning and it is still on the horizon for MOOCs, but this technology has a huge potential to further transform corporate training. What is Tin Can? Tin Can is an application programming interface, or API, which is essentially a method that allows information to be shared across software programs. For example, an API makes it possible for you to share a YouTube video on Facebook or a photo on Twitter. Tin Can is an API specifically for learning activities. You are probably already familiar with the Sharable Content Object Reference Model, or SCORM, which is a specification that allows learning management systems (LMSs) to track e-learning user activities. The catch is that SCORM only works within the context of an LMS—it doesn’t interact with other programs. Using SCORM you can generate a large amount of data about how long learners spent on different e-learning activities, how many times they have to take an assessment to pass, and so on, but only as long as all of the learning activities are housed within the LMS. Here is where the problem becomes immediately evident: with cloud-based resources, Khan Academy videos, mobile learning applications, social media, and so on, most of our learning activities don’t actually take place inside an LMS. This is where Tin Can comes in: this API can track learning activities no matter where they take place. Tin Can collects learner data in what is called a learning record store (LRS). Very simply, an LRS comes in the form of a statement that a learner engaged in a certain activity. For example, "John watched Communication Video 1" or "Sharon attempted Question 3." Each statement has a description of the activity, a timestamp, and other information, and LRSs can stand alone or be sent to an LMS. (Read more about Tin Can statements). The point is that Tin Can is flexible enough to encompass many learning activities that SCORM can’t and, coincidentally, that training departments in general have been ignoring for a long time. So whether employees are learning online or off, from digital resources or even from one another, Tin Can is able to track the data. Why use Tin Can? What underlies Tin Can is the recognition that not all workplace learning happens within the boundaries of a SCORM-compliant LMS. Jon Aleckson, who writes the Managing eLearning blog, has identified five things Tin Can does better than SCORM: Better portability for content and data: Learning experiences no longer need to be housed within an LMS to be trackable. Better analytics of a user’s learning experience: Tin Can is highly flexible and thus can provide a wider variety of more precise analytics. More mobile and offline access for learning: Learners don’t need to be logged into a computer for their learning activities to count. More tracking of real-world activities: Meaningful learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum—it happens in the context of real-world activities. Recording formal learning activity and informal learning activity: Tin Can is able to track any learning activity that can be put into an appropriate statement. The Tin Can website describes how the API can be used to correlate training with job performance: "As we start to aggregate these [activity] streams across an enterprise, or even across an industry, we can start to identify the training paths that lead to the most successful outcomes. Or, conversely, we can identify the training paths that are leading to problematic outcomes. Now we can determine the effectiveness of our training programs and measure ROI." Now be honest: Can your current tracking system do that? What does this have to do with MOOCs? MOOCs are on the cutting edge of corporate training, and for all practical purposes Tin Can is on the cutting edge of MOOCs. But if you look at the goals of Tin Can above, I hope you’ll notice that they overlap quite well with many of the goals of MOOCs, including unbundled content, mobile learning, learning from real-world activities, and integration of formal and informal learning environments. Efforts to "Tin Cannify" popular learning resources, like YouTube videos, are ongoing, and the major MOOC providers have not integrated Tin Can into their courses. But there is some movement in that direction—Google Course Builder was starting to experiment with Tin Can before it integrated with Open edX, and some open-source e-learning platforms like Moodle also support Tin Can. Organizations are increasingly adopting MOOCs for everything from building talent pipelines to standard workforce training, to customer education. Integrating Tin Can into these digital learning environments will further enhance the effectiveness of training programs by providing more, and more relevant, data about all of an organization’s learning activities. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…Megatrends in MOOCs: #4 Microlearning PathsMOOCs and MicrolearningMegatrends in MOOCs: #1 Adoption at Corporate UniversitiesMOOC Analytics: What Corporate Training Can Learn from Big…(Visited 324 times, 1 visits today)

Over the past few months, we have explored the social component of massive open online courses (MOOCs) from several angles. We have examined the role of peer learning in organizations and the importance of creating personal learning networks. We have also reviewed the major technology-enabled learning tools that MOOCs use to support social interaction. In this article and the next, we will put it all together by looking at why businesses should use social media in their training and development programs and various practical ways to implement peer learning through social media in corporate MOOCs. Many organizations are wary of social media, mainly because of a lack of control and the fear that social networking on the job will quickly devolve into "social notworking." This fear is probably largely unfounded—companies were also suspicious about email and the Internet, but there is little doubt (and a lot of empirical research) that these innovations have improved, not harmed, productivity. In today’s environment, businesses that do not adopt new technologies are setting themselves up for failure. According to a 2012 Capgemini report, digital leaders—defined as those companies that use new technologies such as social media, mobile technologies, and analytics—are 26 percent more profitable than their competitors and generate both more revenue and higher market valuation ratios. Some companies are even developing their own internal social media platforms. For example, last year GE launched its own Facebook-like social network, GE Colab. It is used by more than 100,000 GE employees to find information, share knowledge, and solve problems. The platform is used across functions, business units, and even continents. According to GE CIO Ron Utterbeck in an interview for MIT Sloan Management Review, the result is that the company is now solving problems faster, with people from different departments around the world working together. In general, the results of an Aberdeen Group study suggest that employees with extensive digital networks are 7 percent more productive than those without digital networks. So, how can social media enhance training and development? Here are just a few advantages of incorporating social media into training programs: Increasing engagement and interactions. I’ve mentioned before that Millennials spend nearly four hours every day on social networking sites. For this generation, connecting with others online is a natural human interaction and a regular part of the day. Many of them have probably already participated in courses with a social media component, so not to have instant access to their learner network would seem strange. Social media provides avenues for learners to interact not only with each other, but with instructors and subject matter experts as well. Extending the classroom. In traditional programs, when the seminar is finished or the workshop is done, the training is over. No wonder by some estimates people remember less than 20 percent of training content a month later. We just don’t learn that way—we need repetition, engagement, reflection, and most importantly application. Using social media extends the classroom so that students can interact before, during, and after training. They can take time to reflect and then ask questions or participate in discussions. Keeping the conversation going reinforces the content and helps keep the training both current and relevant, which translates into increased retention. Social media training. Many companies are now investing heavily in social media training to avoid online embarrassment and to teach employees how social media can be used productively in the workplace. Incorporating social media into other aspects of a program can both provide this essential training and give learners opportunities to practice their social media skills. This is especially important as more companies are following GE’s lead and developing their own internal social media platforms. This training can also help ensure that employees’ personal online activities don’t reflect negatively on the company or the brand. Developing and improving training content. Interactions on social media can serve as a window into what employees are learning and help instructors identify areas for improvement. Comments and questions from learners can inform future implementations of a course, and trainers can use MOOC analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of the training program. Recruiting top talent. Social media can be a powerful tool for recruiting new hires. In fact, in a recent survey by Spherion Staffing, 47 percent of workers said that when looking for a new job, a company’s online reputation was as important as the job offer. Businesses themselves are a bit slow to catch on to this trend—only 27 percent of companies felt that social media affected how prospective employees viewed their organization. Employees using social media as part of training can be part of the strategy for businesses to maintain their online presence. In addition to helping promote a positive reputation online, MOOCs make it possible for students to "try before they buy." Organizations can use this to their advantage by allowing prospective new hires to enroll, formally or informally, in training MOOCs. Hopefully by now you are convinced that social media integration is essential for your training programs to live up to their potential. In the next article, we will explore the different types of social media, the tools available, and how to use them in your training MOOCs. Copyright Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1Megatrends in MOOCs: #6 More Social, More CollaborativeHow to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 2How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 2(Visited 43 times, 2 visits today)

So you are ready to design your own massive open online course (MOOC) and you want to incorporate social media. How should you go about it? What tools should you use? When the first MOOCs hit the net, the only real option was blogs. Then Coursera, Udacity, and edX popularized discussion boards, similar to what is used in non-MOOC elearning. Since then, social learning tools have exploded onto the market. At a minimum, most MOOCs today use discussion boards, blogs, and microblogs, and many have some kind of dedicated social network. Training MOOCs are by nature different than academic MOOCs. One difference that affects the use of social media is the potential audience and the type of content. Organizations need to decide whether to make their MOOCs truly open and host them publicly on the Internet or whether to restrict part or all of the courses to authorized users. The deciding factor may be the amount of proprietary or competitive information included in the course content. For example, a business etiquette course may be hosted on the Internet, while a sales training course may be run on a private intranet. Different social media tools are available depending on whether or not the training will be made public. Another difference is the number of social media tools used in a given course. In some MOOCs (particularly connectivist MOOCs), learners are encouraged to connect with each other over as many platforms as possible. In a course with tens of thousands of students, this can lead to an overwhelming amount of information being posted, so most students pick and choose how they will engage with the content and one another. In a training MOOC, this model may or may not be appropriate. To prevent learners from spending all day surfing social media sites, instructors can limit the tools to a couple of platforms or divide learners into small groups for discussion and collaboration. The following presents a review of the main types of social media and how they can be used in training MOOCs. Discussion boards Most MOOCs have forums where learners can ask and answer questions and informally discuss course materials, and most learning management systems (LMSs) include discussion board modules. If you are not using an LMS, there are plenty of options available. ProBoards and ZetaBoards are free hosting services for publicly viewable forums. Zoho Discussions and Fusetalk are collaboration software packages for businesses that include discussion forums and a range of other features. Blogs Blogging is well suited for courses in which learners need to reflect on and respond to content, such as case studies. The main difference between blogging and discussion forums is that discussion forums are less structured, while blogs provide a more formal way for learners to articulate their ideas and receive feedback from others. Again, many LMSs have blogging modules but there are other options. For public blogs, WordPress is the most popular and user friendly. Blogger is a Google tool that can easily be integrated with other Google apps. You can create private blogging groups on sites like BuddyPress, but this may not be feasible for very large classes because authorized users must be added individually. For now, the best way to enable private blogging within a MOOC is to use an LMS. Microblogs The main purpose of microblogging in MOOCs is to provide opportunities for synchronous interaction, such as a once-a-week live conversation. For public conversations, Twitter is the undisputed leader, with 500 million users as of March 2013. Nearly 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies already use Twitter, and having your employees Tweet can raise customer awareness and promote positive perceptions of your brand. Yammer is the premier microblogging tool for private conversations. Organizations can set up social networks that are accessible only by employees with company email addresses. Blogs and microblogs aren’t social unless other users can find and comment on others’ posts. To facilitate learner interaction, assign a hashtag (e.g., #BusEtMOOC) to be included in each post. You can then use an aggregator to collect posts on the course dashboard or create a daily or weekly digest of learner social media activity using a content curation application like Scoop.it, Storify, or Flipboard. Facebook, aka social networking Facebook is the prime place for people to connect, and studies have shown that college students (i.e., those entering the workforce) prefer using Facebook to discussion forums hosted within an LMS. Many MOOCs have Facebook pages set up either by the instructors or by groups of ambitious students. You can create a standard page that is publicly viewable or a closed page that requires permission to access. Other sites offering both public and private social networking include Google+ and Hoop.la. Other social media tools There are myriad other social media tools, many of which I’ve mentioned before. Here are a few you may want to explore: HipChat is a private group chat and instant messaging app, great for project teams. For content sharing, Pinterest is hugely popular and already used by members of many professional communities. Bloomfire offers private content sharing for organizations. To increase learner engagement, many MOOCs include synchronous events held on a weekly basis. GoToWebinar allows you to host live lectures and facilitated discussions for up to 1000 people. When deciding which social media tools to use, start by determining the goals of the MOOC. Courses for which knowledge transfer is the main objective can probably get by with discussion boards for Q and A. Blogs are excellent options for courses that require individual reflection and problem-solving. Microblogging and live webinars provide great ways for learners to converse with subject matter experts. Finally, courses that involve higher levels of collaboration and group work can benefit most from social networking and live chat. In the next article in this series, we will examine assessments in MOOCs with a focus on problem-solving. Copyright  Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 2How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 2How to MOOC: Technology-Enabled Learning Tools, Part 2Megatrends in MOOCs: #6 More Social, More CollaborativePeer Learning and MOOCs: Using Technology to Maximize…(Visited 54 times, 1 visits today)

So far in this series, we have looked at ways massive open online courses (MOOCs) have led educators and trainers to rethink how content is delivered and the role of social media in the corporate classroom. This article focuses on a topic that has historically been an albatross around the neck of training and development: assessment. Assessment in corporate training is complicated by a couple of factors. First, there is a widespread misconception that exposure to information equals learning. The result has been an overabundance of objective testing methods that assess information recall but little else. This practice is probably responsible for the fact that employees retain only about 10 to 15 percent of what they learn in training sessions—information is easily forgotten; only when we apply that information does it become knowledge. The second complicating factor is even more troubling: many organizations don’t assess employee learning at all. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, corporate training researcher Eduardo Salas noted that one of the biggest mistakes businesses make in training is failing to evaluate employee learning. If they do, he says, "they usually stop at the first level of evaluation—the reaction data. Companies think that if there is a positive reaction to the training, people will learn. But what we know is that the correlation is very week between reaction to training and actual learning." U.S. companies currently spend about $160 billion every year on training and development. Without evaluating what employees are actually learning, how can they determine whether that training is effective? What is the ROI on this substantial investment? MOOCs have led educators to develop some new perspectives on assessment, and corporate training has a lot to learn from them. To start with, MOOCs are changing the place of assessment in courses in general. As Cathy Sandeen wrote in the May 2013 issue of Research and Practice in Assessment, "within the MOOC world, assessment is a central feature of design from the very beginning. In this new context, assessment is less about compliance than about supporting student learning outcomes and ultimately student success and attainment—directly in the center as it should be." Any type of standard assessment can be implemented in a MOOC. Objective assessments, like multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, can be administered and graded (with feedback optionally provided) using most learning management systems. Subjective assessments are also possible: writing assignments can be peer graded, oral presentations can be given via webinars, and groups can collaborate on projects in virtual workspaces. So the question becomes "What types of assessment can meaningfully support learning outcomes, success, and attainment in a training and development context?" The answer is the types that best lead to improved job performance. A recent Forbes article identified the top 10 skills that organizations are looking for in new employees. It may surprise you to learn that hard skills such as computer programming didn’t even crack the top four. In fact, the four most in-demand skills are critical thinking, complex problem solving, judgment and decision-making, and active listening. These skills cannot be assessed using standard objective measures. A host of new MOOCs are exploring the potential of the massive format to develop these skills and lead to meaningful outcomes using problem-based learning. In this model, students learn the content in a real-world environment and are assessed using real-world problems. These courses, which include the University of Washington’s "Introduction to Data Science" and the University of Virginia’s "Foundations of Business Strategy" maximize the advantages of the MOOC format by focusing on applied knowledge rather than information transfer, facilitating connections and collaborations among students, and crowdsourcing solutions to complex challenges. The courses are run in cooperation with Coursolve, a company that connects students with organizations that have problems to solve, so the students are working on real problems faced by real businesses. The organizations involved in this initiative range from entrepreneurs, small business owners, and non-profits to multinational giants like General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and Walmart. So, how can you best evaluate what your employees are learning? As we mentioned, MOOCs can handle any type of assessment, and for some courses testing information recall using the testing module in your learning management system may be sufficient. But if you want your employees to translate that information into meaningful knowledge they will remember and can apply, consider using problem-based assessments. There are several ways you can implement problem-based learning: For public MOOCs run on the Internet, you can design problems as case studies, simulations, or even games. For private MOOCs run on an intranet, you can use real challenges your company is facing and crowdsource talent from across the entire organization. You can have employees design or pick their own challenges to solve. You can consider joining with Coursolve to crowdsource your organization’s problem-solving on an even larger scale. Unless you develop grading rubrics, problem-solving assessments may not result in standard scores like objective assessments do. But does it matter? The Internet and mobile technologies provide unlimited access to information so we no longer need to remember everything we learn. Assessment is only meaningful if it is tied to meaningful outcomes, and the goal of training is for employees to improve their core job skills, with many courses aimed at developing the skills in the Forbes top four. The effectiveness of these programs should be measured not by scores on a test, but by improved productivity and performance and their impact on the organization’s bottom line. There are many other options for assessing learning, but the goal of this article was to get you thinking about the role of MOOCs and problem solving in training programs. In the final article in this series, we will take a look at different ways to recognize and reward MOOC achievements. Copyright Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:How to MOOC: Meaningful Assessment Through Real-World…How MOOCs Can Solve Common Training ProblemsMeasuring Success (ROI) of a Training MOOC, Part 2Training Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessHow to MOOC: Designing Effective MOOC Training Programs(Visited 148 times, 1 visits today)

On this blog, we have looked at massive open online courses (MOOCs) from a variety of perspectives. We have explored what MOOCs are and what they can do, the many reasons corporate training departments are ripe for MOOC disruption, and how to use various technology-enabled learning tools to design and run a MOOC. One issue we have not addressed, and which will be the focus of this next short series, is how to get the support—from executives, managers, and staff—necessary for a MOOC’s success. Upper-level buy-in is important for all L&D initiatives, but perhaps even more so with MOOCs. Many of the advantages of using this training format, for example the development of personal learning networks, only come when a course is integrated both horizontally and vertically throughout an organization. The good news is that employers are proving to be highly receptive to using MOOCs for employees’ professional development. A study released earlier this year by Duke University and RTI International found that while only 7% of employers were using MOOCs for training, another 5% were considering doing so, and an additional 71% could see their organization doing so in the future. These numbers suggest that interest in MOOCs is growing and that the vast majority of organizations are starting to recognize the value of this type of training. The key to obtaining executive and management buy-in is first to help them understand the need for change and then to present a plan for bringing about that change. Change management expert Kirk Sievert recommends following the "Five Bs of Executive Buy-In": Best practices Business case Be specific Be assertive Bring in an expert Here are some strategies to help you obtain executive and management buy-in for MOOCs. Provide education about what MOOCs are and how they can be used In the Duke/RTI study mentioned above, fewer than one-third of the participants had actually heard of MOOCs. After learning about them, however, most were positive about the possibility of using the courses for recruiting, hiring, and employees’ professional development. Don’t assume that your administrators and managers already know about MOOCs, or that what they do know is correct. Educate them about the format and the technologies, and demonstrate the various ways MOOCs could be incorporated into your current training program, such as in a hybrid environment. Focus on your organization’s greatest training needs Whatever industry you are in, your company will likely need to provide a lot more training in the next few years than you have in the past. During the 2008 recession, training budgets were on the chopping block, and within these, entry-level training was often the first to go. However, those companies that cut their training a few years ago are now finding themselves in a tough position as they start to enter a growth phase. Couple this with the fact that nearly 80% of this year’s college graduates expect formal training from their first employer and you have a situation in which companies are not currently equipped to deliver the amount of training they need to in order to remain competitive. MOOCs provide the ideal digital learning environments to meet the needs of organizations facing this challenge: they can provide training to a lot of people at the same time, and at a lower cost than instructor-led training. Another great place to introduce MOOCs is for compliance training. Let’s face it, compliance training is the pits. No one—not trainers, not staff—has ever uttered the words, "Boy am I enjoying this compliance training!" However, in a recent survey of more than 400 companies, performed by the Brandon Hall Group, two-thirds of respondents said that compliance training was essential to implementing their business strategies, and nearly 30% rated compliance training as their firm’s most important learning program, followed by leadership development training and then job-specific technical skills. Many compliance training programs are currently offered as video-based courses, so the content is already online. Moving these programs into a MOOC format can make them more engaging, and while I can’t promise that compliance training will ever be fun, adding the social and interactive elements of MOOCs can at least make it not quite so dull. Show ‘em the money The various ways MOOCs can save an organization money will be the focus of a later post in this series, but just for fun, take a stab at estimating the realcost of your current training program. By real cost I mean all of the costs, including not just the training itself, but also travel (airfare, accommodations, meals and entertainment), the cost of employees not being at their desks, the cost of providing retraining, and even the cost associated with mistakes that would not have been made if employees had received the proper training. These items are not always considered in calculating training costs, but they are real and they can be substantial. Present case studies Many large, successful companies have already ventured down the MOOC route. For example, Yahoo! offers reimbursement for employees who earn verified certificates from Coursera, and McAfee uses MOOCs to flip its new-hire orientation. Here are some more examples of how MOOCs are used in workplace training. Also check out this description of how medical device maker Ethicon is using MOOCs as part of its content marketing strategy. I hope this post has given you some ideas about how to frame MOOCs to gain upper-level buy-in. Also, check out the How to MOOC series to learn about best practices. In the next article, we will look at how to obtain buy-in from an equally important group: the employees who will constitute the MOOC learners. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:How MOOCs Can Save Your Organization Time and MoneyCorporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from EmployeesMegatrends in MOOCS: #5 Lifelong LearningHow MOOCs Are Used in Workplace TrainingUsing MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…(Visited 82 times, 1 visits today)

How does your company currently get buy-in from employees for your training programs? I’m willing to bet that for a reasonably large percentage of organizations, that question isn’t even asked on a regular basis. Training is too often imposed on employees in a top-down fashion—e.g., "The new course on [fill in the blank] runs Monday through Wednesday from 9 to 5. See you then." If you ever wonder why employees seem less than thrilled to attend training sessions, and then proceed to forget most of what they learn, a lack of buy-in is probably the culprit. MOOCs are different. They are flexible training formats in which the learners have full independence and control of their own learning experiences. Because they are bottom-up approaches, gaining employee buy-in is absolutely crucial to their success. So, how do you do it? The first step in procuring employee buy-in, and arguably the one on which the entire project hinges, is ensuring you have the support of managers and executives. I explored this topic extensively in the previous post. Depending on whether your current programs are delivered via instructor-led training or elearning, MOOCs may be a larger or a smaller change, but they represent a change nonetheless. And as with any organizational change, upper-level support is essential. The next step in convincing employees to give MOOCs a try is to show how the courses will directly benefit them. Trainers and administrators may be interested in the features of MOOCs (e.g., technologies, security, etc.), but users want to know about the benefits (i.e., "What’s in it for me?"). One way to approach this is by answering the questions of what, why, and how. The What: Provide education about what MOOCs are We saw in the post about getting executive and manager buy-in that only about one-third of employers have heard of MOOCs, but that after learning about them most feel positively about the courses. The same is likely true of the employees at most companies—a certain percentage have likely heard about MOOCs, and some may even have tried a course or two, but there will still be plenty of staff members who have no idea what they are. You may even have employees who have never taken a course online. Here is where a good educational PR campaign will prove invaluable. Make a presentation or a video about what MOOCs are. Encourage employees to explore some academic MOOC providers like Coursera and edX—maybe even recommend a few courses for them to take. Since showing trumps telling, you could even run a mini-MOOC about what the courses are, what they entail, and their advantages for both organizations and learners. The Why: Show employees why MOOCs are relevant to their jobs Here’s a disturbing statistic: Despite the fact that employees want more training opportunities, 62% of those who have training available believe that training is either somewhat or not at all applicable to their job. This statistic seems to suggest a major disconnect between L&D departments and the employees they are in charge of training. Depending on the needs and priorities of your organization, you may approach the issue of relevance in several different ways. One suggestion is to ask employees what type of training is most relevant to them and then use that information to design your first MOOC. Another option is to focus your first MOOC around providing performance support, or just-in-time training, which employees can use immediately on the job. You could also create your first MOOC to support a current hot topic in your organization, such as the adoption of a new technology. These are only a few out of the many possibilities. The point is simply that to achieve buy-in for the MOOC format, start with a training content area that is already in demand in your organization. The How: Provide clear instructions and expectations for how the MOOC will proceed MOOCs are completely different from instructor-led training, and even significantly different from traditional e-learning. For employees who haven’t ever taken an online course, diving into a massive one could be intimidating. Therefore, it is essential to clearly communicate how the course will proceed and how employees are expected to interact with it. Here are some of the questions that need to be answered in establishing the "how": Will the course be scheduled or self-paced? Is there a deadline to complete it? How will employees access the course (work computer, personal mobile device, other)? When will employees access the course? Will it be accessible from offsite? Will employees be given work time in which to complete the course? Will they be given opportunities to practice what they are learning? Is it mandatory for employees to complete all modules in order or can they skip around? How will learners interact with instructors and one another (discussion boards, social media, email, virtual classrooms, other)? What communication guidelines need to be established (e.g., etiquette)? Where can learners go for help if they need it? How will course participation be tracked? How will learning be assessed? What impact might participation in the MOOC have on employee performance reviews or promotions? Are there other training options available for those who are unwilling or unable to participate in the MOOC? This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does illustrate the types of information employees will likely seek as they try to wrap their heads around this new learning experience. The approach you will take toward procuring employee buy-in will depend on your organization. If you are a tech-savvy company with a high percentage of Millennial workers, then the idea of using mobile devices for self-paced training won’t seem so out there. If your workforce is older or training programs have until now been entirely instructor-led, then the hurdle may be a little higher. However, keep in mind that people want more training, and almost two-thirds don’t feel that their workplace learning needs are currently being met. Check out my article Training Mojo: Developing a Culture of Training by Getting Buy-In from Stakeholders and Staff for more ideas on how to obtain buy-in for training at all levels of your company. Copyright 2014 Bryant Nielson. All Rights Reserved. Bryant Nielson - Managing Director of CapitalWave Inc.- Being a big believer in Technology Enabled Learning, Bryant seeks to create awareness, motivate adoption and engage organizations and people in the changing business of education. Bryant is a entrepreneur, trainer, and strategic training adviser for many organizations. Bryant’s business career has been based on his results-oriented style of empowering the individual. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:Training Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessWhy Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…Training in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD EnvironmentCorporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and ManagersMOOCs and Performance Support(Visited 213 times, 1 visits today)