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)

Organizations are now spending more on corporate training than they have in more than seven years. According to Bersin by Deloitte’s 2014 Corporate Learning Factbook, U.S. companies increased their spending on corporate training by 15% in 2013. Training is now a $70 billion industry in the United States and a $130 billion industry worldwide. This is surely a good sign for the economy, and for training professionals, but what does it mean for companies? Well, it doesn’t mean that all of these organizations are suddenly flush and have extra money to spend. Instead, organizations are facing serious skills gaps that are already threatening their bottom line and promising to have even more of an impact in the future. Employees require much more training than companies were previously providing, and it is taking a toll. So while businesses may have increased their L&D budgets by 15%, they are expecting a much greater increase in both the amount and the quality of the training provided. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) allow organizations to deliver that increased and high-quality training their employees need without necessitating even larger increases in the training budget. In fact, compared to instructor-led training and even traditional e-learning, MOOCs can even confer cost savings. Here are five ways MOOCs can save your organization time and money. Eliminating many travel, logistics, and resource-related expenses Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. MOOCs eliminate the need for companies to spend any money at all on transportation, accommodations, meals, entertainment, or other items associated with travel. For a company that has locations spread across a wide geographical area, this factor alone can translate into significantly savings. Other logistical expenses MOOCs eliminate include costs associated with booking event space for seminars, providing transportation and meals for employees who attend training off-sites, and paying administrative staff to make all of the arrangements. Decreasing the marginal cost of training additional employees Once a MOOC is designed, developed, and put online, the course can be delivered to 10 or 1,000 or 10,000 employees. As long as your learning management system can handle unlimited learners, there is no marginal cost associated with training additional employees. If the MOOC is completely self-paced and independent, it can be run as many times as necessary. If it is moderated, there will be costs associated with instructor time, but those costs will by far undercut what it would cost to have the same instructor deliver the same training multiple times in person. Reducing training time Though training time isn’t always adequately accounted for in cost estimates, this is an area where MOOCs can have a major impact in reducing the unstated costs associated with employees not being at their desks. Moving from instructor-led training to e-learning can reduce training time by up to 60%, and though hard data are not yet available, MOOCs can lead to even more time savings. Not only are MOOCs more efficient than instructor-led training, but they can also save significant training time by being more personalized. In a traditional course, all employees must work through all of the material at the same pace. MOOCs, on the other hand, allow employees to customize their learning experiences—skipping the content they already know and focusing more on the gaps in their knowledge and skills. Just to illustrate how big this could potentially be, consider the example of McAfee, which used a MOOC model to revamp its new-hire orientation, a program that had previously involved 40 hours of pre-work, five days of on-site training, and post-work. Not only did the MOOC format allow McAfee to significantly cut the time required for its new-hire training, but its sales staff attribute $500,000 worth of sales per year to the skills they learned in the MOOC. Reducing the need for re-training The amount of information employees retain from traditional training sessions generally ranges from little to less. According to HR expert Ed Holton, retention rates for training range between 10 and 30%. That statistic is not only embarrassing, but it also means that organizations must spend additional money on retraining (thus more time employees spend away from their desks), not to mention the cost of employees forgetting key information. E-learning has been shown to increase information retention by up to 60% over instructor-led training. Again, MOOCs can improve on this number by providing a platform for just-in-time training and performance support. Your employees will never remember everything, but using MOOCs they can in essence take charge of their own retraining by the accessing learning resources and materials they need exactly when they need them. Keeping organizations current Here is another cost that is very difficult to measure, but nonetheless significant. How much does your organization lose by not being up-to-date in your industry? In a recent survey, 72% of companies said that e-learning helps them keep current and remain competitive. Using a MOOC platform along with the abundant technology-enabled learning tools available to create and distribute content, new information that comes out today can quite literally reach your entire organization tomorrow. MOOCs also allow employees to keep their skills up-to-date by providing ways for them to independently pursue their own professional development. U.S. companies are spending somewhere in the range of $1200 on training per employee per year. By adopting MOOCs for their L&D programs, organizations can ensure that more of that amount is going toward actually providing training for employees rather than to things like travel, renting spaces, and so on. In addition, the increased efficiency of MOOCs means employees can spend less time learning and more time on revenue-generating activities. Contact me for more information about how MOOCs can save your organization money while enhancing the quality of your training. 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:2014: The Year of the Corporate MOOC?Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and ManagersShould your corporate training strategy move to the MOOC?Using MOOCs: Finding and Onboarding New EmployeesUsing MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…(Visited 78 times, 1 visits today)

Digital learning environments, like e-learning, online training, and massive open online courses (MOOCs), have without a doubt been the biggest influencers on corporate training practice over the past several years. According to recent statistics, 80% of organizations offer online training and companies that have adopted e-learning have realized significant benefits, including 60% reduction in training time. But while traditional e-learning may offer improvements over instructor-led training, from a learner’s perspective, it still leaves much to be desired. As this Learn Dash infographic shows, e-learners become frustrated by many aspects of their courses, including: Finding lists of procedures and regulations tedious (76%) Getting bored with the courses (38%) Hating it when the pace is too fast or too slow (37%) In the previous post, we explored how MOOCs can improve on instructor-led training and traditional e-learning in terms of saving organizations both time and money. But of course the ultimate goal of training is have your employees learn something, which requires keeping them engaged. Here are nine reasons your existing e-learning courses are failing and how MOOCs can help. They’re boring. E-learning is attributed with being more engaging than listening to (or sleeping through) a lecture, but clicking "Next-Next-Next" on a PowerPoint presentation isn’t exactly a cognitive challenge. Gamification, simulations, interactive video, bite-sized content, interaction with fellow learners—these are just a couple of features of MOOCs that make them more engaging than traditional e-learning. They attempt to replicate instructor-led training courses. The absolutely worst approach to designing a digital course is to take the content from an instructor-led training course, put it online, and call it done. Many e-learning courses fail to take advantage of the huge potential benefits of online learning. In contrast, the best MOOCs incorporate a variety of technologies for content creation, curation, and distribution, as well as communication and collaboration, which greatly enhance the effectiveness of digital learning environments. They don’t allow learners to determine the pace or order of learning. One hand-me-down that e-learning inherited from instructor-led training is the idea that a certain course should take one or two or 40 hours to complete. Often, these time constraints are fairly strict, with little opportunity for learners to take control. However people learn at different paces, and employees in an organization all have different levels of knowledge going into the courses. The MOOC format allows employees to move fluidly throughout each course, spending more time on the content they need and skipping or testing out of what they already know. They aren’t interactive. Traditional e-learning provides one level of interaction, between the learner and the computer. But a wealth of data has shown the importance of learning through interaction with others (often referred to as social or informal learning). By using various social and communication platforms, MOOCs provide two additional levels of interaction: learner-instructor and learner-learner. They aren’t relevant. Both instructor-led training and traditional e-learning are primarily used to deliver just-in-case training. However, this is one of the main reasons corporate training is ineffective: it isn’t relevant to what employees are doing at the time. Relevance is a top motivator for learners, and the lack of relevance is one of the top causes of frustration. By using MOOCs to provide performance support and just-in-time training, L&D departments can ensure that training sessions are relevant and that information is more likely to be remembered. They don’t involve real-world problem-solving or decision-making. According to Learn Dash, more than half of e-learners want their training to involve real-life situations and decision-making scenarios. Unfortunately, too much e-learning still takes the form of a content dump rather than an environment where employees can practice new skills before applying them on the job. As flexible social learning environments, MOOCs provide opportunities for collaboration, project-based learning, and real-world problem-solving. They use summative rather than formative assessments. How many of your e-learning courses still consist of a PowerPoint deck followed by a multiple choice quiz? The first problem is that this is boring. The second problem is that this type of assessment doesn’t translate into or measure real learning. People who learn digitally prefer to be tested throughout a course rather than taking a single test at the end—learners find this more challenging and thus more engaging. MOOCs, which are based around the concept of bite-sized learning activities, allow for more frequent and more varied forms of assessment than are found in standard e-learning. They aren’t compatible with employees’ mobile devices. The BYOD (bring your own device) movement is on the upswing. Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of employers will no longer supply mobile devices for their employees at all—they will expect their employees to use their own. Mobile learning is one of this year’s hottest trends, and it is considered a key strategy for training members of the Millennial generation. Training courses that can’t be accessed via learners’ personal mobile devices are not only less useful for just-in-time learning, but they risk not being useful at all, because employees simply won’t access them. Many features of MOOCs are already mobile compatible (e.g., videos, social media streams), and educational technology companies are working to make all aspects of the courses available for mobile. Their analytics mean nothing. How do you track employees’ engagement in your e-learning courses? Similar to instructor-led training, which is often measured by seat time, e-learning analytics often focus entirely on completion rate. However, this statistic doesn’t mean very much, and research has shown that learners interact with online courses in sophisticated ways that completion rate alone can’t measure. MOOCs offer companies the opportunity to collect huge amounts of data, and to learn from data collected by others, to better assess and improve their training courses. These nine factors highlight why MOOCs are replacing both instructor-led training and standard e-learning in companies of all sizes, in many industries. Contact me for more information about how you can use MOOCs to up your firm’s training game. 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 MOOCsTraining Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILTMeasuring Success (ROI) of a Training MOOC, Part 2Beyond Cost-Savings: Advantages of MOOCs for Corporate…(Visited 352 times, 2 visits today)

For more than a year now, this blog has focused on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We’ve looked at what they are, the technologies that underlie them, and their place in organizational and employee learning and development. At this point, it feels like a good time to take a step back from the ROIs and the how-tos, and explore the top reason MOOCs are having such a huge impact on corporate training. MOOCs are not just fancy new technologies to attract and retain Millennials. Nor are they just more efficient methods for companies to save time and money while also delivering high-quality training. Over the past few years, especially as the skills gaps continue to widen and digital technologies pervade every aspect of our personal and professional lives, some of the fundamental ideas that have defined training for decades are shifting. Training is not only moving from in-person to online, but from just-in-case to just-in-time and from knowledge transfer to performance support. MOOCs have become popular largely because their flexible format allows companies to deliver the type of training required in the increasingly ad-hoc, BYOD environment that is the modern workplace. Training with a purpose The educational needs of students in a college classroom are different from the training needs of employees at a company, but for many years the two followed roughly the same model: learners would sit in a classroom and (supposedly) gain knowledge and skills that they would use at some undetermined point in the future. In workforce education, this model resulted in formats like extended new-hire orientation sessions, once-a-year training retreats, and half- or full-day seminars offered every so often. The problem with this model is that the training is often delivered without regard to employees’ actual needs. If we’ve learned anything at all about best practices over the years, it’s that training must be relevant. Just-in-case, in-advance training simply isn’t immediately relevant, so it really should come as no surprise that employees forget pretty close to all of it. With digital learning environments, training has become more ad hoc—delivered just-in-time and for a particular purpose. Although employees still need quality conceptual training, they also need access to knowledge and resources that they can use as performance support. The advantage of MOOCs is that they provide the best of both worlds. MOOCs are highly flexible learning environments that can be customized by both trainers and learners to meet the needs of the organization and the individuals within it. The combination of resources, including videos, tutorials, and simulations, and social forums, where learners can collaborate with subject matter experts and with one another, provides the opportunity for learners to gain conceptual knowledge and also to access performance support resources at the moment a problem presents itself. They provide learners with the training they need—where, when, and in the format they need it. Learning on the go The BYOD trend, which is continuing to rise dramatically, has largely been driven by employees—they want to use their personal laptops, smartphones, and tablets at work, and evidence suggests that they are doing it, regardless of whether their organization supports it. According to Adrian Drury of tech research firm Ovum, "Employees are finding ways to do it [use their own devices] whether IT knows about it or not. Really what we are seeing is enterprise multi-screening in exactly the same way as we see multi-screening in the home. We are seeing multi-screening in the workplace [because] people just want to use the right screen at the right time to get the job done." MOOCs that are responsive—i.e., they provide support for all operating systems and mobile platforms—make it possible for employees to use the "right screen at the right time," which might be their computer while at work, their smartphone while at a customer site, or their tablet while on the train home. BYOD mobile learning is really only starting to take off, but it is going to be big and companies that embrace it will reap vast rewards. According to a 2013 survey, 99% of mobile learners believed that the format enhanced their learning, and 100% said they would complete more training using this format. I challenge you to find any other training format that inspires that kind of optimism. MOOC providers and learning management system vendors are still working out how to make the courses 100% supported. Currently, although learners can do some things, like watch lectures and tune into social media chats, on their mobile devices, the ability to participate fully in a mobile MOOC is not yet available everywhere. However, just a few months ago, U.K. company Qualt launched the first mobile-only MOOC platform, and other organizations are rushing to follow suit. The corporate training landscape has fundamentally changed. New technologies, the skills gap, employees’ demands for more flexible training—these are all factors driving this evolution. Because of their flexibility and their customizability, MOOCs are uniquely positioned among training formats to meet the learning needs of the 21st century workforce. 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:MOOCs and Performance SupportHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILT13 Megatrends in MOOCsMegatrends in MOOCs: #8 Mobile LearningMegatrends in MOOCs: #4 Microlearning Paths(Visited 152 times, 1 visits today)

How do your employees feel about your organization’s current training program? Are they getting the training they need? Do they find that training valuable? Engaging? Relevant? Does it help them do their jobs better? Corporate learners today need something different from their training than they did in the past. This article will focus on those needs and on how massive open online courses (MOOCs) can address them. More training There are no two ways about it: today’s employees need more training—both more than they have ever needed before and more than they are currently getting. This need takes a variety of forms: More new-hire training. A recent Accenture survey revealed that while 80% of 2014 graduates expected formal training at their first job, fewer than half of 2012 and 2013 graduates actually received any training at all. Companies, especially those facing a skills gap, need to provide more training to help new hires be successful on the job. More regular training. With the pace of technological change, the half-life of skills is getting shorter. In many cases, knowledge and skills acquired five or 10 years ago are now obsolete. This is especially true in tech industries, where skills that were in hot demand even a few months ago may already be in need of an update. Annual or biannual training isn’t sufficient to keep up with the pace of change. As management consultant Mark Lukens wrote for Fast Company, the traditional once-a-year approach to training often focuses more on filling gaps and fixing weaknesses rather than on developing strengths. It also encourages complacency. Lukens suggests that organizations should "change goals as they become redundant or something better shows up, not just because it’s January." More varied training. According to a new study by IBM, 80% of companies are now looking outside of their IT departments for ideas to bridge technical skills gaps. With boundaries between departments becoming blurrier, today’s employees need more well-rounded training options, including technical training outside of their areas of expertise and soft skills training to improve communication and collaboration. Innovation training. Innovation is the key to success in today’s competitive business landscape. Innovation expert Anthony Ferrier recommends training employees at all levels how to be innovative, not just to manage innovation. This training can result in benefits an improved bottom line and more empowered and engaged employees. MOOCs can help companies provide the increased training their employees require without significantly expanding their training staff. The courses can be offered to an unlimited number of learners, an unlimited number of times, whenever they are needed. In addition, there are already MOOCs available for topics such as innovation, which may represent new training areas for many firms. Efficiency, immediacy, and relevance Today’s corporate learners want training that meets their needs quickly, efficiently, and right at the moment those needs arise. These are ideas we’ve explored before. One of the biggest problems of both ILT and traditional e-learning is that the skills they teach are often not immediately applicable to the job, which results in inefficiencies due to forgetting and the need for retraining. MOOCs help companies deliver training that is efficient, timely, and most importantly relevant to learners’ needs. Mobility We’ve covered the trend toward mobile learning, but the idea of mobility goes beyond just being able to learn while sitting on the subway. Mobile users interact with technology in ways that are leading to a whole new style of learning. On Sh!ft’s eLearning blog, Karla Gutierrez highlights five "mobile usage habits of today’s corporate learner." Mobile users: Quickly move from one device to another, Are not willing to wait, Love to engage with online videos, Engage in short bursts of activity, and Are always switched on wherever they are. ILT doesn’t cater to any of these. Even traditional e-learning is limited to providing online videos in short burst of activity. Because of their flexibility, MOOCs are the only training format that can currently address all five of these learner habits. Social and experiential learning To say that social learning is the primary means by which employees learn is understating the fact…by a long shot. Social learning makes up such a huge portion of corporate training that in 2012 large companies tripled their spending on it, compared to two years earlier. This trend is only growing as informal social learning experiences, like peer learning and personal learning networks, are getting more attention. As MOOC technologies improve, the courses are becoming even more social, leading to increased opportunities for collaborative, project-based, experiential learning that echoes what employees are expected to do on the job. Training and development I alluded to this in the section on more training, but it is important enough to merit its own discussion. Today’s corporate learners require both training to meet their current needs and development to meet their needs (and the organization’s needs) in the future. Using MOOCs is likely the only way that many companies can even begin to provide this scope of training. Together, these learner needs are a tall order, especially as, as Marcia Conner puts it, "the L&D footprint continues to shrink," by which she means that the ratio of training staff to learners is declining. Meeting all of these needs via ILT or even traditional e-learning is beyond the ability of most, if not all, organizations. But it isn’t beyond the ability of MOOCs. In order to meet the growing needs of today’s corporate learners, it’s time for training departments to start thinking big. 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…MOOCs at the 5 Moments of Learning NeedMegatrends in MOOCs: #1 Adoption at Corporate UniversitiesMOOCs and Performance SupportHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILT(Visited 226 times, 1 visits today)

Your training programs need a reboot. You need to train more learners and get them up to speed faster, and you need to do it on what seems like an ever-tightening budget. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are potentially an excellent solution to help you meet your training goals. But is your company ready? Rolling out new training initiatives is always challenging, and it’s important to assess the climate in your organization to ensure it is up to the challenge. Below are several questions to ask yourself to help you decide whether your company is ready for a MOOC. Do you have a large number of employees who need to learn the same things? If your organization’s training needs can be satisfied by a series of one-time seminars each delivered to a different small group of people, a MOOC is probably not the best option. But, if you have a large number of geographically diverse learners who need consistent, standardized training, MOOCs can provide huge benefits. According to Bersin’s 2013 Corporate Learning Factbook, companies spend anywhere from $100 to $500 per employee per year teaching core business skills like basic management, office productivity, and Microsoft Office. MOOCs can teach these skills just as effectively and at a significantly reduced cost. Do all of your potential trainees have access to computers and/or mobile devices? MOOCs particularly excel at providing performance support and just-in-time training for learners on the go. Thus, a major assumption of the courses is that all learners will have access to them as needed. In many corporate environments, such as in the financial industry, this is a non-issue: a recent Forrester study found that 61% of information workers work outside of the office and most use at least three different devices every day. However, in environments like manufacturing, not all employees may have on-the-job access to devices. Problems with technology and not being able to use one’s device(s) of choice are two of the biggest sources of frustration with digital learning in general. In a MOOC, which may or may not be moderated, these issues can potentially be compounded. Are your employees willing and able to learn independently? MOOCs come in many varieties. They may be scheduled and closely moderated, or they may be self-paced and not moderated at all. In either case, they usually involve less instructor-student interaction than is present in most instructor-led trainings, and often less than is typical of traditional e-learning. For a MOOC to work, your employees need to be willing and able to learn on their own, which requires both motivation and effective time management. As a test, consider running a short introductory MOOC, or even just a single module, and soliciting feedback from learners before transferring your entire training program into a new format. Do you have a way to access or produce effective online learning content? The content for MOOCs can come from a variety of places, including (but certainly not limited to) open educational resources, vendors, and your own in-house training content. They key is that that content needs to be in a format that is conducive to being accessed online and from different devices. Video is the most common and most easily accessible content format for MOOCs. Do you have the technology and the technological expertise to support a MOOC? This question is a bit difficult to frame precisely because there is no one single MOOC technology. Many learning management systems (LMSs) now offer MOOC support, and if you are already using an online LMS, there may be no additional modules or know-how necessary to get your first MOOC up and running. On the other hand, MOOCs can be and are run outside of formal LMSs all of the time, and if you decide to purchase a MOOC from a third-party vendor, that vendor may bear the technology responsibility. The important thing is to ensure that you have the technology and expertise required to support the type of MOOC you want to run. Do you have protocols and systems in place to facilitate collaboration and communication? MOOCs can be siloed, but they are used to their best advantage when they enable collaboration and communication among learners. If you don’t already have methods and standards in place for cross-location and cross-departmental communication, now is the time. This is particularly important if you plan to use any social media tools, via either a local intranet or the wider Internet. Have you clearly defined the goals of the training and how employees will be assessed? The success of instructor-led training is often (albeit erroneously) assessed based on attendance; in traditional e-learning, basic measures include time on task and final test scores. Using activities like real-world problem solving, MOOCs have the potential to greatly increase the scope of course assessments, allowing success to be based on more relevant factors like improved productivity and increased sales. In order to get make sure the learners, trainers, and managers are all on the same page, the goals of the training and the metrics you will use to evaluate it should be articulated in advance. Do you have buy-in at all levels of your organization? If your responses to the previous seven questions were positive, then you are already in pretty good position, but a MOOC is an organizational endeavor and thus obtaining buy-in from all levels of the organization is key. For ideas on how to get to "yes," see my previous articles on getting buy-in from managers, executives, and employees. Hopefully you are able to answer most of these questions in the affirmative. If not, these questions can help you identify areas where you may need to put in some thought. Contact me for more information and strategies for how to boost your company’s MOOC readiness. 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:Strategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from EmployeesHow to MOOC: Designing Effective MOOC Training ProgramsWhy Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…ILT, Elearning, or MOOC? When to Use Common Training Formats(Visited 112 times, 1 visits today)

So, you have decided to replace, or at least supplement, some of your instructor-led training (ILT) with a massive open online course (MOOC). Great! You are about to join the myriad companies that have seen their training programs blossom through the incorporation of this new form of technology-enabled learning. Now what? Moving from traditional ILT to a MOOC is not as simple as just putting your current learning resources online. In fact, studies have shown that this approach is the exact opposite of what you want to do. The best MOOCs are designed as MOOCs from the ground up, from a digital perspective and taking full advantage of the available technologies. This article outlines an overall approach for making the transition from ILT to a MOOC. Plan, plan, and then plan some more Teaching a MOOC is much different from leading an in-person training course, and what all of the differences point to is the need for more advance planning than you’ve probably ever done before. You will be developing the entire course in advance for an audience with whom you may or may not interact on a personal level. This means you won’t be able to see the confused looks on learners’ faces when something is unclear, or be able to change things up quickly when you observe them nodding off. You will also be recording video, which is more difficult (and more expensive) to reshoot when you make a mistake than it is to correct an error or verbal flub during a face-to-face lecture. The more you plan, revise, and practice prior to actually pressing "Record," the better your course will be, and the fewer retakes will be necessary. Redesign course materials with learners’ needs in mind Today’s corporate learners are diverse group with diverse needs. They want training to be efficient, immediate, and relevant. They want to be able to access that learning on their own schedules and using their own devices. ILT is rarely designed with these needs in mind, but MOOCs need to be. Moving from ILT to a MOOC does not mean just splitting lectures you already have into bite-sized pieces. In fact, research has shown that this is the least effective way to convert a traditional class into a MOOC. Instead, take your course materials and focus on creating short, standalone lessons. This will give learners ultimate flexibility in when and how they access the resources. Another aspect of designing with learners’ needs in mind is thinking about navigation. In ILT you lead learners through the course materials in real time; in MOOCs you don’t have this opportunity, so you need to incorporate this guidance into the course itself. To help students work through the materials on their own, provide plenty of navigation signposts, along with a welcome page or orientation video explaining how everything will work. Create active assessments, and plenty of them One general feature of MOOCs is that they have more assessments than ILT or traditional elearning, and those assessments are more learner-centered. It is fairly standard, especially in corporate MOOCs, to have pre-knowledge assessments, individual video questions, module exams, and post-knowledge assessments. These assessments increase engagement and provide a way for learners to judge their progress long the way. MOOCs can also incorporate a variety of active assessments, from participating in course discussions to working on individual or collaborative projects. Maria Andersen, who works at Canvas and teaches a MOOC through the Canvas Network, recommends that assessments in MOOCs should "benefit the students not the instructor," which means that they should provide additional learning activities, not just serve as attendance markers, which is often the case in ILT. The assessments in MOOCs can be machine-graded, peer-graded, instructor-graded, or even ungraded. The important thing is that they are meaningful. Many of the assessments you use already can likely be adapted to the MOOC format fairly easily. Be prepared to play a different role One of the most difficult parts of transitioning from ILT to MOOCs as an instructor is getting used to the different role you will play. In a course that is not moderated, your role may be limited to creating the course materials. In a moderated course, you may answer questions on discussion forums and clarify concepts as needed. In either case, you will need to step back—likely more than you are used to—and allow the learners to engage with the course on their own. Learn from the data MOOCs have the ability to produce huge amounts of data, including how long learners spend with the materials and how actively they participate. This is an opportunity many ILT implementations don’t afford. Analyzing and using the data generated by your MOOC can help you both make the MOOC better for next time and improve your ILT courses. Don’t try to do it alone Transitioning from ILT to a MOOC is a huge endeavor, and not one you should attempt alone. In many companies, an ILT course might be developed and delivered by just one person, start to finish. MOOCs don’t work this way. The MOOC development team usually includes several members of the L&D team, a technical support team, and often an outside consultant specializing in MOOC design and pedagogy. Finally, what better way to learn about MOOCs and how to design and teach them effectively than by taking one yourself? Check out Coursera’s Learning to Teach Online for more strategies to help you make the move into a 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:What a MOOC Is and What It Isn’tHow to MOOC: Designing Effective MOOC Training ProgramsWhat Style of MOOC is Right for You?Training Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessNew MOOC Models: Blended Learning(Visited 201 times, 1 visits today)

From the outside, corporate training appears to be something of a paradox. On one hand, it is becoming ever more necessary for companies to provide training, especially for recent college graduates: according to a Gallup survey, only 11% of business leaders believe that college graduates are adequately prepared to succeed in the workplace. Corporate training is also a huge factor in company success—a 2000 analysis by Laurie J. Bassie found that investing $1,500 per employee per year leads to 24% higher profit margins and a more than 200% increase in revenue per employee. On the other, research suggests that as much as 90% of what is learned during training is lost in a short period of time. Given these data, it’s obvious that training is one of the key drivers for companies’ success. But the data also suggest that many organizations aren’t doing it as well as they could be, which means they are likely not achieving anywhere close to the level of success indicated in Bassie’s analysis. I’ve written before about various ways massive open online courses (MOOCs) can improve upon traditional training, for example by better meeting the needs of today’s corporate learners and by making elearning more interesting, more interactive, and more relevant. This article addresses three common problems found in training and discusses how MOOCs provide solutions to these problems. Problem 1: Employees aren’t engaged. Probably the number one thing keeping corporate training programs from producing results is that employees aren’t engaged. This can be the result of many different factors—learners might not find the information valuable or relevant, the training might be too advanced or too easy for the audience, or the seminar room simply might be too warm and the instructor’s voice too soothing. For whatever reason, although employees want more specialized job training, traditional programs just aren’t doing it for them. Too often, the blame is placed where it doesn’t belong, like on the subject matter. Take, for example, compliance training, which has a reputation for being particularly painful. However, it is essential that compliance training is done well, for legal reasons and because it is critical to business success. As Lorri Freifeld wrote last year in Training Magazine, "Among all of the issues the Learning function deals with, compliance is the one that can have the greatest consequences if it is mishandled." Perhaps the biggest contribution MOOCs can make to a corporate training program is to increase employee engagement, especially for the boring stuff. If you doubt the power of the MOOC format to make things interesting, consider the success of Jim Fowler, an assistant math professor at Ohio State University whose Calculus One MOOC has attracted more than 145,000 students. It is one of the top courses on Coursera and has been so successful that Coursera moved the course to an ongoing enrollment model so students don’t have to wait to get started. Calculus—the course that many people spend their student years actively trying to avoid! Millions of students have participated in MOOCs. Hundreds of thousands are probably participating in them right at this moment. Those kinds of numbers are a testament to the courses’ power of engagement. Problem 2: It is unclear if learning is actually taking place. Seat time is not a valid assessment of learning. Neither is the ability to hit "Next" on a PowerPoint slide nor learners’ reactions on a happy sheet. Despite the fact that these types of assessments don’t measure learning, they are the most frequently used methods of evaluation in many training programs. Inadequate assessments lead to third major issues. First, they don’t tell trainers what, if any, learning is actually taking place. Second, they don’t function as part of the learning process. Third, they don’t provide any motivation—a learner who knows that a happy sheet will serve as the course assessment probably won’t put as much effort into it as a learner who knows that the assessment will require a demonstration of skills and knowledge. MOOCs typically involve much more assessment than either ILT or elearning. Not only are there a higher quantity of assessments, but they are more diverse and more meaningful as learning activities. Assessments can include short quizzes, end-of-module exams, participation in course discussions, simulations, presentations, collaborative projects, and so on. The more creative, and the more realistic in terms of what learners will be expected to do on the job, the better. Problem 3: Employees quickly forget what they have learned. This scenario probably sounds familiar: You design and deliver what you feel is an excellent training course. Everyone does well on the final assessment, so you confidently report to management that your company’s employees are now fully trained in X, Y, and Z. But a few months later, when a situation requires that training arises, it’s like you never delivered the course at all. In a 2012 interview with The Wall Street Journal, corporate training expert Eduardo Salas said: "There are a number of myths that organizations have about training. The first myth is if you send an unskilled employee to training, when they come back there is immediately a changed, improved, skilled worker." One of the major implications of this myth, according to Salas, is that organizations don’t provide employees with enough opportunities to practice and apply the new skills they have acquired. The forgetting that happens following training is more than just an annoyance. It costs money, both in mistakes and in the necessity for retraining. It can also potentially lead to lost clients, a damaged corporate reputation, and other negative impacts that are difficult to pinpoint and measure. MOOCs extend the scope of training beyond what happens in the actual course. Learners can return to the material weeks or months later if they need a refresher. The most successful MOOCs also involve real-world situations, including simulations and assessments based on problem-solving, which provide learners opportunities to practice, over and over if necessary. Engagement, meaningful learning, and retention over time—these are three of the biggest challenges trainers face, and MOOCs provide powerful solutions for addressing all of them. 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 to MOOC: Meaningful Assessment Through Real-World…How to MOOC: Meaningful Assessment Through Real-World…Measuring Success (ROI) of a Training MOOC, Part 2Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…How Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?(Visited 323 times, 1 visits today)

I’ve been writing about massive open online courses (MOOCs) fairly steadily for the past year and a half or so, and over that time, MOOCs have changed considerably from what they were when they first appeared on the scene. Largely, these changes have been due to more investment and research into the development of digital learning environments. Early MOOCs were often nothing more than long video lectures with a few multiple choice questions at the end—if you read much MOOC literature, you will know that these early implementations were roundly criticized for their poor pedagogy and almost complete lack of meaningful learning experiences. And the critics were right. However, that is no longer what MOOCs look like. As more institutions have experimented with them, and more research has been done about how to improve online learning, new pedagogical approaches and technologies have come on the scene. In terms of quality and learning, today’s MOOCs rival and sometimes even eclipse what is found in many instructor-led courses. This post examines a few of the innovative new technologies that are helping MOOCs evolve into powerful active, collaborative, and immersive learning experiences. (For a review of basic technology-enabled learning tools used in MOOCs, see here and here.) Enhanced content delivery: LectureScape Watching a long video lecture isn’t any more engaging than watching a long in-person lecture. There are certainly some advantages to video, for example, learners can pause, rewind, and return to the content as needed, even after the course is over. But MOOCs can do better. LectureScape is a new type of enhanced video player that was developed by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) based on an analysis of learning interactions from more than 7 million MOOC video sessions. Developer Juho Kim describes the technology like this: "LectureScape dynamically adapts to thousands of learners’ collective video watching patterns to make it easier to rewatch, skim, search, and review. By analyzing the viewing data as well as the content itself, LectureScape presents educational videos in a more lively and dynamic way." The video player accomplishes this goal via several features: A video timeline shows what parts of the video other users watch most frequently as well as a personal watching trace. Keyword search and an interactive transcript allow learners to quickly find information. Personal bookmarks allow learners to highlight spots in the video for later reference. Word clouds and summaries are automatically created, and popular content automatically appears on later slides for quick reference. LectureScape in essence transforms video-watching from a passive activity into a personalized, interactive learning experience. This is a great example of how MOOCs can improve upon traditional instructor-led training by taking advantage of the available technologies. More practical problem-solving experience: Simulations Although the idea of immersive learning via simulations has been around for decades, MOOCs have been instrumental in reviving interest in this type of approach. In education, remote laboratories are being constructed so students can perform chemistry, physics, and even biology experiments online—something that was never thought possible (or valuable) before. Corporate training has generally been more receptive to simulation-based learning, which has proven effective in fields from finance to healthcare. According to instructional design and development experts Peter Shea and J.M. Grenier, immersive learning environments have several advantages over many other learning environments. They can: Provide engaging learning challenges Provide rapid feedback Adapt to the needs of individual learners Be quickly developed and revised for new situations Provide real-time data about individual and group performance This is currently a very hot area, and we are likely to see a plethora of new tools and technologies supporting immersive learning come on the market very soon. Better communication, collaboration, and support: Project Lever, Teeays, and GroupMOOC Online learning no longer means learning in isolation. In fact, research has shown that one of the key drivers of MOOC success is the ability to connect with others. Several new technologies are taking aim at improving MOOC participants’ ability to communicate, collaborate, and get help and support. Project Lever matches students with advisors and is being used in MOOCs to match employees for project teams (learn more here). Teeays is a new service that provides on-demand TAs for online courses, giving MOOC learners access to timely in-person support. GroupMOOC is a mobile app that keeps learners on track and connected by automatically creating a course plan and allowing learners to network with friends and coworkers who are taking the same MOOCs. Although these tools were developed for the education space and primarily support courses from the major MOOC providers, they are excellent models for how companies can increase interaction in training MOOCs. For example, corporate MOOCs can take advantage of existing resources, like SharePoint and internal social networks, to enhance learner communication, collaboration, and support. Unlike face-to-face education, which has been working according to the same basic model for centuries, digital education is developing rapidly in response to current research, big data, and stakeholder requirements. The tools described here represent just a portion of the new tools that are either available or in development, and in the next few months and years, we can expect many more technologies targeted at further enhancing digital learning environments. 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:Video Production and Learner Engagement in MOOCsHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILTStrategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…What a MOOC Is and What It Isn’t(Visited 471 times, 1 visits today)

The idea that massive open online courses (MOOCs) can greatly enhance learner engagement and retention in corporate training settings has been a recurrent theme on this blog. (If your department is still using traditional instructor-led seminars for most of your training, well, you probably know that in some cases, there is no place to go but up.) Obviously, it isn’t just the mere use of technology that leads to increased engagement, but rather the fact that the MOOC format allows you to design training courses to better correspond with how people learn. One of the most significant advantages MOOCs have over ILT and traditional elearning is in how the content is delivered. Video is the primary means of content delivery in a MOOC. Because video plays such a central role, it has a huge impact on the learners’ experience. In terms of course design and development, video is the area where trainers may have the least experience, and it can also be the most expensive element to put together. For all of these reasons, it’s important to get video right. Fortunately, we don’t have to guess at how to do that. For a study released last spring, researchers at MIT analyzed about 7 million video sessions from four different edX MOOCs to see how various features of videos affect learner engagement. Here is what they found, along with practical recommendations that can be drawn from the data: Videos should be short. The optimum video length for learner engagement can be as short as six minutes. After nine minutes engagement starts to fall off, and after about 20 minutes learners have probably started surfing the Internet or playing games on their phone. Our internal experience is that video length is best using the "TED Talk" approach, ideally making them 18 minutes or so. Learners like a combination of talking head lecture and demonstration. There are two basic types of videos used in MOOCs: lectures and demonstrations. Within these larger categories are recordings of live classroom lectures, talking head-style videos, narrated PowerPoint presentations, screencasts (i.e., onscreen tutorials demonstrating how to use a piece of software), and Khan Academy-style videos in which instructors talk while writing and drawing on a tablet device. Learner engagement is highest for videos that combine approaches, for example, a talking head-style interspersed with PowerPoint slides. Most learners don’t like watching a video of a live classroom lecture at all. Learners prefer lectures with a more informal feel. This finding will probably come as a surprise: Learners engaged more with informal video lectures delivered by an instructor seated behind a desk than with videos produced in a multimillion dollar studio and featuring an instructor standing behind a podium. This pattern was especially apparent for longer videos, that is, those beyond 12 minutes. The researchers suggest that the more informal setting produced a "desirable trait [called] ‘personalization’—the student feeling that the video is being directed right at them, rather than at an unnamed crowd." There is likely both good news and bad news here for trainers. On the plus side, although MOOC videos should be of high quality, they don’t necessarily need to be produced in a professional recording studio. On the flip side, trainers who are accustomed to delivering traditional lectures may be less comfortable in a more informal setting. For demonstrations, digital tablet drawings are more engaging than PowerPoint slides. Learner engagement lasts one and a half to two times longer for demonstrations in which instructors talk while writing and drawing on a digital tablet than when they narrate static PowerPoint slides. This could be in part because human handwriting is more engaging than computer fonts, which is consistent with the idea that learners prefer informal lectures. It could also be that learners are more interested when something dynamic is happening on the screen. A little enthusiasm goes a long way. Lectures don’t need to be boring, and the best way for instructors to ensure that their students are engaged is to be engaged themselves. In general, learner engagement increases when instructors display energy and enthusiasm by speaking quickly. This is the opposite of what is recommended for in-person lectures, where speakers are often encouraged to slow down to allow for better comprehension. But remember: MOOC students can easily stop, rewind, and review if they miss something. Learners watch lectures only once, but return frequently to tutorials. On average, learners watch only two or three minutes of a tutorial, but they watch those two or three minutes multiple times. In contrast, they usually watch a lecture only once. Videos should be optimized depending on their type. Lectures should present the most important information clearly and in a way that is easy to understand the first time. Tutorials can be improved with tools like content tags and bookmarks that facilitate re-watching, for example, by using LectureScape, the enhanced video player I described in a previous article. What this all adds up to is probably a lot more than you are accustomed to thinking about when preparing traditional training courses, which explains why many companies are choosing to license third-party MOOCs rather than develop the courses themselves. For organizations that do decide to create their own MOOCs, these results demonstrate the importance of proper planning. Here is a quick guide to putting the recommendations from this research into action: Chunk your content into pieces as short as possible. Consider where and how you can interject slides and demonstrations into your lectures. Use live tablet drawings rather than static PowerPoint slides to illustrate key ideas. Provide learners with tools to review information. Invest post-production time to splice together different content types and edit out pauses and other things that slow the video down. Be excited about what you are teaching. You don’t need a full movie studio and video editing team to create great educational content, but as you can see, simply winging it won’t do either. Contact me for more tips and strategies for how to make your MOOC videos maximally engaging for your 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 to MOOC: Technology-Enabled Learning Tools, Part 1MOOCs: Flipping the Corporate ClassroomNew Technologies Making MOOCs Even BetterMegatrends in MOOCs: #9 Flipping the MOOCHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILT(Visited 628 times, 2 visits today)

When does your organization provide training to employees, when it’s a good time for you or when it’s a good time for them? If you are stuck too firmly in the first category, it’s time to start inching over, and massive open online courses (MOOCs) are excellent tools to help you get there. In 2011, Bob Mosher and Conrad Gottfredson fundamentally changed many firms’ approach to training when they introduced the idea of five moments of learning need. Their model turns training from organization-centric to learner-centric, resulting in training that is more relevant to learners’ needs. The five moments of learning need are: New: When learning something for the first time More: When building upon what you’ve already learned Apply: When applying what you’ve learned Solve: When things go wrong or don’t work as intended Change: When learning a new way of doing something, which often requires unlearning and relearning Traditional formats too often approach all training in the same way, such as through instructor-led training (ILT) or elearning courses. However, when you think carefully about these five moments, it becomes obvious that learners’ needs are different at each. As such, they need to be approached differently. I agree with technology-based learning expert Eran Gal, who wrote at eLearning Industry: "…one of the [five moments of learning needs] model’s most brilliant points is its holistic approach to the various learning occurrences it identifies. As opposed to the declared aim of formal learning, which is specific learning achievements or certification, the goal of learning in the workplace is proficiency. In order to achieve proficiency,…one is required to combine formal, informal, social, and real-time learning strategies" [emphasis added]. As it happens, MOOCs are ideal tools for combining these various strategies. Let’s look briefly at how the MOOC format can address learners’ needs at each moment. New: When learning something for the first time Employees are frequently required to learn new things. Here, we’ll focus on two main training areas where first-time learning takes place: new hire orientation and when learning how to use a new software tool. In many organizations, new hire orientation is fairly standard across the board, or at least it contains standard components—policies and procedures, corporate culture, and company protocols, to name a few. This type of content can be quickly and easily delivered in a self-paced, non-moderated MOOC using short videos with embedded comprehension questions and an end-of-module exam. More tailored content, such as for managers, can then be delivered via a more advanced MOOC or in a short ILT session. Learning new software can be accomplished through video tutorials that are designed to be watched and re-watched as employees work through processes and examples. Read more about how learners interact with different types of videos in MOOCs. More: When building upon what you’ve already learned Many of the same ideas apply here as when learning something for the first time. MOOCs that build upon prior knowledge may include more advanced features, such as moderation, social and collaboration tools, and both more and more varied assessments. Apply: When applying what you’ve learned The moment of apply is where MOOCs really excel, in the form of providing just-in-time learning and performance support. Gottfredson and Mosher wrote in Learning Solutions Magazine, "[Apply] is the sweet spot of performance support. There is much that can and needs to occur here. And today we can do more than we have been able to do in the past. When people are at this moment, when they need to actually perform on the job, they need instant access to tools that intuitively help them do just that—perform." Because of its flexibility and its comprehensive nature, the MOOC framework is well-suited to provide performance support. Features such as course archives, video content, personal learning networks, resource sharing, and mobile learning together create a powerful performance support solutions that go way beyond the typical job aids. Solve: When things go wrong or don’t work as intended One of the main advantages of MOOCs over traditional training methods is their ability to incorporate real-world problem-solving, giving learners experience at the moment of solve in situations where the stakes are low. When things still go wrong, as they inevitably do, learners can use that experience combined with the same types of resources that are useful in the moment of apply (course archives, etc.). When solving problems, access to relevant documentation and the ability to communicate with knowledgeable others, via discussion boards and learning networks, becomes especially important. Change: When learning a new way of doing something Finally, things change, and in many industries today they change very fast. According to Gottfredson and Mosher, "This moment of need has been the least attended to, and yet is the most challenging. And since we don’t attend to it very well, it is often the most costly to organizations." The module-based approach of MOOCs can help companies meet learners’ needs at the critical moment of change. If new compliance training is required, a short course can be quickly created and instantly distributed to employees around the world. The same goes for when a new version of a software package comes out, or when a firm finds certain of its practices suddenly obsolete. MOOCs are designed in bite-sized chunks that can be replaced, updated, and moved around as necessary, and the ability to re-watch videos and access resources provides extra support for those who may take a little longer to "learn, unlearn, and relearn." MOOCs are not a panacea, but their module-based approach combined with their use of technology provides a tool training departments can use to meet learners’ needs at the crucial moments in a way that was not possible before. 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:MOOCs and Performance SupportWhat Style of MOOC is Right for You?Megatrends in MOOCs: #4 Microlearning PathsTraining in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD EnvironmentStrategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…(Visited 246 times, 1 visits today)

MOOCs, mobile, and Millennials—these three ideas often elicit some measure of discomfort in training and development departments, because while these three forces are greatly affecting businesses in general and workplace education in particular, they remain relatively poorly understood. This lack of understanding means that while Millennials are increasingly adopting a mobile mindset and seeing MOOCs as not only a viable method of training, but their preferred one, many companies are still slow about moving in these new directions. The result is a model of corporate training that is not well suited to its target audience. Let’s look at some data highlighting the disconnect between corporate training and these various factors. Here is what Millennials think about MOOCs: In a Software Advice study earlier this year, almost three-quarters of 18 to 24 year-olds, and nearly as many 25 to 34 year-olds, said they would participate in a company training MOOC. The same study found that more than half of Millennials would be more likely to apply for and stay with a company that used MOOCs for training. (Learn more about the study.) A recent study by QuestionPro found not only that respondents believed that MOOCs offer a high quality of education, but that 78% rated them as being a better experience than a traditional classroom. Millennials in particular are so positive about this learning format that almost 80% of 25 to 34 year-olds expect that in the future MOOCs will replace some parts of traditional education entirely. Now let’s see what employers think about MOOCs: According to a large-scale study by Duke University and RTI International, only 31% of employers have even heard of the courses. Only 7% were using MOOCs for employees’ professional development, and only another 5% were actively considering doing so. Recap: Nearly 75% of Millennials want MOOCs for training; less than 10% of employers are using them. What about mobile? Again, Millennials love it: A recent study by Zogby Analytics found that 90% of Millennials have their phones with them at all times. Eight in 10 check their phone first thing every morning, and almost the same number spend about two hours a day on their phones. Various studies have shown that mobile learners in general, and those in the Millennial generation in particular, are both more collaborative and more motivated. And again, businesses are a bit slow on the uptake: According to the Brandon Hall Group 2014 Learning and Development Benchmarking Study, only 10% of companies are using web-based mobile learning, 8% are using mobile learning apps, and 4% to 5% are using mobile performance sites and apps. Recap: 90% of Millennials are pair-bonded with their phones; only 10% of employers are using mobile learning. Taking these data together, we are left with a picture of corporate training that looks something like this:                           The biggest barrier to using MOOCs and mobile learning appears to be lack of knowledge about how to implement them. In the Duke/RTI study, once employers learned about MOOCs, they were generally positive about the courses’ potential for training, but there is a large distance between feeling positively about something and having the knowledge and skills to implement it. Similarly, the Brandon Hall Group Benchmarking study found that "most companies recognize that mobile learning solutions can improve adoption, expand global reach, and engage users better, but do not understand how to execute a mobile strategy." Now is the time for these organizations—who may have heard of MOOCs and mobile learning but are hesitant due to lack of knowledge—to gain the knowledge and skills they need to move in new directions. James DeBello, CEO of Mitek, the company that comissioned the Zogby Analytics study, commented that companies need to go mobile because "if you don’t have it, you’re considered old-fashioned, out of date and not a company [Millennials] want to do business with." He was talking about Millennials as consumers, but his point is equally applicable to Millennials as employees. The first rule of successful training is to know your audience, and that audience is becoming more interested in mobile and other alternative learning methods all of the time. MOOCs themselves are not entirely mobile yet. Some are, but most of the courses available from the major providers (Coursera, edX, etc.) are only partially mobile (i.e., students can do certain activities, like watch videos, but they can’t participate in discussion forums or take assessments). But this is changing. As MOOCs become more mobile, and as companies start to adopt both MOOCs and mobile learning on a broader scale, the corporate training landscape will slowly shift from the picture above to one that looks more like this: And for those of you who may still need a nudge toward exploring these new learning formats, consider this: Millennials will soon give way to the next generation (what Scott Hess refers to as the "post generation"), which is even more diverse, more digital, and more ready to ditch the traditional for the new.                   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:Megatrends in MOOCs: #12 Training for MillennialsMegatrends in MOOCs: #8 Mobile LearningTraining in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD EnvironmentTraining and Education for Millennials through Gamification13 Megatrends in MOOCs(Visited 364 times, 1 visits today)

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are the education and training story of this decade (at least so far). In barely three years, they have expanded from a single course on artificial intelligence taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig in the fall of 2011 to thousands of MOOCs taught by instructors from leading colleges, universities, and companies on various platforms around the world. It’s impressive. However, while there is growing awareness of the existence of MOOCs, there persists a good deal of confusion about what they actually are and what they can do. This is unsurprising for two reasons: MOOCs have changed considerably since they first came out, and they are continuing to evolve as both the pedagogies and the technologies Many types of courses fall under the MOOC umbrella. Education insiders have developed an entirely new vocabulary surrounding the courses, but in popular parlance, they are all commonly referred to as MOOCs. The goal of this article is to clear up some of the confusion by exploring what a MOOC is and, perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t, and clarifying the roles MOOCs can play specifically within the context of corporate training. A MOOC is a framework, not a platform. One of the biggest sources of confusion I encounter is the idea that a MOOC is an online learning platform, a learning management system (LMS). This misconception is understandable, since the language we use often equates MOOC providers like Coursera and edX with the courses themselves, but it is a misconception nonetheless. What Coursera and edX offer are essentially LMSs that are designed to be infinitely scalable. MOOCs are courses built using these LMSs; they are not LMSs themselves. Although MOOCs use a wide variety of technologies, they are not actually technologies at all. What do I mean when I say that a MOOC is a framework? What this signifies is that the courses are generally constructed using a common set of building blocks, such as bite-sized learning modules, video content delivery, and online discussion forums. Within that framework, however, the options are practically unlimited (e.g., videos can be lectures or tutorials; discussions can be held privately within a virtual classroom or publicly on social media), and in theory MOOCs can be delivered on any LMS capable of handling them, or even outside of an LMS altogether. A MOOC is flexible and adaptable, not set in stone. One of the biggest advantages of MOOCs is their flexibility. The building blocks of the courses are short, modular learning activities, which can be swapped in and out, reused in different courses, and updated quickly to reflect changes in content or learner needs. Unlike in traditional instructor-led training (ILT), which is typically delivered only once a year or so, or traditional elearning, which depending on the format can take considerable resources to update, there is nothing about a MOOC that is set in stone. Thus, the courses can be adapted based on the needs of the organization and the learners. A MOOC is one part of a solution, not a panacea for all of today’s training challenges. In the early days of MOOCs, Sebastian Thrun boldly claimed that in 50 years there would be only 10 universities left in the world. He stepped back from the idea that MOOCs could solve all of education’s problems after Udacity’s courses didn’t perform nearly as well as expected in a pilot program at San Jose State University. The problem was the idea that you could just turn a course into a MOOC and it would instantly be a success, an assumption that turned out to be false. MOOCs can solve many of today’s common training problems, but only if they are developed using a solid, research-backed pedagogical approach. Putting boring training online doesn’t make it engaging; putting well-designed training online in a format that resonates with employees does. When developing training courses and programs, learning professionals would do best to think of MOOCs as just one tool in a constantly expanding toolbox. A MOOC is a supplement for instructor-led training, not a replacement. There are some people who believe that MOOCs will eventually replace all forms of education, including ILT. I don’t think that’s true, but I do believe there are some courses that can be replaced by MOOCs so that trainers can focus more of their time, energy, and budget on high-value ILT areas, such as executive education. Research has also shown that students get the most out of MOOCs when the courses are used in a blended learning format. In this light, MOOCs are best seen as complementary to the training that organizations are already doing. A MOOC is not just one thing. It can take many forms. Finally, as I alluded to before, a MOOC is not just one thing. If you take a course on Coursera, you will get one experience; on edX, another experience; and on NovoEd (which is a collaborative online learning platform), a different experience entirely. Some MOOCs are self-paced, while others are moderated. Some use machine-graded assessments, while others use peer review. Some use a project-based model with learners working in teams, while others can be completed without any learner-learner interaction at all. Some are run on open platforms, while others are run on closed intranets. The point for trainers is that a MOOC can take whatever form necessary to meet your organization’s training needs. I hope this post has provided some clarity on MOOCs and their role in corporate training and development efforts. Contact me to learn more about how a MOOC can complement and enhance your training programs. 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:What Style of MOOC is Right for You?Megatrends in MOOCs: #1 Adoption at Corporate UniversitiesWhat Type of MOOC Is Right For You?Strategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…MOOCs: From the Classroom to the Conference Room(Visited 625 times, 1 visits today)

In the training world, we often refer to instructor-led-training (ILT) as the gold standard. We compare every other form of training to it and seek to replicate it as closely as possible when developing new training methodologies. But it recently occurred to me that the underlying assumption here might not be correct, and that ILT might not be the ultimate high-value training after all. Digital learning environments like massive open online courses (MOOCs) are starting to challenge the preeminence of ILT. Is it time we had a new gold standard? Why is instructor-led training considered the best? ILT became the gold standard not because it’s perfect (we all know that isn’t true), but because it’s better than other traditional methods of training. There is no question that ILT is superior to sending a new hire a booklet to read or putting an employee in a room with a computer to hit "Next-Next-Next" on a PowerPoint deck, but these are not exactly examples of high-quality training. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research about the actual effectiveness of most ILT (although we do know that without proper reinforcement learners exhibit a high level of forgetting). This is largely due to a lack of adequate assessment for training in general—happy sheets don’t reveal anything about what people have actually learned, and the summative multiple-choice tests typical of elearning aren’t much better. Basically, ILT got its reputation from being better than anything else that was available, but that doesn’t mean it is categorically the best. What are the top advantages and disadvantages of ILT? In terms of advantages and disadvantages, instructor-led training is usually compared to traditional elearning. From this perspective, the main benefits of ILT include: Learning from experts. Opportunities for instructor-learner and learner-learner interactions. Peer learning and network-building. The ability to ask questions and receive immediate feedback. Adaptability—the ability of instructors to tailor courses to learners’ needs, even on the fly. Focus and attention—learning is not constantly interrupted by ringing phones, emails, etc. The most commonly cited disadvantages are related to cost and logistics: ILT is expensive and time-consuming. Instructors and venues are not always available. Once a Learner steps out of the classroom, returning to it for clarification is gone. It isn’t always possible to stagger the start dates of courses when giving consideration to learner schedules. When put in this context, ILT definitely wins—the advantages all focus on the higher quality of learning, while the disadvantages are mostly logistical. However, from experience, many trainers know that this divide isn’t quite so stark and that several of the commonly identified advantages of ILT exist only in theory. For instance, while adaptability can certainly be an advantage, too much variance in training is not. Instructors often go "off-script", and sometimes huge differences exist between instructors, resulting in a lack of training consistency across an organization. Also, though ILT does allow learners to ask questions in real-time, this can disrupt the training flow—too many questions and discussions during the formal training time can mean that some of the content gets short-changed and missed. In addition, although ILT provides the opportunity for instructor-learner interaction, in practice one-on-one instruction rarely takes place. It’s simply not always feasible for instructors to pull aside individual learners for extra help, and there is no way for learners to rewind and repeat a lesson to better understand a concept. Finally, while peer learning and network-building can occur, they are oftentimes short-lived because there is no infrastructure in place to foster those connections after the course has ended. Overall, while ILT may be better than training methods that offer no opportunity for questions, interactions, and so on, there is still significant room for improvement. Enter "Technology-Enabled-Learning". MOOCs as the new Gold Standard A gold standard should both reflect best practices and produce the best results, and not just in theory. By combining the best of ILT with the best of elearning, new digital learning environments, like MOOCs, have emerged as a new gold standard for training. MOOCs both have nearly all of the advantages of ILT and they can respond to the disadvantages: They are taught by experts, just delivered via video rather than in person. Instructors are never tired and are always available. Instructors cover all of the topics of the course. Instructor-learner and learner-learner interactions can take place on discussion boards and using other forms of internal and external social media. This provides not only interaction during the course, but also various forums for follow-up after the course has ended. Peer learning and network-building occur both using online communication platforms and through collaborative learning activities, and the since course exists online even after its official end date, these connections can continue to flourish. They can provide both adaptability and consistency. Courses can include a range of material with which learners can engage depending on their needs, while video-based delivery provides training consistency. Learners can stop, rewind, and review when necessary, even after the course is completed. Ability to create knowledge benchmarks both pre and post course. Assessments are built into the learning framework. In terms of focus and attention, learners can choose when to participate in the courses, accommodating their workflow. MOOCs are less expensive and don’t suffer from the same logistical problems as ILT. Of the ILT advantages listed above, the one thing learners may lose with MOOCs is the ability to receive "immediate feedback" to ideas and questions. The key word here is immediate—they can get feedback in the forums, but there will be at least a short delay. In today’s technology-enabled workplace and world, ILT is no longer the best we can do for training. MOOCs deliver 90% of the value of the live experience, while also overcoming many of the known ILT issues. To top it all off, they can do all of this on a budget approaching one-fifth that required for high-quality instructor-led training. In the end, that is what makes new digital learning environments so compelling: the ability to get so much more for so much less. 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:What Style of MOOC is Right for You?ILT, Elearning, or MOOC? When to Use Common Training FormatsWhat a MOOC Is and What It Isn’tHow Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…(Visited 142 times, 1 visits today)

Corporate training used to mean one thing: "Here’s an orientation pamphlet and a couple of manuals. If you have any questions, ask Joe." Then it meant another: "Your training will take place October 14 through 18, from 9 to 5. Bring a lunch and try not to snore too loudly." And then another: "Just hit ‘Next’ on this computer presentation until you get to the end, and then take the test." I jest, of course, but only slightly. The point is that when many people, even in L&D departments, think about effective corporate training, they have one specific format in mind, and that format is usually either instructor-led training (ILT) or elearning. The popularity of each type of training has risen and declined according to various factors, including who’s in charge, training budgets, and what’s trendy. Today, however, with innovation and new technologies, there are many different types of training formats in use, including the classics (ILT and elearning) as well as newer developments like complex computer-based simulations and massive open online courses (MOOCs). With so many options, which one do you choose? The various formats are not mutually exclusive, and ideally you would not have to make this choice for an entire training program en masse. Instead, the training format you use should be the one best suited to the content to be learned, the needs of the audience, and the needs of the organization. Below are some guidelines for when to use traditional ILT, elearning, and MOOCs. Instructor-led training On this blog, I’ve talked a lot about the disadvantages of ILT, even questioning whether it is still the gold standard for training. One of the main downsides of ILT is that it is expensive, especially when items such as travel and accommodations must be taken into account. However, there are certain situations in which there is no reasonable substitute for face-to-face training. ILT is the best type of training to use when: The group to be trained is small and located in one geographical area. According to 2012 statistics, as much as 85% of an organization’s classroom training budget goes toward delivery, including travel. When travel and its associated costs (accommodation, meals, entertainment, etc.) are eliminated, the numbers start to look a lot better. Elearning and MOOCs have a clear advantage when training programs need to be scaled up, but if you are delivering a managerial training program to 20 or so people once every few years, there is likely no benefit to moving from in-person to digital training. The training is light on content, but heavy on discussion. Digital learning environments have a huge advantage for content delivery, but not all training has content as its main focus. For training that is more centered on synchronous discussion and collaboration, ILT remains the top choice. When the content is highly complex or changes frequently. Both MOOCs and elearning rely at least in part on people’s ability to learn on their own. For highly complex content, which will likely inspire a good number of questions, ILT remains a top choice. In addition, it is much more difficult to change the content in an elearning course than a face-to-face one, so ILT is preferable for content that has a short shelf life. Elearning Interest in and use of elearning have grown exponentially in recent years, as technologies have improved and training budgets continue to be squeezed. While elearning can sometimes be frustrating to learners, used well it has significant benefits, especially in terms of saving both time and money. Elearning has been shown to reduce training costs by up to 50% and training time by up to 60%. Elearning is the best type of training to use when: Significant interaction isn’t required. Interaction among learners and between learners and instructors is advantageous in many circumstances, but it isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, all that is required of trainees is that they read information and acknowledge that they have done so. Content has a long shelf life. It doesn’t make sense to provide expensive ILT for content that is the same every time. Use elearning or a MOOC instead. The training needs to take place in different places or at different times. Both elearning and MOOCs allow organizations to provide training on an as-needed basis. Consistency is required. ILT often has a consistency problem, as delivery varies between instructors and even for the same instructor over multiple implementations. Elearning and MOOCs can deliver the same content in the same way every time. Learners can easily master the content on their own. For content that is not likely to generate many questions or initiate discussions, elearning does the trick. MOOCs MOOCs are the best of both worlds: they provide the interaction of ILT and the consistency, logistical benefits, and lower costs associated with elearning. Here are some additional situations where MOOCs have the upper hand: Training needs to be flexible and on-demand. Since MOOCs are module-based, they are highly flexible. Learners can access modules and lessons as needed. Performance support is required. In addition to providing video content, a MOOC can be a central repository for performance support resources. Learners are at different levels. In a MOOC, learners can easily skip over or test out of the content they already know; thus, the courses are well suited to groups of learners who have different levels of knowledge. Collaboration is required over long distances. Using a MOOC, companies can simultaneously train employees across the globe, and MOOC platforms provide forums where those employees can easily collaborate and network. The content has varying lengths of shelf life. MOOCs are more complicated to update than ILT, but it is generally easier to add or update modules in MOOCs than in traditional elearning. For courses where some of the content is long-lasting and other content changes frequently, MOOCs offer superior flexibility. All training formats have their advantages and disadvantages. As stated earlier, the key to success is matching the training format to the content and the needs of both the learners and the organization. Often, the best answer is to use a blended approach, such as a MOOC followed by high-value ILT. Contact me for additional information on how to leverage ILT, elearning, and MOOCs to get more out your training programs. 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:What Style of MOOC is Right for You?Instructor Led Training…Is It Still the Gold Standard?Rapid Elearning and MOOCs: Keeping Up with ChangeBeyond Cost-Savings: Advantages of MOOCs for Corporate…Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…(Visited 230 times, 1 visits today)

If there is one idea I hope I’ve impressed upon you in writing about massive open online courses (MOOCs), it’s that, unlike instructor-led training and traditional elearning, MOOCs are highly flexible online learning environments. The popular media often refers to a MOOC as being just one kind of thing, and that one thing is usually associated with the types of MOOCs found on Coursera. But, this perspective doesn’t provide the full story—over the past year or so, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of experimentation and development of the MOOC, and today the acronym is an umbrella term that is used to refer to a wide variety of large-scale online courses. In the corporate training world, there are three main distinctions that are meaningful when determining what style of MOOC to implement: Scheduled versus self-paced Moderated versus non-moderated Fully online versus blended (or hybrid) In this post, we’ll look at each of these distinctions to help trainers decide what type of MOOC best meets the needs of their organization and their learners. Scheduled versus self-paced MOOCs can be either scheduled (they start on a particular date, have time-delineated activities, and end on a particular date) or self-paced (the learner starts the course at will and completes it according to his or her own schedule). Use scheduled courses when: Content needs to be delivered simultaneously across a group of learners. For example, when regulatory information changes, it is often necessary for everyone in a company to learn the new rules as quickly as possible. Courses require learner collaboration. Although it certainly isn’t impossible to have collaboration in a self-paced course, if the course involves any group activities, it is usually desirable to make sure everyone reaches the same level of knowledge at the same time. Courses are mandatory. If you want to make sure that all learners who are required to take your courses actually do so, use a scheduled format and use analytics features to track learners’ progress. Use self-paced courses when: Content is best delivered on an as-needed basis. One of the main advantages of MOOCs is the ability to have staggered start dates. For example, MOOCs are excellent for new-hire orientation, where they can provide consistent training even if one new employee starts every week. The self-paced format is also ideal for on-demand training as learners can access the resources they need at the moment they need them, rather than trying in November to remember the material from a seminar they attended in June. Courses are optional. Providing optional courses in a self-paced format means that learners can take courses based on their own interests or when have identified holes in their current knowledge and skill sets. Moderated versus non-moderated MOOCs can be moderated (an instructor participates in course discussions and provides feedback to learners) or they can be non-moderated. Use moderated courses when: Instructors are internal SMEs or members of the training team. MOOCs are often taught by subject matter experts and then licensed to different companies for training purposes. In this case, it is not always feasible to have the instructors themselves moderate the courses. However, when a course is taught by an internal expert, there is a lot to be gained by having that expert available to answer questions and provide input for discussions. Participation in course discussions is required. MOOCs may or may not have a social component, and even for those that do, that social component may or may not be required. If participation in course discussions is a mandatory activity, then having those discussions moderated by facilitator is recommended. Content is complex and likely to generate questions. Moderated courses are better when the content is at a high enough level that learners may have trouble getting through it on their own. Use non-moderated courses when: Content is basic or consists mostly of tutorials. These types of content are less likely to generate many questions, so moderation may not be necessary. Courses are self-paced. Most self-paced MOOCs are not moderated. In these cases, it is still recommended that learners have someone they can turn to for help or support if necessary. Fully online versus blended Finally, MOOCs can be delivered 100% online or in a blended online/in-person format. Use fully online courses when: It is not feasible for learners to meet. Only fully online courses can deliver training across geographical boundaries (and sometimes even across departmental boundaries). 100% consistency is required. Consistency of in-person training varies between instructors, and it can even vary when the same instructor teaches different sessions of a course. When 100% consistency is required, such as for training on regulatory topics, use a fully online approach. Budget is a main concern. Fully online courses are less expensive than blended courses since they don’t require any expenditures related to instructor time, travel, and so on. Use blended courses when: Parts of the course have only a small audience. There are times when different employees need different content, even within the same course. For example, new managers may be required to complete both the standard new-hire orientation and an advanced managerial orientation. If your company doesn’t train many new managers, then it is probably not cost-effective to use a MOOC for this aspect of the course. Instead, have all new hires complete the basic orientation online and then use instructor-led training for the advanced content. Course activities benefit from face-to-face interaction. In some courses, though the content can be consumed online, the activities themselves are best done in person. For example, a course on how to give business presentations will be most effective if learners are given the opportunity to practice in person what they learn in the online portion of the course. As you can see, MOOCs are flexible digital learning environments that can be easily adapted to meet your organization’s needs, whatever they are. The ability for the courses to be used in so many different ways is one of the main reasons I believe MOOCs will soon replace instructor-led training as the gold standard for workplace education. 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:ILT, Elearning, or MOOC? When to Use Common Training FormatsTraining Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessWhat a MOOC Is and What It Isn’tStrategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…MOOCs at the 5 Moments of Learning Need(Visited 279 times, 1 visits today)

This is a question I hear often, and only recently has research become available providing us with an answer. But before we get there, take a moment to ask yourself two questions: "How much learning really occurs in instructor-led training?" and "How much learning really occurs in elearning courses?" The reason I call your attention to these questions is that for many trainers in many organizations, the honest answer is "I don’t know." But you should know. Whether learners are actually learning is important information for companies that are finding themselves increasingly required to provide more training, more frequently. Too often, however, we focus so squarely on training delivery that we fail to measure, or even notice, if anyone on the receiving end of that delivery is even awake, much less encoding any information. The problem of forgetting One of the main challenges for workplace education, what Art Kohn calls "the dirty secret of corporate training" is that learners forget, and they forget fast. Kohn cites research showing that learners forget 50% within an hour, 70% within 24 hours, and as much as 90% within one week. Perhaps the single biggest cause of this extreme forgetting is the fact that traditional training doesn’t gibe particularly well with how people learn. Bottom Line Performance President Sharon Boller puts it well when she writes: "A significant portion of what organizations label as training fits [a common but ineffective model]: it’s delivered as a single ‘glop,’ and large volumes of it are delivered up at once with nothing repeated. The intent in these instances is efficiency, but the result is the opposite because people don’t remember well in these scenarios." Will Thalheimer argues that the percentage of forgetting depends on various factors, including the type of material, the learners’ prior knowledge, and the power of the learning methods used, among others. The idea that the post-training flow of information out of the brain can be stanched is encouraging, and it’s up to us as training professionals to use scenarios that give learners at least a fighting chance at retention. The MOOC advantage MOOCs have many advantages over both ILT and elearning. The one I want to single out here is that, unlike traditional training formats, MOOCs take place over time. The content is not delivered in a "single glop." Instead, learners participate in the courses over several days or weeks. Because MOOCs are video based, learners can go back and review information, and MOOCs that incorporate real-world problem-solving and meaningful assessments give students the opportunity to use what they’ve learned. Both of these practices can lead to higher levels of retention. In addition, since the content and resource materials remain available even after the course is over, learners can go back and refresh their memory as needed. Learning in MOOCs So, how well does it work? Does learning occur in MOOCs? It has been a challenge to measure learning in these new digital environments. There are several reasons for this: For courses offered through major MOOC providers like Coursera, the completion rates are generally low. It took some time for the education community to accept the idea that for free online courses, completion rates aren’t particularly meaningful metrics. MOOC students come from different backgrounds (e.g., some are experts in the field; others are beginners) and have different intentions when taking the courses (some want a certificate of completion to put on their resume; others just want to learn something interesting). MOOC students engage in the courses in different ways. For example, some students are very active on discussion boards and complete all assignments, while others may limit their participation to doing the readings. Recently, though, researchers at MIT, Tsinghua University in China, and Harvard, analyzed data from more than 1,000 students in an edX physics course. Their results were both encouraging, and (to some) quite surprising. Here is what they found: Students in the course all showed relatively the same amount of learning gain, regardless of their prior knowledge about the course material. This finding is especially meaningful because the range of prior knowledge was huge—some students hadn’t even graduated from high school, while others were physics teachers themselves. The various student groups didn’t all achieve the same level of success, but they all demonstrated roughly equal amounts of improvement from pretest to posttest. In fact, the students who scored lowest on the pretest showed the most improvement over the course. Students in the free MOOC also learned just as much as MIT freshman who were required to take the course. In addition to the MOOC content, the freshmen had access to four hours of weekly instruction, as well as tutors, instructors, and other students. Even without these advantages, the MOOC students showed learning gains comparable to those of the MIT students. What these results show is that not only do MOOC students learn, but they learn at high levels. In addition, MOOCs appear able to cater well to student groups that are highly diverse in terms of prior knowledge. The forgetting problem doesn’t need to be corporate training’s dirty little secret anymore. Using MOOCs—which provide the repetition and experiential learning that is missing from most training—can create the conditions necessary for meaningful learning to take place. Read more about how to measure success in a training MOOC. 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:By the Numbers: Learning from MOOCsPublic Libraries Are Failures (and So Are MOOCs)Key Factors in MOOC Success, Part 1Measuring Success (ROI) of a Training MOOC, Part 1Face-to-Face Learning is FAILED Magic(Visited 290 times, 1 visits today)

Often when we talk about the ROIs of any type of training, we focus on things that can be easily monetized. There is good reason for this—L&D, like every other department, must usually justify its existence by showing how its courses and programs are having a positive financial impact on the company. However, not all ROIs of training can easily be boiled down to dollars and cents. The intangible benefits of training in general are many. In an article for Training Journal earlier this year, Martin-Christian Kent identified six intangible benefits that are common to all types of training programs: Increased employee satisfaction Increased organizational commitment Improved teamwork Improved customer service and reduced complaints Reduced conflicts Reduced stress Even though these training results range from difficult to near-impossible to measure in monetary terms (at least immediately), they can have significant impacts on the success of a company. As training solutions, MOOCs can provide these benefits just as well as instructor-led training (ILT) or traditional eLearning. But as flexible, collaborative digital learning environments, MOOCs have the potential to provide even more intangible assets to an organization. Here are five non-financial ROIs of using MOOCs for your corporate training and development. Creating a sense of community ILT courses that involve group activities can result in improved teamwork, but the ability of MOOCs to create connections among people goes far beyond that. In ILT, group activities can foster better collaboration and communication for the people in the room, which is usually a small group at best. In a MOOC, collaboration and communication take place over an entire organization, even if that organization has 10,000 employees in different locations around the world. MOOCs are inclusive, not exclusive, and because of this they can create a sense of community across an entire organization. Learn more about MOOCs as relationship builders. Fostering a culture of learning In 2010, Bersin by Deloitte released a report representing more than six years of research into best practices in corporate training. Their main finding? "The single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of the organization’s learning culture." The report identified seven elements of a learning culture: "building trust, encouraging reflection, demonstrating the value of learning, enabling knowledge sharing, empowering employees, and formalizing learning." While all types of training may be capable of fostering these seven elements, MOOCs stand out particularly for encouraging reflection (courses are taken over a period of time, allowing for more reflection and discussion than time-limited ILT), enabling knowledge sharing (easy knowledge sharing and the building of personal learning networks are two main advantages of the MOOC format), and empowering employees (MOOCs encourage employees to take control of their own training and development, which can lead to increased motivation and participation). Encouraging skill development outside of employees’ defined roles Once you start empowering employees to take control of their own professional development, you might be surprised at what they do, for example, taking courses to develop new skills that are outside of their current job descriptions. Most traditional corporate training is focused on helping employees perform their present jobs better. Financially, this makes perfect sense: with ILT, the cost of training additional people can be very high. But for MOOCs, the marginal cost of adding learners is essentially zero, which means that opening up courses to more employees can only benefit the organization. Employees can acquire a wide range of knowledge and skills, increasing their chances of mobility within the company and providing internal candidates for job openings. MOOCs allow businesses to provide vastly more training for all employees, which results in a winning situation all around. Forging a leadership role in employee training and development MOOCs are still relatively cutting-edge in education and training. They have been moving their way through the Gartner Hype Cycle, and it has just been over the past few months that they have started moving up the slope of enlightenment. We have seen significant advances in MOOC technologies—from enhanced video production technology to better tools for course discussions and collaborations. Many companies are watching these developments with a keen interest, but MOOCs have yet to go mainstream. Organizations that adopt MOOCs now have the opportunity not only to be seen as innovative, but also to play a leadership role in how digital training technologies will develop over the coming months and years. Appealing to the newest entrants into the workforce As I’ve touched on before on this blog, the new entrants into the workforce (Millennials and the generations that will follow them) are different from those previous. They are digitally minded and have likely already taken a couple of online courses, perhaps even a few MOOCs. According to survey data, more than half of Millennials say they would be more likely to apply for and remain at a company that uses training MOOCs. These new members of the workforce want to work for companies that are innovative, companies that are exploring new directions and new technologies, not companies that are stuck doing things the old way. Training of any kind is beneficial for businesses—it helps companies operate better, increases employee job performance and satisfaction, and can help organizations recruit and hold onto top talent. MOOCs, however, provide advantages above and beyond these basics in terms of employee relationships, enhanced skill development, and even business image. These ROIs may not be easily calculated with equations and formulas, but they are still investments you can take to the bank. 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:Using MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…Megatrends in MOOCs: #13 MOOCs as Relationship BuildersUsing MOOCs: Finding and Onboarding New EmployeesHow MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILTMegatrends in MOOCs: #2 Facilitating Learning Organizations(Visited 162 times, 1 visits today)

Join me for my presentation to the New York Chapter of ATD on Wednesday January 14th, 2015. It seems like everyone is talking about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) these days. But what are they? What are the advantages of using a MOOC? How do they apply to a corporate setting? All of htese questions and more will be discussed in the first ATD eLearning SIG meeting of 2015. In this interactive session, we will discuss: What is a MOOC How companies are using MOOCs Success Stories Nuts and Bolts (technology, transitioning from ILT/elearning) Trends and Future directions. Agenda: 5:30- 6:00 pm - informal networking/welcome 6:00 - 7:00 - presentation 7:00 - 7:30 - Q/A/wrap-up When: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 5:30 - 7:30 PM Where: CUNY School of Professional Studies 119 West 31st Street Room 103 - 1st Floor Between 6th and 7th Avenues New York City Presenter: Bryant Nielson, CapitalWave Inc. Registration: required Must register by noon January 12, 2015. Picture ID required for building security For in-person registration click here >>> About the facilitator: 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 an 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 via technology. Learn more about Bryant at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bryantnielson Related Posts:2015 the Year of "Technology Enabled Learning"Technology-Enabled Learning: What Will 2015 Bring?Public Libraries Are Failures (and So Are MOOCs)MOOCs Are Too Uncontrollable - People Could Do Anything!Are MOOCs Too Risky for Your Corporate Training Program?(Visited 43 times, 1 visits today)

MOOCs, gamification, social media, engagement, all of these are reaching out and asking for our attention.  All of them are being amplified, accelerated and enabled with technology.  It is our intent to provide you the reader with a host of perspectives that will entertain, delight and whet your appetite for knowing more about how Technology is Enabling Learning for the corporate environment. Join us by following our posts for this year.  It is our hope that we will provide a thoughtful perspective to you and your associates. 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:MOOCs - What Are They? Why Should You Care?Technology-Enabled Learning: What Will 2015 Bring?Megatrends in MOOCs: #12 Training for MillennialsWharton Puts First-Year MBA programs online for FreeMegatrends in MOOCs: #8 Mobile Learning(Visited 45 times, 1 visits today)

It’s the beginning of the year—the time to make predictions about what the coming year will bring so that we can congratulate ourselves when they come true and make up excuses when they don’t. So, what will 2015 look like for corporate training and technology-enabled learning? This is going to be a big year for technology-enabled learning. Many trends and movements have been bubbling just under the surface, and I expect that this will be the year they start making some serious waves. Here are my seven predictions for workforce education and learning technologies in 2015. More companies will experiment with MOOCs. Over the past year, companies have started dabbling with MOOCs, but the courses have yet to take off big time. There are a variety of reasons for this, including a lack of awareness, uncertainty about how to do it, and concerns regarding security, control over the information employees are learning and sharing, and so on (I’ll be addressing these and other objections to MOOCs in a series starting soon). However, in nearly every survey I’ve seen, while only a small percentage of companies are currently using MOOCs, many are interested in them. There is now a growing list of high-profile MOOC success stories (such as those highlighted in this Extension Engine infographic), and hiring managers are starting to see more MOOCs on resumes of job applicants. As awareness about what MOOCs are and the benefits they can bring increases, we will start to see companies shift from the "We are considering using MOOCs" category to the "We are currently using MOOCs" category. New technologies will emerge that will significantly boost the effectiveness of online learning. Some great new technology-enabled learning tools came on the scene in 2014, including the enhanced video player LectureScape, technologies that create immersive online learning environments (such as simulations), and tools that foster better communication and collaboration. We will much more of this type of innovation going forward, as more research is done into how people learn online and more emphasis is placed on providing not just training, but engaging and meaningful training. Training will become more personalized and adaptive. One of the biggest sources of frustration for learners—in both instructor-led training and elearning—is having to sit through courses that aren’t particularly relevant to them. For example, they don’t see how the content will help them in their daily work activities, or the course is too fast or too slow. Especially in a training environment, learners all come to the table with different levels of prior knowledge, different abilities, and different needs. As trainers, we need to remember that the goal is not to have employees attend courses, but rather to have them acquire new knowledge and skills. New technologies aimed at personalizing training programs so that they are adapted for and relevant to individual learners can help L&D departments achieve their desired training goals. Training will become more networked. While the world in general is becoming ever more networked and connected, many areas of the business world, including training, have remained siloed. In 2015, however, we will see this situation start to change. MOOCs and the technologies that support them are bringing networking to training by making the learning environments more social and more collaborative. As companies start to focus less on simply providing training and more on becoming learning organizations, we will see training programs that foster networking, peer learning, and collaboration among employees, departments, and even those outside the organization. Training will become more data-driven. Big data has been a buzzword in business for a couple of years now. But for training the key component isn’t so much the size as the data. Training has not historically been a particularly objective endeavor. This is largely due to a lack of using relevant metrics (or sometimes any metrics at all) to quantify the results of training programs. The well-known problem is that instructor-led training sessions are often evaluated according to how the participants felt about them, rather than how much participants actually learned. The result, unfortunately, has been that employees don’t learn as much as they are supposed to and quickly forget what they do learn. Collecting data and using analytics to make sense of that data can help training departments significantly improve the effectiveness of their courses and programs. MOOCs provide a huge amount of data, including how many times learners access various resources, how long they spend interacting with those resources, and how many times it takes them to reach the correct answers on assessments. Using this data, training departments can both track the learning happening within their organization and link that learning with measurable ROIs. Training lessons and courses will become more integrated into daily activities. MOOCs, mobile learning, and other technology-driven learning initiatives are changing not only the how of learning, but also the where and the when. By facilitating a "pull" rather than a "push" model of learning, these technologies are expanding learning far beyond both physical and virtual classrooms. When employees have access to learning resources, such as performance support, on their smartphones, learning is transformed from something that happens once in a while on designated training days to something that is happening all of the time. In 2015, as companies further adopt BYOD policies and on-demand learning formats, training will become even more integrated into employees’ daily activities. We will see more high-quality examples of gamification. In 2012, Gartner predicted that "by 2015, 40 percent of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations." This has not happened. While the use of gamification has been growing, particularly in training environments, that growth has been much slower than predicted. This is not necessarily a bad thing—while gamification done well can make training highly engaging and motivating, gamification done poorly can have a de-motivating effect, which is not what anyone wants to see. In 2015, I predict that we will not necessarily see a huge increase in the number of companies using gamification for training. Instead, what we will see is a significantly higher-quality examples of gamification that move beyond points, badges and leaderboards (PBLs) to game elements and mechanics that are more meaningful to learners. There you have it, seven predictions for technology-enabled learning in 2015. Now to wait and see how they all play out. Copyright 2015 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:Strategies for Implementing Gamification in Your Training…Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…On the MOOC Horizon: Tin Can API5 Corporate Training Trends You Can’t Afford to IgnoreMegatrends in MOOCs: #7 Gamification(Visited 247 times, 1 visits today)