Last week, we looked at seven predictions for how technology will affect training and development in 2015. This week, we’ll look more broadly at a handful of corporate training trends—still mostly technology driven—that organizations can no longer afford to ignore. Business-centric learning The idea of business-centric learning came onto many people’s radar last year, after the Brandon Hall Group did a survey showing that about 40% of businesses were developing their learning strategy in alignment with business needs, while the other 60% were focusing on the learners and the content. David Grebow of the Brandon Hall Group offers these characterizations of the three types of learning: Just-in-case learning is content-centric. This is the one-size-fits-all model that made up the training landscape for many years, particularly with the widespread implementation of e-learning. As Grebow notes: "We took the instructor completely out of the picture, and ended up with nothing but content." Just-in-time learning is learner-centric. Here the learners’ needs are the focus of course development, and learners can access the information when, where, and how they need it. Just-for-me learning is business-centric. Grebow writes: "There is no point in focusing on just-in-case learning when the business case for the learning has not been made. No need to get that content out there just in time if the learner has no time to waste finding an answer to a question with no relationship to the business needs. What makes the most sense strategically, as well as operationally, is to provide the exact information that is just for me, when and where I need it, as long as it supports the business needs of the company." Business-centric learning isn’t in opposition to a learner-centric mode. Instead, it involves aligning the learners’ needs with the business needs. There are two major factors necessary for effective business-centric learning. First, the business goals of the training must be clearly defined. Second, the relationship between the business goals and the training must be measureable. New technologies that enable advanced data collection and analytics can provide support for companies making the switch to business-centric learning. Video-based learning Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of online training have ushered in the era of video. Research has shown that more than 80% of learning takes place visually and that a combination of video and audio demonstrations are effective ways to learn tasks. Today, all it takes is a computer to produce a training video. As a result, video-based learning is being used more and more, not just in online courses but in traditional and blended courses as well. Multiple learning formats In addition to more video, we are seeing much more variety and flexibility in the use of learning formats. In the past, training was usually delivered either one way or another—either instructor-led training or elearning, in a seminar or as a tutorial. But thanks to both the BYOD (bring your own device) movement, in which employees use their personal smartphones and tablets for business purposes, and new multimedia technologies (from screencasting software to simulations), training formats can be tailored both to the content and to the needs of the learners. Blended courses, responsive design (i.e., content that works on any device or operating system), and mobile learning are three of the ways this trend is currently manifesting. More social media The use of social media in training has been somewhat controversial, as organizations are understandably concerned about the privacy of their proprietary information. However, not all social media tools necessarily need to be public, and companies have much to gain by using communication and collaboration tools beyond the discussion forum. In a recent article on the future of L&D, David Wentworth and Mollie Lombardi of the Brandon Hall Group wrote that "companies still lack the knowledge and insight around how to use [social] tools for learning and development." In a study, they found that while almost 60% of companies were using social for learning, fewer than one-quarter thought it was effective. The authors say that one reason is the limited scope of the tools the firms are using, which aren’t the ones that are best for learning. "Companies are using document sharing, discussion forums, and blogs, but they aren’t generally using video or micro-blogs—which our research shows are more effective—to improve their learning functions." Competency-based training Finally, the competency-based education model is making huge waves at all levels of education, and companies are also realizing that what is really important is not that employees sit through training, but that they can do something useful at the end of it. Competency-based training requires reorganizing training programs around demonstrable skills, which requires clearly articulating the desired learning outcomes and developing assessments that validly measure those outcomes. Organizations that adopt a competency-based approach will find themselves much better able to cope with the skills gaps currently affecting many industries. Mirroring what is happening in higher education, the training landscape is in a bit of an upheaval, which is being fueled by new technology-enabled learning tools and by new ideas about the best ways to educate today’s workforce. These five trends have largely emerged over the past few years. Smart innovative companies are already embracing them, and organizations that choose to ignore these trends will soon find themselves left behind. 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:MOOCs at the 5 Moments of Learning NeedTechnology-Enabled Learning: What Will 2015 Bring?Training in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD Environment13 Megatrends in MOOCsWhy Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…(Visited 404 times, 1 visits today)

This is the first in a series of articles that will tackle common objections to and arguments against using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training. Have you seen how people use public libraries these days? They pick up books, skim through them, and then put them back on the shelf without reading them. Sometimes they even check out books and don’t read them. Sometimes they just photocopy a few pages or a chapter, or look up a reference. Sometimes they don’t use the books at all, but instead participate in a discussion group or even watch a film! In fact, a 2012 study found that only a bare majority of people who go to a public library actually borrow printed books. Since people who go to libraries aren’t all borrowing books—and even when they are borrowing books they probably aren’t all reading them—public libraries are failures. By now, I expect you are rolling your eyes. And for very good reason—the assertion that public libraries are failures is ridiculous. But these are the very same arguments often used to suggest that MOOCs are failures. The fact that only between 5 and 10% of people who sign up for MOOCs actually complete them has led some to conclude that MOOCs are not engaging, that people don’t like them, and that they are not effective forms of instruction. However, the research that has been done on MOOCs shows that this argument is not valid, because completion rates are not useful measures of what really happens in a MOOC. Let’s take a closer look at what the completion rates of MOOCs really mean. The completion rates usually reported for MOOCs are straightforward: divide the number of people who complete the MOOC (e.g., 5,000) by the number who sign up (e.g., 100,000). Regardless of the fact that 5,000 people is still a huge number in the context of most courses, 5% just doesn’t look very good. The problem with this calculation is that it doesn’t take into account learner intention. Those 100,000 people who enroll may never intend to finish in the first place. Many of them don’t even show up for the first class. Like people who sign up for a free library card, the people who enroll in MOOCs do so with a variety of intentions in mind—maybe they want to see what it’s like (taking a book off of the shelf and skimming through it), maybe they are only interested in one or two modules (photocopying a chapter or two), or maybe they just want to be reminded when the MOOC will start and plan to make their decision at that time (putting their name on the waiting list for a popular book). The more informative calculation isn’t based on the number of people who enroll, but the number who enroll intending to complete the course. For a study released last month, Harvard’s Justin Reich examined exactly that, and the results look much different. Reich surveyed students from nine HarvardX courses about their intentions to complete their MOOCs. What they found was that, depending on the course, only 40 to 78% (average: 58%) of respondents intended to complete the course at all, and of those, 9 to 36% (average: 22%) actually did. Another interesting finding was that among those who didn’t intend to complete the course, between 6% and 10% went on to earn a certificate, showing that learners’ intentions can change—in both directions. Finally, the study showed that attrition happens early in the course: if learners are engaged early, they are more likely to see it through to the end. Admittedly, these numbers are not high, but there is still more to the story. Reich’s study looked at a range of academic courses, most of which learners probably weren’t taking to improve their job skills (for example, courses on ancient Greek heroes and the letters of Paul). So let’s look more closely at courses that learners are taking for professional development. One way to measure this is by exploring the completion rate for people who sign up for verified certificates, which cost around $50 each and are starting to be considered as valid credentials in the workplace. In an interview at Disrupt SF 2014, Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller said that among learners who embark on the verified certificate track, the completion rate is between 80 and 90%. That looks a heck of a lot better than 5 to 10%! What does all of this mean? It means that completion rates aren’t valid measurements of MOOC success. We can’t measure the success of a public library based only on the number of people who go into the library and then, regardless of their intentions, leave with a book which they then read cover to cover. That would be silly. It is equally silly to judge the success of a MOOC based on the overall percentage of people who complete the course. For corporate trainers, the more relevant metric is the 80-to-90% completion rate of those who enroll in the verified certificate track. Different learners have different needs, and that’s something we should embrace, not fight against. Some learners need a whole course, some need a module or two, and some just want to skim. As I’ve written before on this blog, MOOCs can accommodate different learners’ needs in ways that instructor-led training and traditional elearning simply can’t. Public libraries aren’t failures, and neither are MOOCs. They are both ways of providing personalized learning and engagement opportunities for a diverse group of people. There may not yet be an agreed-upon metric for measuring MOOC success, but until there is one, let us not condemn them on the basis of something as meaningless as low completion rates. 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:Face-to-Face Learning has FAILEDMeasuring Success (ROI) of a Training MOOC, Part 1How Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?By the Numbers: Learning from MOOCsKey Factors in MOOC Success, Part 1(Visited 198 times, 1 visits today)

This is the second post in a series of articles that tackle common objections to and arguments against using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training. Read the previous article: Public Libraries Are Failures (and So Are MOOCs). I’ve heard all of the benefits of online learning. Learners can access the course materials anytime, from anywhere. They can schedule their courses around their life, rather than their life around their courses. Companies can offer the same amount of training in less time and with considerably less expense. I know all of that. But when it comes down to it, people just don’t learn as well online. They don’t put in the time or they get distracted by their email. They can’t easily ask questions. And besides, there is just something magical about an instructor standing in front of a class that simply can’t be replicated in or replaced by the online experience. Right? The myth that people don’t learn as well online-that there is indeed something magical about face-to-face instruction-is as pervasive as the myth that teaching to individual learning styles affects learning outcomes (it doesn’t). The idea that people don’t learn as well online is usually the first argument made against massive open online courses and in defense of instructor-led training (ILT). But it isn’t true. Let’s explore the research behind this idea. How does online learning compare to face-to-face learning? First, let’s briefly return to the idea of completion rates, which were the focus of the previous post in this series. In all (or close to all) of the studies that have been done comparing online and F2F learning, the completion rate is higher for F2F. However, while the fact that more people drop out of online courses may mean many things, it doesn’t mean that overall people don’t learn as well online. The data we need to examine is the comparison between online and in-person learners who could reasonably be expected to learn the same amount (i.e., those who actually complete their courses). Teasing apart the research on online versus F2F courses isn’t easy, because the courses are rarely directly comparable and because of the many different types of students who take the courses. Here, I’ll focus on the results that are most relevant to training formats. Studies showing online learning doesn’t work There are, indeed, plenty of studies showing that students in online courses don’t learn as well as students in F2F courses. For example, this study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found "modest evidence" that in-person instruction is superior to online, and this study out of Columbia University found that online students were more likely to fail than traditional students. However, while results like these may be important in academic environments, they are less relevant for corporate training. The reason is that many of the studies that show online learning to be inferior focus on remedial courses or students who are already at a disadvantage. In the NBER study, the biggest differences between online and F2F learning were found among students who were relatively low-achieving to start with. Even the highly publicized failure of the partnership between San Jose State University and MOOC provider Udacity focused on introductory and remedial courses for students who had graduated from high school, but didn’t have the skills to succeed in college. This caveat is important to keep in mind as it helps explain the different results we see when larger datasets and more high-achieving students are considered. Studies showing online learning does work Probably the most widely cited study in favor of online learning was conducted by the U.S. Department of Education on data from K-12 classes. They performed a meta-analysis of studies, most of which took place between 2004 and 2008, and concluded that on average, online students perform better than face-to-face learners. Other studies have also found either an advantage of online learning or no difference between learning formats. For example, this study analyzed learning outcomes in students taking continuing education courses and found that they were "essentially the same" for both the fully online and the in-person formats. What conclusion can we draw? Although the results from remedial courses may be disheartening for colleges and universities, the evidence largely supports the idea that online learning is at least equivalent to F2F learning for the demographics most relevant to corporate training. For high-achieving, motivated learners, the format doesn’t appear to have much of an effect on learning outcomes at all. Other factors, such as the effectiveness of the instructor, likely have a much greater influence. In addition, we must consider that the most relevant studies haven’t yet been done. For example, on this blog, I’ve highlighted many new technologies, like LectureScape, which have the power to lift digital learning to a whole new level. No research has yet been examined how these new technologies impact learning. In addition, while mobile learning is starting to come into its own, there haven’t yet been any large-scale studies showing learning outcomes of mobile courses. In terms of comparing learning in MOOCs to learning in person, these studies will likely have to be done by companies, which have more control over their learners and what happens in their courses than the colleges and universities that are currently offering free courses for all. The take-home message here for corporate trainers is that people can, and do, learn just as well online as they do in person. I would even argue that they learn better, for many reasons I’ve discussed before, such as they can re-watch videos and access the information at the moment they need it. These are the kinds of things that will eventually differentiate new forms of online learning, like MOOCs, from anything that has come before. 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:Key Factors in MOOC Success, Part 1Public Libraries Are Failures (and So Are MOOCs)MOOCs Treat All Learners the SameHow Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?Megatrends in MOOCs: #9 Flipping the MOOC(Visited 291 times, 1 visits today)

This is the third in a series of articles that tackle common objections to and arguments against using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training. Read the previous article: Face-to-Face learning had FAILED. All learners are different. They come from different backgrounds and have different levels of prior knowledge. They have different learning styles and preferences, different needs and different questions. For education to be effective and engaging, it needs to be adaptable for the needs of individual learners. MOOCs treat all learners the same, and a one-size-fits-all approach works just as well for education as it does for clothing, which is not well at all. This is probably my favorite objection to MOOCs, perhaps because it is the one (aside from low completion rates) that has gotten the most attention. The basis of this argument is that "massive" courses can never work because they don’t take into account the needs of individuals. In fact, I (and many others) believe that MOOCs are able to support individual learners even better than traditional instructional formats. To address this issue, let’s start by taking a trip back in time…way back to 2008, when George Siemens and Stephen Downes offered the very first MOOC, a course called "Connectivism and Connected Knowledge." The course was based on the theory of connectivism, which Downes has defined as "the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks." The MOOC, which attracted 2,200 students, was completely different from the traditional idea of a course. There was no assigned content and no formal assessments. Instead, Siemens and Downes provided a large supply of recommended content as a starting point and then encouraged learners to explore the content, repurpose and remix the content, contribute content of their own, and share what they’d created and learned, via blogs, online discussions, social media, and so on. The content of the course was fluid—it changed as learners discovered and shared their discoveries with one another. The goal of the first MOOC was not for participants to memorize anything or answer multiple choice questions correctly. It was for them to approach the content based on their own interests and objectives, build networks of people with shared interests, and thus actively create their own knowledge and knowledge networks. Far from being one-size-fits-all, this was personalized learning at its best—learners chose not only when and where they participated in the course, but also what materials they engaged with and who they collaborated with, if they chose to engage or collaborate at all. The MOOCs that started to appear in 2012, from Coursera and Udacity, were much more formally structured, more like a regular college course than an experimental collaborative knowledge-creation environment. There was a set schedule and weekly modules with required content and formal assessments. All students were expected to progress through the course at least somewhat linearly—though they could skip around within modules, the modules were released in a set order on set dates. There was also the possibility of participating in online discussions, but, not surprisingly, many found it difficult to hold a meaningful conversation with tens of thousands of other people. Many of the MOOCs we see today fall somewhere between the two extremes, allowing learners to choose how they participate in the course, but within a more structured framework. For example, Coursera has started offering many of its courses on-demand, so learners can start anytime and work at their own pace. Many courses use collaborative project-based learning rather than online quizzes and tests, so learners can choose their projects and their teams according to their interests. And many courses now incorporate social media, blogs, and other communication tools, so learners can choose if and how they want to interact with others. The take-home message is that a MOOC is not a pedagogy, it is a framework, and within that framework many things can happen, including learner-centered instruction. As Stanford professor John C. Mitchell wrote in 2013, "Perhaps the most important lesson thus far is that ‘online education’ cannot be thought of in rigid, monolithic terms—as if all online education looks the same, or requires giving up all aspects of the classroom experience…educational technology does not require a cookie-cutter approach. Quite the contrary: Online education, as it develops, should allow us to customize and personalize the student educational experience to a greater extent than ever before." For corporate trainers, this means that MOOCs can be selected, designed, and facilitated according to the needs of the organization as well as individual learners. For example, a course where consistency is paramount and all learners need to acquire certain knowledge by a specific date may be more rigid in terms of schedule and requirements. In contrast, a course that is optional or serves primarily as performance support may be more flexible to allow just-in-time learning. Assessments in any course may include a combination of formal tests and project-based learning. Discussions may or may not be required. The possibilities are bounded only by our imagination and the limits of the available technologies, which are improving all of the time. Can your company’s instructor-led training or traditional elearning programs do that? Just because mailboxes in the United States are blue doesn’t mean mailboxes must be blue. In Canada they are red. Similarly, just because some MOOCs have been designed according to a rigid, or one-size-fits-all, approach doesn’t mean they all must be. The MOOC framework is flexible, and it is this flexibility that allows MOOCs to be powerful digital learning environments able to meet today’s complex training needs. 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:MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning…What Style of MOOC is Right for You?MOOCs Are Too Uncontrollable - People Could Do Anything!Megatrends in MOOCs: #6 More Social, More CollaborativeLearner-Centered Instruction in MOOCs(Visited 144 times, 1 visits today)

This is the fourth in a series of articles that tackle common objections to and arguments against using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training. Read the previous article: MOOCs Treat All Learners the Same. MOOCs aren’t interactive. They don’t provide opportunities for active learning or engagement. Learners just sit in front of a computer and watch video lectures (they probably aren’t even paying attention) and take multiple choice tests. There is no learner-learner interaction, no instructor-learner interaction, and only a minimal amount of learner-content interaction. This isn’t meaningful learning—one could hardly call it "learning" at all. This would be a very convincing argument, if it were true. In the previous post, we saw that the widely held perception of MOOCs as a one-size-fits-all solution is inaccurate. While some MOOCs do take a "cookie-cutter approach" (which isn’t always a bad thing—think compliance training), this is not a trait inherent to the courses themselves. The same idea applies to active learning and interactivity. Yes, some MOOCs are designed as more passive experiences, where all learners do is watch videos and take multiple-choice tests (again, think compliance training), but many MOOCs are highly active, and interactive, digital learning environments. In fact, in a study about interaction in MOOCs presented at the EdMedia2013 World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, 65% of MOOC students reported being "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the level of interaction in their courses. Since then, the development of new technologies has only enhanced the active learning opportunities available in MOOCs. Here are 12 ways to make MOOCs more interactive: Make interactive video. That is not an oxymoron—with the technologies available today, online video can be used to create rich, interactive experiences. At a basic level, comprehension and reflection questions can be inserted into video segments and videos can contain direct links to course discussion boards. At only a slightly higher level of complexity, choose-your-own-adventure-type simulations can be created using a series of related video clips. Another option is to use LectureScape, an enhanced video technology that incorporates data-driven video interaction techniques, including keyword search, interactive transcripts, personal bookmarks, and more. Use discussion boards and social media. Many MOOCs take advantage of online communication technologies, including class discussion boards and both public and private social media platforms, to spur learner-learner interaction. Have a facilitator lead class discussions. MOOCs can be facilitated by subject matter experts, who supply discussion prompts, answer questions, and otherwise moderate class discussions. Hold virtual office hours. To encourage instructor-learner interaction, hold virtual office hours in an online chatroom for an hour or two each week. Use surveys and polls. Surveys and polls can be used in many ways in MOOCs. For example, as an introduction to a particular learning activity, take a poll to gauge what learners already know or how they feel about the topic. Incorporate projects and other real-world problem solving. Corporate training often suffers from a lack of meaningful assessment. Use case studies, simulations, and other forms of real-world problem solving to get learners to interact with the content, and with one another. Assign learners to groups. To facilitate cooperation in a large class, assign learners to smaller groups for discussions and projects. Learners can be grouped based on department, geographical location, or any other variable that is relevant for the training and for your organization. Use a variety of exercise types. Even when all you really need is for learners to read and understand the content, you are not limited to multiple choice questions. Digital learning environments allow you to create a variety of exercises, such as matching, drag-and-drop, identification, and so on, which provide a higher level of interaction. Set up knowledge sharing environments. Set up a course wiki or another collaboration area where learners can ask questions and share their knowledge with one another. Incorporate simulations. The MOOC framework can accommodate any type of digital activity, including complex simulations and scenario-based learning. Gamify. Gamification can boost learner engagement and encourage interaction. Here are four strategies for effectively implementing gamification in training MOOCs. Go mobile. Here are 20 strategies for increasing learner interactions in mobile MOOCs from Inge Ingatia de Waard. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does represent the myriad ways MOOCs can be interactive, from content delivery to assessment, and beyond. What makes these opportunities possible is the new web-based technologies that have been developed over the past few years, and I expect we will continue to see new learning technologies being developed, which will further expand the idea of what is possible for technology-enabled learning. Just like MOOCs can be designed so that they meet the unique needs of individual learners, they can also be designed to be interactive. That’s the real power of the MOOC platform—it can be used to deliver the training your learners and your organization require, whatever that training may be. Featured image by Bin im Garten 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:Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…New Technologies Making MOOCs Even BetterKey Factors in MOOC Success, Part 2MOOCs Are Too Uncontrollable - People Could Do Anything!Instructor Led Training…Is It Still the Gold Standard?(Visited 370 times, 1 visits today)

This is the fifth in a series of articles that tackle common objections to and arguments against using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training. Read the previous article: MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning Taking Place. I understand the benefits of digital learning environments, but the problem remains that MOOCs are not very well controlled. How will we know what learners are doing? They could say they are taking the course, but really just be watching YouTube. And what about our intellectual property and other proprietary information? We can’t have employees holding Twitter chats about our business. Retaining control over employees’ training is a very real concern for many organizations. Not only is training time paid time, but training often involves the communication of sensitive business information that companies do not want publicly disseminated. In addition, many courses are mandatory and training departments are often held responsible for tying training efforts to performance metrics, so the idea that learners could engage with their courses according to their own schedule and using their own devices can be a bit scary. I have two major responses to this objection: MOOCs used for corporate training don’t need to take place publicly. The lack of tight control found in MOOCs can actually be an advantage for organizations. Let’s look at both of these in more detail. Corporate training MOOCs are usually run privately. Despite the words massive and open in the acronym, most MOOCs for corporate training are neither. They are usually run on password-protected intranets or closed learning management systems, so they are open only to approved learners and discussions take place within the system, not on public platforms. Even corporate MOOCs that incorporate social media don’t necessarily use Twitter—Yammer is a popular private social network that businesses can use to ensure the privacy of employee communications. There are other acronyms frequently used to describe these types of courses, such as MPOC (massive private online course) and SPOC (small private online course), but they are all variants of MOOCs, so it is easiest just to include them under the MOOC umbrella. They point to remember is that a MOOC is a flexible framework that can be built upon and altered to meet the needs of any organization. A lack of tight control can actually be beneficial. It is true that learners in MOOCs have much more freedom than they do in instructor-led training (ILT) or traditional elearning. They can participate on their own time. They can engage with the content in different ways according to their needs. And they can interact with one another, even if they are in different departments. Even if they are on different continents! Rather than being a disadvantage, this can lead to a much more powerful learner-centered, and user-generated, experience. Stephen Downes, who along with George Siemans ran the very first MOOC, describes what he calls "emergent properties" of MOOCs. In exploring what it means for a MOOC to be a success, Downes wrote on his blog: "…the MOOC should exhibit network properties on a macro scale…This is to treat the MOOC as an entity which perceives, or which learns, as a whole. These things are emergent properties, for example, emergent knowledge or emergent learning. Did the MOOC as a whole produce some new insight, or recognize some new phenomena in its area of study? MOOC success, in other words, is not individual success…It is not a combination or a sum of [individual] experiences…but rather a result of how those experiences combined or meshed together." Here are some ways MOOCs can benefit companies as a result of emergent properties: Empowering employees to take control of their own learning and professional development Enabling communication and collaboration among individuals and teams that are normally siloed Facilitating the development of learning organizations by demonstrating that the organization values independent learning Integrating learning into everyday activities Fostering innovation by encouraging employees to create knowledge resources (e.g., contribute to a wiki) and share those resources with others These are not benefits normally associated with ILT or traditional elearning. In MOOCs, they emerge as a result of creating a learner-centered, collaborative learning space. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. Of course, I’m not suggesting MOOCs are, or should be, a free-for-all. They do have a structure, and they can be tightly controlled when it counts. For example, because they use video-based content delivery, MOOCs are excellent when consistency is essential—the core content is guaranteed to be delivered in exactly the same way every time. In addition, because of the large amount of data and analytics available, engagement and performance can be measured much more precisely than it can for ILT. But by empowering learners and providing opportunities for them to interact with one another, MOOCs create the conditions necessary for these "macro" benefits to emerge. As Downes writes, MOOC success is not just individual success. In this case, it is also the success of the team, the department, the training program, and the organization as a whole. It may be a challenge for firms to embrace the uncertainty that comes along with new technology-driven digital learning environments, but for those that do, the payoff will be huge. Featured image by Faramarz Hashemi 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:Are MOOCs Too Risky for Your Corporate Training Program?MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning…MOOCs Treat All Learners the SameLearner-Centered Instruction in MOOCsTraining Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC Readiness(Visited 89 times, 1 visits today)

In the five previous articles, we have addressed common objections to using massive open online courses (MOOCs) in corporate training. Here, we take a step back to tackle a more fundamental objection—the objection to using technology at all. Here’s a sentiment commonly heard in training departments and conference rooms: We’ve always done instructor-led training. Our entire training program is based on face-to-face interaction, and I don’t think learning technologies can offer us much of an advantage. Using learning technologies just isn’t right for me or for my company. "We’ve always done it this way" syndrome is rampant in companies, especially regarding adopting new technology, and it can be difficult to overcome. This objection usually stems from an unwillingness to learn something new. But while adopting a new way of doing things can be painful for some, it must happen for businesses to survive and grow into the future. Customer Interaction Solutions magazine editorial director Tracey Schelmetic wrote: "When an unwillingness to learn about, let alone adopt, new technologies begins holding businesses back, it’s time for education. It’s time to learn the what, why, how, and where of new methods….Companies are standing on a precipice, and the deadline is fast approaching when they must make the decision to go forward or dissolve into rust." That was in 2005 and she was talking about adopting new telecommunications technologies. It was before everyone had a cellphone, and only a lucky few had a Palm Pilot or a Blackberry. It was five years before the iPad. Facebook was in its very early stages, and Twitter wasn’t even on the radar. How many companies can you name that have refused to adopt these new telecommunications technologies and managed to survive? My guess is: not many. Ten years from now, we will be saying the same things about MOOCs and other forms of technology-enabled learning. The arguments about whether or not to use new online tools, social media, and so on will seem silly, because by then they will be the new way we’ve always done things. If your company is standing on a precipice, here are three major reasons your corporate training program should fall on the side of using technology: Technology is in the process of revolutionizing the corporate training industry. This may sound like jumping on the bandwagon, but it is more accurately described as keeping up with current trends, which is essential for companies looking to attract tomorrow’s best and brightest. A new report from Visiongain predicts that the MOOC market will grow immensely in the next five years, especially for "companies looking to implement effective training programs for employees." A huge driver of this revolution is Millennials, who at latest count spend almost 18 hours every day consuming some sort of media and 14.5 hours per week on their smartphones. To these hyper-connected individuals, training that doesn’t incorporate some sort of technology seems antiquated. Employees expect and need more training than they are getting. Are you experiencing a skills shortage in your company? Do you have too many vacancies you can’t find qualified people to fill? This skills gap is happening in all sectors, and while many have laid the blame at the door of colleges and universities, but Wharton’s Peter Capelli suggests that the real problem is a training shortage. An Accenture study last year found that 80% of 2014 graduates expected formal training at their first job, which is more than 30% higher than number of 2012 and 2013 graduates who received training at theirs. To reconcile these numbers, employers would need to nearly double the amount of training they offer—and that’s just for entry-level employees. Most companies are not in the place to double their T&D staff, but they can use technology to scale their training efforts. Technology-enabled learning is simply more effective for training. Finally, though many trainers like to argue otherwise, technology-enabled learning is simply a more effective way to train employees. Here are a few elearning statistics that I’ve noted before, but are worth revisiting: Technology-enabled learning tools and strategies can increase employee productivity by up to 50%. Technology-enabled learning can increase retention by up to 60%. Companies that use technology-enabled learning are 46% more likely to be industry leaders, 34% better able to respond to their customers’ needs, and 17% more likely to be market share leaders. These three reasons each represent a major way organizations that don’t actively pursue new learning technologies will soon find themselves trailing behind. They will be unable to attract and keep top talent, they will be unable to bridge their skills gaps, and they will be unable to keep up with their competitors who are using technology-enabled learning. No company wants to look toward its future and see a pile of rust. For organizations that want to get the most out of their training programs, now is the time to stop saying "we’ve always done it this way" and instead to start exploring better ways of doing it. 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:What You Risk by NOT Using MOOCsHow to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 13 Reasons You Need to Reinvent Your Corporate Training…(Visited 137 times, 1 visits today)

For the past month, this blog has focused on common objections to using massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other technology-enabled learning tools in corporate training programs. We’ve explored the arguments that MOOCs aren’t interactive, that they are a one-size-fits-all solution to a many-sided problem, and that people don’t learn very well in them. This article finishes up the series by addressing the idea that MOOCs are simply too risky on which to bank something as important as corporate training success. What are the risks of MOOCs? In addition to the issues explored earlier in this series, here are some perceived risks of using MOOCs in particular and technology-enabled learning in general. The technology could break down or become obsolete. Well, yes it could. But so could any other technology your company uses, whether it be an iPad or a cloud-based software application. These risks are inherent to technology, but they are not reasonable arguments against using technology. Instructor-led training (ILT) doesn’t always work either—sometimes the trainer gets sick, sometimes flights are delayed, sometimes there is a power outage at the venue. ILT can also quickly become obsolete as technological and other advances are made in a field. In fact, it’s easier to revise a MOOC to reflect current practice by adjusting the module content than it is to redeliver an entire ILT training course. Content could leak into public sources. Training consultant David Kelly has an excellent response to this idea: "Some dismiss the idea of a Corporate MOOC based solely on the open aspect. The idea of corporate knowledge being shared with the population at large is seen as a risk. In some rare cases that might be true, though I’m struggling to think of what corporate secrets are baked into the average leadership or communications course." The fact is that the content of most corporate training courses isn’t classified, so there is often little to lose by embracing the open aspect. If that approach doesn’t fit with your company objectives, you can still use the MOOC framework to run a private course. Kelly notes that open doesn’t have to mean "open to the public"; it can just as easily mean "open to all employees." Business plans could be revealed due to public awareness of the training being delivered. First, see the previous point—most corporate MOOCs don’t involve classified information, and those that do don’t have to be truly open. Second, some companies are actually using MOOCs to solve business problems, to spur innovation and collaboration, and to drum up excitement for new initiatives, both within and outside of the company. While you certainly don’t want all of your business plans revealed to the public, running MOOCs that inform learners about your business could actually be part of your marketing campaign. The truth is, if your content is ultra-sensitive, it’s likely that a MOOC isn’t the best choice for delivering it in the first place. Read this post on when to use common training formats for more suggestions on how to decide between ILT, traditional elearning, and a MOOC. A compliance risk may exist from not having your inter-staff communication monitored. Companies in the financial services sector (and other sectors as well) are facing increased regulations in many areas. Today, compliance programs require that firms monitor and archive all electronic communications, including email, blog posts, and even social media. How can organizations run MOOCs—which take advantage of a variety of online communication tools—and still maintain compliance? The answer is: technology. While the amount of communication data generated by MOOCs can be immense, various technologies are available to help you keep track of it. One solution is to have employees limit their MOOC discussions to certain tools, such as the course discussion forums, a private social network, or a new communication platform like Slack. If your MOOC will be run on the web at large, there are many tools available that will provide surveillance and archiving of communications including emails, mobile messages, social networks, and more. These tools have very powerful search capabilities, and many are available as cloud-based software applications. Even if you aren’t running MOOCs, monitoring employee communications in this way is still recommended to ensure that you keep on the right side of compliance regulations. This report by PricewaterhouseCoopers provides best practices for how to integrate technology into a compliance program. So, are MOOCs too risky? While it may appear that MOOCs have a few extra risks, they also have a lot of benefits that other training formats simply don’t. In addition, all of the risks can be easily managed. Setting procedures in place to mitigate potential risks such as information leakage and compliance breaches, is simply good practice, and something you should be doing anyway, whether you use MOOCs for training or not. As with anything, if you worry too much about the potential risks of MOOCs, you will lose the opportunity to gain the benefits. In the next article, we’ll look at the flip side of this issue: what you risk by not using MOOCs in your training and development programs. 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:What You Risk by NOT Using MOOCsMOOCs Are Too Uncontrollable - People Could Do Anything!MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning…Training Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessCorporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and Managers(Visited 103 times, 1 visits today)

To wrap up our series exploring arguments against massive open online courses (MOOCs) and potential risks associated with the courses, in this final post we’ll turn the tables and look at some risks of NOT adopting MOOCs and other technology-enabled learning initiatives in corporate training programs. MOOCs and other forms of technology-enabled learning signal a shift in our thinking about training. Today, learning isn’t just something we do in class; it’s something we do all of the time. Companies that choose not to move their training programs into the 21st century using technology face three main risks: Not being able to provide enough training Not providing training that is as effective as it could be Being perceived as out of touch More training The Association for Talent Development defines the term skills gap as "a significant gap between an organization’s skills needs and the current capabilities of its workforce that occurs at the point at which an organization can no longer grow or remain competitive because they don’t have the right skills to drive business results and support the firm’s strategies and goals." Though there is a lot of debate surrounding the nature of the current skills gaps (and particularly over who to blame), companies in many areas are reporting trouble finding employees with the skills they need. In this environment, the only way for companies to ensure their workforce is able to "drive business results and support [their] strategies and goals" is to provide more training. A defining feature of MOOCs is that they are infinitely scalable, enabling companies to provide all of the training required to develop their workforce. Big problems require big solutions. Organizations that limit their training programs to small instructor-led courses risk facing a much more pressing problem down the road. Better training I’ve written extensively about the failure of ILT as a training format. While there may be theoretical benefits to in-person interactions with the instructor and other learners, in reality this doesn’t happen very often in corporate training. Most ILT is still based on the extended lecture format, where learners are expected to listen attentively to someone speaking for four or eight (or forty) hours and then go back to their desks and do their jobs better. Is that realistic? Not really. This post on The Rapid E-Learning Blog identifies four ways e-learning supports learner development. These benefits do a good job of summarizing the main reasons MOOCs are so effective: Real-time access. ILT is just-in-case; MOOCs are just-in-time. While a course may follow a schedule, learners have access to the resources long after the course is over, which means they can review the content anytime they need to. In this way, MOOCs provide both the initial training and continuing performance support. Freedom to fail. No one likes to mess up, but that is how we learn best. Digital learning environments, especially interactive ones like simulations, provide learners with the ability to practice by working through real-life problems and scenarios. This allows learners to fail, and to learn from their failures, in low-stakes situations before they find themselves in high-stakes ones. Improved retention. Bite-sized learning, multimedia, interactivity, the ability to rewind and review—these factors all contribute to increased retention in digital learning environments. Personalized learning. Unlike ILT and traditional elearning, MOOCs are not linear. Learners can work at their own pace and move back and forth between modules, designing their own personalized training program based on their individual needs. U.S. companies spend billions of dollars on training every year. Do you want to risk that kind of investment on ineffective training methods? Positive perception How a company is perceived can affect its ability to attract and retain talent, especially workers in younger generations. Increasingly, the willingness to embrace technology plays a large role in that perception: companies that use new technologies are seen as innovative and forward-thinking, while companies that resist technology are seen as out of touch. In a study last year, Millennials reported being more likely to apply to a company that offered MOOCs, more likely to participate in MOOC-based training, and more likely to stay at a company that used MOOCs for professional development. These findings signal an overall trend in how the younger generations view the importance of technology in the workplace. As technology becomes even more woven into the fabric of our lives, any company that doesn’t embrace trends such as BYOD, mobile learning, and MOOCs risks being perceived as out of touch. The perceptual risks aren’t limited to potential employees. Many companies run external MOOCs to connect with potential customers. In fact, brand awareness is one of the top reasons many colleges and universities have started offering the courses. As a result, local and regional schools have been able to attract a much wider range of students than they previously could. If your competitors are running MOOCs, but you aren’t, your company risks losing out on the brand awareness and positive perceptions that come along with being seen as an innovative and forward-thinking organization. These three risks are not small. The ability to attract top talent and to have access to a qualified workforce are the cornerstones of any company’s success. Don’t just roll the dice. Embracing technology-enabled learning today so you can mitigate these risks in the future. 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:Are MOOCs Too Risky for Your Corporate Training Program?Training in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD EnvironmentMegatrends in MOOCs: #12 Training for MillennialsUsing MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…(Visited 130 times, 1 visits today)

Spending on corporate training is rising rapidly. According to Bersin by Deloitte, corporate training spending increased 10% in 2011, 12% in 2012, and 15% in 2013. The numbers for 2014 aren’t out yet, but they were probably even higher. Wouldn’t you hate to find out that you are wasting your money or your time, or both? It isn’t much talked about in anything more than a whisper, but corporate training fails quite a lot of the time. It fails to engage; it fails to enhance employees’ knowledge and skills; it fails to provide meaningful learning experiences. There are many, many reasons corporate training fails. Here are some of the most common: There are no defined learning objectives, or the learning objectives aren’t aligned with your business goals. Employees do not have the opportunity to apply what they learn to real-world problems and situations. Training effectiveness is not being measured in a valid way (happy sheets are not a valid measurement of training effectiveness). It’s boring! Whatever the reason your training isn’t effective isn’t important (well, it is, but that is for another article). What is important is that you fix it. If you’ve been dragging your feet about revamping your training, now is the time to get going. With the pace of change in business today, companies that don’t move forward will quickly find themselves far behind. Here are three reasons you need to reinvent your training programs. You need to provide more training than you currently are. Employees today simply need more training—more than they have ever needed before and more than they are currently getting. If your organization is facing a skills gap, you know this to be true. The catch is that it isn’t going to get any better. Because of advances in technology and increasing complexity in organizations, the jobs that are in demand are changing quickly as well as becoming more specialized. Take data science as an example. Just a few years ago, there was no such thing as a data scientist because there was no such thing as big data. Now, the idea of a general data scientist is nearly obsolete—companies today are looking for business intelligence analysts, data preparation analysts, and analytics programmers. Gary Beach of CIO.com wrote that the "IT skills gap is really an education gap." This sentiment is just as true in every other industry facing a shortage of qualified staff. Traditional educational institutions (i.e., colleges and universities) can’t keep up with the pace of change. If companies want well-trained business intelligence analysts and analytics programmers, they are going to have to provide the necessary job training themselves. Your training program is obsolete. Are you taking advantage of the technology-enabled learning tools available today, or is your training program stuck in the 20th century? If a three-hour PowerPoint lecture is still your content delivery method of choice, you are way overdue for an update. Current learning trends and technologies, like massive open online courses (MOOCs) and mobile learning, are helping training programs move from being time sinks with few discernible benefits to being learning experiences that provide employees with valuable knowledge and skills to improve their job performance. Twenty-first century technology-enabled training is "pull" rather than "push"; it incorporates learning into the daily work routine by allowing learners to access and use course content where, when, and how they want to; and it’s flexible so that it can be adapted to the needs of individual learners. Of course, as Laura Vanderkam wrote for CBS MoneyWatch, there is a downside to modern training practices: "Perhaps there are some folks who really like being away from their families for long periods of time and making small talk with slightly sloshed colleagues at receptions after a full day of corporate training." However, she also notes that "if those are the only folks you think of as managerial material, you’ve got deeper problems than an iPad can solve." Your training programs don’t serve any higher purpose. MOOCs have impacted corporate training in many ways, but one of the big ones has been to expand the idea of what training can do. Previously, the only reason to provide corporate training was to train employees. This sounds reasonable until you hear about the ways innovative companies are using training courses like MOOCs to serve a wider purpose, such as internally to create an organizational culture of learning, and externally for recruiting new talent and building relationships with partners and customers. We’ve moved past a knowledge economy and into a learning economy, where learning is the most important thing we do every day. In this economy, training isn’t just about delivering content to boost your company’s collective knowledge; it’s about engaging and providing inspiration for stakeholders both inside and outside of your organization. Too many companies are still providing only minimal training, not using technology, and treating training as nothing more than a content dump. This type of training might have been adequate in the past, but it will not empower companies to grow and achieve their objectives into the future. And the future is now. Stop wasting your time and money on training programs designed for yesterday. Contact me for more information about how to provide high-quality, effective training solutions for the modern workforce. 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:How MOOCs Address the Needs of Today’s Corporate LearnersWhat You Risk by NOT Using MOOCsTechnology-Enabled Learning: What Will 2015 Bring?Megatrends in MOOCs: #1 Adoption at Corporate UniversitiesMegatrends in MOOCs: #2 Facilitating Learning Organizations(Visited 187 times, 3 visits today)

In 2010, Bersin by Deloitte published a massive research report analyzing human resources and corporate training practices. The goal was to identify "which practices, processes, structures, and systems drive the greatest business impact." What did they identify was the most significant element driving business impact, out of the 100+ they studied? Learning culture. Now keep in mind, that was five years ago — before BYOD, before lifelong learning was being called a trend, before MOOCs and the countless other learning technologies that have fundamentally changed how we view education, not just in the training world but in society as a whole. Even back then, the number one factor was "the strength of the organization’s learning culture." Today, as the training world is adapting to these changes, having a strong learning culture is even more important for companies’ success. But the opposite is also true — the lack of a strong learning culture can actively harm companies. This post explores what a learning culture is and several different ways not having one can spell an organization’s demise. What is a learning culture? Essentially, a learning culture is a corporate culture that views learning as important. In a learning culture, all forms of workforce education (formal training, informal learning, self-directed learning, etc.) are considered valuable ways of increasing the knowledge, skills, and job performance of individuals and of the organization as a whole. In a learning culture, the goal of training isn’t just regulatory or industry compliance, or ticking off the right checkboxes or putting enough "butts in seats." The goal, as J. Wood puts it on the Motivated and Competent blog, stems from "a desire to improve performance, morale, explore human potential, attract, develop, and retain talent, create a learning, questioning culture and drive innovation." This goal gives us a pretty good idea of what can happen when a company doesn’t have a strong learning culture. 3 ways your lack of a learning culture is killing your company Learning culture isn’t something to take lightly. It is something executives and managers need to actively cultivate. Here is what can happen if you fail to establish and cultivate a learning culture in your organization. Your training won’t mean much. Non-learning organizations see training as a requirement for employees to work through a certain number of learning modules or put in a certain amount of time. They offer training only once every year or two, usually via a series of lectures or elearning modules, and their primary means of assessment is an attendance record or a happy sheet. The focus is on the delivery of training, not on the actual learning. Learning organizations seek to provide meaningful learning experiences. They offer training all of the time — formal training, informal training, performance support. They see training as something that is integrated into, rather than separated from, the daily work experience. They develop training programs that are active and interactive, that use real-world problems, and that give learners the opportunity to practice. The focus here is on the learning, and several delivery methods are used to ensure that learning takes place. If you want your training to be meaningful, for your employees as individuals and for your organization as a whole, your organization must embrace, not silo, the learning process. You won’t be able to attract and retain talent. With skills gaps currently affecting nearly every industry and the shortages predicted to continue, the ability to attract and retain the right people is more crucial than ever. And what is today’s top talent looking for? Learning. From the Big Think blog: "Why do people work at a company like Google? Good salary. Check. Good benefits. Check. But it turns out that one of the most compelling reasons to work at Google is to learn." Of course, not every company can have the cachet of Google, but every company can support employees’ learning endeavors in a many ways, like offering a wide variety of training courses, recognizing self-directed learning efforts, and reimbursing employees for earning verified MOOC certificates. Your employees want to learn, they want to gain new knowledge and skills — it’s up to you to create an environment where they can do that. You won’t be able to innovate. Survey after survey has shown that while CEOs recognize innovation as a top driver of growth, many don’t think their companies innovate very successfully. And what are the most important keys to innovation? More than 90% of senior executives say people and culture. In an article for Innovation Excellence, Bradley Bendle outlines the relationship between learning cultures and innovation. He identifies three core innovation competencies that organizations with learning cultures have: Information — Continually seeking and obtaining an array of input and feedback Interpretation — Thorough and deep understanding of what the information does and does not mean Initiation — Leveraging information and interpretation to develop and launch new businesses, products, and/or services Without a learning culture — without values that encourage exploration and experimentation, and even that accept failure — companies have difficulty gathering, interpreting, and using information to innovate effectively. Meaningful training, the ability to attract talent, innovation — these are three of the top factors that drive organizational success today. And they all start with having a strong learning culture. 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:MOOCs to Create and Enhance Corporate CultureMegatrends in MOOCs: #2 Facilitating Learning Organizations5 Non-Financial ROIs of MOOCsWhat You Risk by NOT Using MOOCsTraining Mojo: 10 Steps to Create Your Training Dojo(Visited 311 times, 1 visits today)

With the strong adoption of mobile devices in enterprises, it is showing no signs of slowing down in the future, especially with the continuous development to produce smarter, high-tech devices. Today, smartphones and tablets are among the most evident gadgets being maximized by employees and businesses in providing more efficient work even when on the go. One of the departments in the office that highly utilizes mobile devices today is the human resources. Based on the report released by Aruba Networks, 86% of HR professionals globally own two or more devices with internet connectivity and productivity apps for work purposes. As the demand goes stronger, it is expected that smartphones will continue to shape and revolutionize the HR department. Here are some of the future trends to expect in this category: Social media screening As social media becomes an extension of people’s lives, HR has now extended their extensive evaluation process of applicants and employees through their own personal social profiles. Jeanne Meister wrote in Forbes that 2015 will be the year that Social HR will become a reality. Social platforms have also paved the way for HR personnel to locate the perfect employee for their office. LinkedIn has become the most common site where many human resource managers, as well as CEO and COO have located the right person for their corporation. The platform allows each user to connect with one another, as well as share insights and knowledge. The article also opened the discussion about the changing phase of video consumption online where people 45 and above are increasingly using these types of platforms, such as YouTube and Vimeo. These websites are now being utilized by HR departments in making their training videos easier to access by employees wherever they go. More HR applications and solutions Previously, we did feature that 86% of HR are maximizing more than two devices for work purposes. The same study also noted that there will be an increase in the consumption of applications helpful for human resource staff in scanning more potential applicants as well as providing training solutions. Here are the top HR applications that are highly maximized today: 1. NetSuite TribeHR 2. SumTotal 3. Spark Hire 4. Vortex Connect 5. NaturalHR New developments in mobile devices will also have an increase in adoption. Currently, tablets appear to be more appropriate for work purposes, for its almost similar functionalities to smartphones with bigger screen sizes. According to a list provided by O2, the most popular and top tablets today ranges from 7-inch to 10-inch size, close to the size of netbooks. However, Apple is said to be working on its camp for a 12-inch and above iPads (close to the size of laptops), while other manufacturers are incorporating more powerful hardware similar to PCs. Wearables and VR trainings Demand for more portable devices came into reality with the release of wearables on the market. The most popular will be smartwatches, but the Google Glass also paved the way for consumers to see the potential of Augmented Reality (AR) in changing the tech game. Smart headsets such as the Oculus Rift also introduced Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which used to be a mere dream in the past. Today, human resource managers in private institutions are working on various ways to maximize wearables and its technologies. If there’s one apparent example of virtual reality for training, then it will be the military VR training for army, navy, and air force in the United States. According to Virtual Reality website, "this [virtual reality] is particularly useful for training soldiers for combat situations or other dangerous settings where they have to learn how to react in an appropriate manner." It includes various simulations that offer ‘almost real’ experience without the need to be in dangerous situations. The same technique will be beneficial and cost-effective for many companies, instead of spending a lot for training days. Using mobile devices is currently one of the strongest tech trend in the corporate setting, and it is not showing any signs of slowing down. With the release of new tech solutions and gadgets, it will strengthen the apparent adoption of mobile technologies, especially in the HR department. How do you expect new innovations to revolutionize the human resource processes? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jennifer Birch — Professional Freelance Blogger from Berkshire, UK — For almost six years, she has written almost anything under the sun, however she is highly interested to cover topics related to technology, mobile, innovation, and any futuristic assets that will be helpful in enterprises. Jennifer has been featured on various websites for her continuous efforts to produce quality content and informative insights to readers worldwide. Follow her on Twitter: @WrittenByJenni Related Posts:Megatrends in MOOCs: #8 Mobile LearningTraining in an Ad-Hoc, BYOD Environment13 Megatrends in MOOCsHow MOOCs Address the Needs of Today’s Corporate LearnersMegatrends in MOOCs: #4 Microlearning Paths(Visited 111 times, 1 visits today)

Not surprisingly, one of the most common questions I get from people who are interested in using massive open online courses (MOOCs) for training is: "How much do they cost?" This is a simple question, but the answer is complex. I could say, "A MOOC equivalent to five days of instructor-led training (ILT) costs roughly $160,000, or a bit more than $30,000 a day." But without any context, it’s difficult to determine what that number means. And anyway, what most people want to know isn’t what MOOCs cost in absolute terms, but what they cost compared to ILT. And that’s where things start to get complicated. The problem isn’t on the MOOC side, where the costs are straightforward, but on the ILT side, where far to many of the true costs are hidden. MOOCs are infinitely scalable-the 5-day course would cost about $160,000, whether it was delivered to 50 people or 500 or 5,000 (slightly more). Not only is this not true of ILT, but the cost of an ILT course itself isn’t the full cost of running the training. In fact, it doesn’t come anywhere close. Last October, I wrote that "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 this on a budget approaching one-fifth of that required for high-quality instructor-led training." In this article, I’ll break down the various costs associated with the different types of training to give some more context to that statement. Cost comparison: MOOCs versus ILT ILT is known to be the most expensive type of training, but exactly how expensive is it? Suppose you have a 5-day course that you need to deliver to 500 staff members. A common class size for ILT is 25 people, in which case you would need to run the course 20 times for everyone to receive the training. The basic costs of this course would look something like this: Vendor day rate: $4,500 Number of days: 100 (5 days x 20 sessions) Total cost: $450,000 At this rate, the $160,000 MOOC delivery would save you nearly $300,000 over ILT, a savings of 65%. If you had 525 staff members to train and had to run the ILT course again, it would cost you an extra $22,500. In contrast you could add another 25 (or 50 or 100) people to the MOOC at a nominal additional cost. These numbers are impressive enough, but they don’t accurately represent the true costs of ILT. For example, they don’t factor in venue costs or travel and accommodations. They don’t account for the time your staff are spending away from their desks, which in terms of productivity is equivalent to five personal or vacation days. The also don’t take into account the administrative costs, such as costs associated with signing people up and preparing course materials. And what do you do if someone doesn’t show up to a mandatory training session? Schedule a make-up class? These costs are extremely difficult to measure, which is why they are so often ignored. But they can significantly increase the true cost of ILT. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that no travel is required, that you can use a room in your building so there are no venue costs, and that you assign all of the administrative work to an unpaid intern. There is still the lost productivity due to staff being away from their desks, and thus not engaged in revenue-generating activity. Suppose the average salary of your trainees is $80,000, which means they each earn $400 per day. The cost to the company of paying those employees for five training days is: 500 staff x $2,000 ($400 per day x 5 days) = $1,000,000 Which brings the total real cost of the ILT course to: $450,000 + $1,000,000 = $1,450,000 The MOOC? Still about $160,000, representing savings of close to 90%, or, in real terms, $1,300,000. That’s right: a MOOC can result in savings of more than $1 million for a single 5-day training course. Now imagine your course is 10 days, or you need to train 1,000 people, or the average employee salary is $100,000. In these cases, moving the course to a MOOC could decrease the cost of the training by 95%. Aside from abolishing your training efforts altogether, there is nothing else you could do that would have this kind of positive effect on your training budget. And remember, we still aren’t taking into account all of the costs associated with ILT. Travel, accommodations, venue costs, administrative costs-these items are present more often than not, and they are by no means insignificant. Despite the huge potential savings, many companies are still hesitant to try a MOOC, mostly for reasons I discussed in a series of articles to kick off the year, including the idea that MOOCs are risky and the fact that many organizations suffer from "We’ve always done it this way" syndrome. Over the course of the next few articles, I’ll explore more deeply the question of why 65%, or even 95%, savings isn’t enough to get more companies on board, and then make some recommendations for how to assess the value of  implementing MOOCs in your organization using the principles of A/B testing. 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:How MOOCs Can Save Your Organization Time and MoneyWhy 65% Savings Isn’t Enough: Barriers to Organizational…Should your corporate training strategy move to the MOOC?Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and ManagersILT, Elearning, or MOOC? When to Use Common Training Formats(Visited 171 times, 1 visits today)

Before you read this article, try an experiment: Go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and type in "why employees love training." Take a quick scroll through the results. Now type in "why employees hate training." Notice the difference? Pages upon pages of articles about why people hate training, but on the love side, nada. Only advice on how to get employees to love your training. The assumption is very clearly that they don’t love it already. The conundrum here is that employees want training. For a 2013 CareerBuilder survey, 35% of respondents said that increased training and learning opportunities would motivate them to stay with a company. Training helps employees do their jobs better, it helps them fit better into the company, and it provides the knowledge and skills they need for advancement. So why do they hate it? The disconnect may be due to the fact that while companies are providing training, they aren’t providing the training their employees want. Below are six things employees want from training programs. Hands-on, on-the-job training Do you offer training on a once-yearly basis? Do those training courses consist of long lectures? Do you assign user manuals as reading material? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you are not providing the training your employees want. They want hands-on, on-the-job training that they can apply to their work. If you won’t do it for your employees, do it for yourself. Myriad studies have shown the advantage of hands-on training compared to lecture-based training. Important, relevant training No one wants to feel like they’re wasting their time — not you, not your boss, and not your employees. But training is often perceived as a waste of time. This idea has two main sources: Managers don’t treat training as important. Either they don’t attend training themselves, or they grumble about their team spending time on training, or both. The training provided isn’t relevant to employees’ jobs. Training needs to be relevant to people’s work. If it isn’t, it feels like wasted time. Training departments often take a shotgun approach, providing the same training to everyone. Instead, find ways to more effectively engage your audience by delivering the right training to the right employees at the right time. For example, provide performance support resources online so that people can access the resources they need at the moment they need them. Proactive training Training is often viewed as a punishment. This is an unfortunate perspective, but not necessarily an unwarranted one. Training is often only offered in response to a problem — mistakes happen, and then training is required. This can feel very much like a punishment, especially to the people who are already doing it right. Taking a proactive approach helps employees see training as an essential part of their work responsibilities, not just as a punishment when things go wrong. Technology-enabled training Employees, especially younger ones like Millennials, use technology in every single aspect of their lives. Millennials spend almost 18 hours a day consuming different types of media, and about half spend at least 4 hours a day on mobile devices. To this crowd, training that does not involve technology seems hopelessly outdated. Emotionally engaging training Before, I said that the search for "why employees love training" came up empty. That isn’t entirely true. There was one result that answered the question: The Top 5 Things Employees Love in Online Training Courses, by eLearningIndustry CEO Christopher Pappas. The article includes some standard benefits of online training, for example, that it is convenient and can be accessed anytime, anywhere. But there is another aspect that is less often discussed: online training offers "emotionally centered experience[s] that help employees to connect." Pappas notes that "characters, avatars, compelling images and graphics, [and] real world examples" are all facets of online training that employees enjoy because they provide an emotional connection. Given the close link between emotion and memory, the importance of engaging learners emotionally can’t be overestimated. Ongoing training and development Finally, employees want ongoing training. It isn’t enough just to train employees to do the jobs they have. You need to provide development opportunities for employees to advance their careers. Career development is the key to retaining talent in your organization. A 2012 study in Harvard Business Review found that there was a gap between the training young managers expected and what they received. As a result of this "expectation gap," 75% of young managers actively looked for jobs elsewhere, and 95% left the companies just over two years after they were hired. The study authors noted: "Employers are understandably reluctant to make big investments in workers who might not stay long. But this creates a vicious circle: Companies won’t train workers because they might leave, and workers leave because they don’t get training." As you read this list, be honest. Are your training programs active and proactive? Are they emotionally engaging? Do they take advantage of technology and provide opportunities for development? If not, your organization may also be suffering from an "expectation gap," and this gap is likely harming your ability to attract, develop, and maintain the talent you need. Featured image by Alex Proimos [Creative Commons] 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:Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from EmployeesUsing MOOCs: Self-Directed Development and Workforce…How MOOCs Are Improving Traditional ILTMegatrends in MOOCs: #12 Training for MillennialsWhat You Risk by NOT Using MOOCs(Visited 161 times, 1 visits today)

So, you’ve decided to start using technology-enabled learning in your corporate training program. Now what? Well, just like there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to all of today’s training challenges, there also isn’t just a single way to "do" technology-enabled learning. Your particular implementation depends on a variety of factors, including: Whether you’re developing the training in-house or purchasing it from a third-party vendor Whether you are using a fully online model or a blended learning model The comfort of the instructors and learners with the technologies you will use The devices learners will use to access the training And much more However, regardless of the exact details of your implementation, all technology-enabled learning courses have a common set of building blocks. Some of these, like learning objectives, are the same for any type of course, online or off. Others, like analytics and reporting, are really only available in digital environments. This post explores each of these building blocks, and in the next we’ll look at specific tools and technologies in each category. Note that the building blocks here aren’t things like "bite-sized modules" and "discussion boards." These are items I’ve covered in depth in other articles. Instead, these are the pieces that need to be in place for technology-enabled learning to be a success. Most of the discussion will focus on courses, but these components are equally important for more modular learning experiences. Learning objectives Learning objectives are the foundation of any training course, and technology-enabled learning is no exception. Having well-defined learning objectives will help you select the specific technologies to use. For example, if learners simply need to be aware of information (e.g., for compliance), then the best technology may just be a pdf. If learners need to be able to do something, then the best technology would be a simulation or other hands-on activity. And if learners need to interact then you’ll need collaboration technologies. Technology-enabled learning isn’t about using technology just because. It’s about using the right technology to meet a training need. Clearly defined expectations Traditional training courses usually follow a set schedule, and in traditional elearning, learners proceed through the course in a set linear fashion. This is not necessarily true of technology-enabled learning environments like massive open online courses (MOOCs). Because learners will be accessing the course asynchronously and based on their own needs, it’s important to set clearly defined expectations. For example, are all parts of the course mandatory or are some of them optional? Does the course need to be completed according to a particular schedule? Will there be any instances when all learners are required to be in the same virtual place or perform the same activity at the same time? You will not be there in person to answer questions about expectations or explain how the and activities course will function. This means that it must be crystal clear from the get-go. Therefore, you should plan to devote more time to defining expectations and schedules for fully online courses than you do for face-to-face ones. Content As with traditional courses, the core of technology-enabled learning is the content. The content is the basis of the knowledge and the skills learners need to master. For technology-enabled learning, there are two main components to consider: creating the content and delivering the content. Content authoring tools When people hear the term content authoring tool, they tend to think of e-learning authoring tools like Articulate Storyline and Captivate. This idea, however, is little too narrow. Loosely defined, a content authoring tool is any tool you use to create the content resources for your course. Digital course content comes in a staggering variety of formats, including (but not limited to): Videos Screencasts Podcasts Presentations (PowerPoint, Prezi, etc.) Website content Blogs Pdfs Word documents Wikis Simulations Games Images Infographics Digital magazines Elearning modules Taken from this perspective, content authoring tools include both text editors and e-learning authoring tools, as well as everything else in between. Content delivery tools Once you’ve developed the content, you need to get it out to your learners. For the most part, this is still done using some kind of digital learning environment or learning management system (LMS). However, it doesn’t have to be. You could just as easily set up a course webpage with links to all of the content resources and activities. Your entire course could be on a YouTube channel or on iTunes. The main benefit of using an LMS is the ability to track learner progress and performance. Whatever content delivery option you choose, keep this one thing in mind: mobile. And by that I don’t just mean mobile-friendly, but fully mobile-functional. Many LMS vendors say their product is mobile, when in reality it isn’t. Here are some common problems: The LMS isn’t responsive. So while you can access the content on a mobile device, you have to scroll around awkwardly to read it. The mobile functionality is limited. For example, you may be able to access the videos but not the discussion boards or the assessments. It works on tablets, but not smartphones. With the popularity of mobile learning growing rapidly, it’s important that your mobile course really is mobile. Activities and assessments What will learners do in your course? These should be tied to the learning objectives, and the expectations surrounding them should be clear. Learning activities in face-to-face courses often involve breaking into small groups for discussions or working on projects. You can do these kinds of activities in technology-enabled learning courses as well, but you can also do a heck of a lot more. Here are nearly 50 ideas for online learning activities. A few guidelines for creating activities and assessments: Keep them short! Like 10 minutes short. The same goes for your learning content chunks. Use real-world examples whenever possible. Make sure they are learner-centered. This means they need to be directly relevant to learners. Another aspect of activities and assessments is feedback. In technology-enabled learning environments, there are a several ways learners can get valuable feedback from both instructors and their fellow learners. Interaction and collaboration A widely touted advantage of instructor-led training (ILT) over digital learning is the ability for learners to interact and collaborate with instructors and with one another. The failure of many online courses to include interaction and collaboration doesn’t mean these things aren’t possible. In fact, the ability to interact and collaborate is greatly enhanced by technology because learners can communicate with one another from wherever they are, and even long after the course is over. In the next post, we will highlight several great collaboration technologies you can use in your digital courses. Learner motivation and engagement You might think that motivation is a strange thing to include on this list of building blocks, as it is an internal state of learners rather than something you can control, right? Not entirely. There are many things you can do to increase learner motivation and engagement in technology-enabled learning environments. For example, gamification is a powerful way to use technology to increase learner motivation. You don’t even have to go all out. Even just adding a progress bar to individuals’ dashboards has been shown to increase engagement. Support Especially when you are transferring to a digital learning environment for the very first time, your learners will need support. This may take the form of technical support or learning support, instructor support or peer-to-peer support. Likely, it will require a little bit of all of these things. Analytics and reporting This is one area where digital learning leaves ILT in its dust. Digital learning environments, like LMSs, provide a huge amount of data about learner behaviors, from what resources they access to how long they spend with each one of them. By analyzing this data, you can pinpoint when learners are most engaged, and when they are falling asleep. Don’t take this information for granted — use it to support your learners and improve your course for the next time. There you have it, eight building blocks, or essential elements, of technology-enabled learning. You’ve no doubt noticed that they aren’t so different from the essential elements of traditional learning. The next post will review the newest and best technologies available for successfully implementing all of these elements in a digital course. 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:What’s in Your Technology-Enabled Learning Toolbox?MOOCs Aren’t Interactive, So There’s No Real Learning…Why Your Existing E-Learning is Failing, and How MOOCs Can…Key Factors in MOOC Success, Part 2On the MOOC Horizon: Tin Can API(Visited 252 times, 1 visits today)

Last week, we looked at the building blocks of technology-enabled learning, from elements like learning objectives that are common across all training formats to those that are specific to digital formats, like content authoring tools. This blog will explore more than 60 tools and technologies for successfully implementing each of these elements in your technology-enabled training program. Learning objectives All training courses and programs should have learning objectives. This may seem obvious, but a lack of clearly defined objectives, or sometimes having the wrong objectives altogether, is a main reason why some training fails. The first step in writing learning objectives for online training is to identify what type of course it is. As Tom Kuhlmann wrote on The Rapid E-Learning Blog, online courses usually fall into one of two categories: information or performance. Kuhlmann likens an information-based online course to a multimedia textbook: its doesn’t teach performance, it supports performance. Therefore, the objective of an information-based course is performance support. Performance-based courses do teach performance, and their goal is to change learner behavior. The category your online course falls into will determine how you present content and assess learning. Learning objectives could provide fodder for many articles. Since that isn’t the goal of this post, here are a couple of resource for how to write learning objectives for online courses: Here’s an easy way to create learning objectives Here’s a way to make your e-learning course objectives interesting Clearly defined expectations This step also requires planning more than technology. In a face-to-face course, the expectations are usually pretty clear and can be explained at the beginning of the course. Most online courses use a syllabus to establish the schedule, policies, procedures, and expectations. Here are some things that should be included in the syllabus: Course schedule: A module-by-module schedule of topics, content, assignments, etc. Learning objectives for the course overall and for each module Criteria for course completion How to access the website and participate in course activities Instructions for participating in course discussions Policies for communication (e.g., should all discussions take place on secure channels?) How to communicate with the instructor if necessary Where to go for tech support This is probably more information than you are accustomed to providing at the outset, but it is crucial that learners understand exactly what is expected — especially if the course is asynchronous. Here is an online syllabus template from the College of Business at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Content The best part about an online course is that you are not limited to just one content format. Instead, you can choose the format that works best for each individual piece of content. Below are some tools you can use to create and deliver content for online courses. Content authoring tools Videos Your webcam and microphone Your iPad, iPhone, or other mobile device LectureScape — interactive data-driven lecture videos VoiceThread — presentation videos with voice annotation Overstream — add annotations to an existing online video Animoto — combine pictures, video, and text into a video Movenote Screencasts Screenr Screencast-o-Matic — free for recordings of up to 15 minutes Snagit QuickTime X (comes pre-installed on Macs) Podcasts Total Recorder Audacity Presentations PowerPoint Prezi SlideShare — upload and share presentations Knovio — enhance presentations with audio and video Wink — great for creating tutorials Website content blendspace — share a collection of web resources with just one link Evernote — collect resources from various sites and then save as a web page Delicious, Pinboard — social bookmarking Blogs WordPress Google Blogger Text Online PDF-Converter Microsoft Word Wikis Wikispaces PBWorks — knowledge base and collaboration tool Simulations — usually custom designed by an outside vendor Quandary — create web-based case studies Games MiningQuiz Game Show Presenter Images Screenshots AllTheFreeStock.com — huge selection of places to find free images Lino — create virtual poster boards and annotated image collections ThingLink — add rich media links to images and videos Canva Infographics Infogr.am Piktochart easel.ly Digital magazines Joomag Scoop.it OpenZine Elearning modules — All of the modules you have created in Captivate, Articulate, or any other elearning authoring tool can be used in an online course. Content delivery tools Most corporate training courses are delivered using a learning management system (LMS) or other digital learning environment. If you don’t have one yet, explore this 10-part series on how to choose and implement an LMS in your organization. And remember — to meet the needs of today’s learners, your LMS must be 100% mobile. Activities and assessments In the previous blog, I linked to a resource with 50 ideas for online learning activities. The activities in your course will depend on the content and the learning goals. Here are some types of activities common in online courses: Projects Case studies Group work Online discussions Here are a variety of activity templates built using popular elearning authoring tools. For assessments, there are many online software applications available. Here are just a few of the options: ProProfs Quiz Maker GoToQuiz QuestBase QuizStar Interaction and collaboration Like the activities, there are many tools available for interaction and collaboration. In addition to course discussion boards, here are some unique tools learners can use to interact. DebateGraph — map out arguments and host debates on complex issues Google Docs, Etherpad — collaborative writing Google+ Hangouts Twiddla, Conceptboard — collaborative online whiteboard Cacoo — collaborative diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps, and more Bubble.us — collaborative brainstorming tool Mindmeister — mind mapping tool Padlet — a blank wall where you can post sticky notes and other things Learner motivation and engagement All of the technologies on this list are aimed at increasing learner motivation and engagement. Rather than just passively watching a lecture or clicking "Next" on a PowerPoint presentation, learners in technology-enabled courses are active participants in the learning process. Gamification is one of the main ways companies are using technology to increase motivation and engagement in all aspects of business. Gamification is also a great way to incorporate spaced learning and distributed practice. Here are several strategies for implementing gamification in a training course. Support Learners in an online course may need support, including technical support and a place to find answers to their questions. For small, synchronous courses, group text messaging is a great way to check in on learners and provide support. Text messaging tools ClassPager Swaggle SMS Matrix TextUs.Biz Other support tools PassNote — message templates to send feedback to learners Google+ Hangouts — can be used to hold virtual office hours OSQA — free, open-source Q&A software Analytics and reporting For the most part, data is collected within the LMS or other digital learning environment, which also provides tools for reporting. If you are working outside of an LMS or want something a little different, here are a few analytics tools to consider: Gomo — provides learning analytics across multiple devices Google Analytics Piwik — open-source analytics platform Cytoscape, TouchGraph — data visualization tools, most useful for very large datasets, such as those generated in massive open online courses (MOOCs) There you have it! 60+ tools for each of the building blocks of technology-enabled learning. These certainly aren’t all of the tools you could use to create an online course, but there should be enough here to at least get you started. 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:The Building Blocks of Technology-Enabled LearningHow to MOOC: Technology-Enabled Learning Tools, Part 2How to MOOC: Technology-Enabled Learning Tools, Part 1Key Factors in MOOC Success, Part 2Rapid Elearning and MOOCs: Keeping Up with Change(Visited 241 times, 1 visits today)

Moving your corporate training courses to a massive open online course (MOOC) format represents a huge change, especially if you currently offer only instructor-led training (ILT). People at all levels of your company-managers, trainers, trainees-may understandably feel some apprehension about moving to the new format. The more you do at the beginning to address their concerns, the better the chances your first MOOC will be a success. Here are six steps you can take to prepare your company for a MOOC. 1. Get buy-in from top to bottom One factor that distinguishes MOOCs from all other forms of training is that their reach can span an entire organization all at the same time. ILT takes place at the classroom level — interactions around courses are often limited to the employees in the room, or employees and their direct managers. E-learning takes place at the individual level — often no person-to-person interactions take place at all. But the most successful MOOCs take place at the organizational level — individuals throughout your organization participate through taking the course, facilitating the course, commenting on discussion boards, or serving as subject matter experts for certain topics. The best MOOCs have people participating at all of these levels, which means everyone in the organization needs to be committed to this new form of learning. These articles contain strategies that will help you get buy-in from everyone in your company: Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Executives and Managers Corporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from Employees 2. Perform a technology assessment A major benefit of MOOCs is that they allow anytime, anywhere learning. Learners can take the course on their own schedule, rather than losing large chunks of time out of their work day. This saves organizations a considerable amount of money because there is no productivity loss related to employees being away from their desks (for a breakdown of MOOC costs versus ILT, see here). What enables this anytime, anywhere learning is technology. Learners can participate in the course using a variety of devices — work computer, home computer, tablet computer, or smartphone — and often they use all of these devices over the course of the training. Technology problems are one of the top causes of frustrations in a MOOC, and the best way to prevent them is to be prepared and head off problems before they happen. Perform a technology assessment to find out what devices your learners will want to use and then make sure your MOOC will run on all of them. This could be as simple as creating a quick survey to ask about the devices of choice. If any of the devices could potentially be incompatible with your course, at least you can communicate this to learners ahead of time to avoid some of the frustration down the road. 3. Develop written guidelines for learner participation Your organization probably already has policies in place that are relevant to your MOOC, such as for interoffice communication and BYOD (bring your own device). You should also develop guidelines for MOOC training that detail exactly how the MOOC will be conducted and what is expected of the participants. This is part of setting clearly defined expectations, which we previously identified as a basic building block of technology-enabled learning. 4. Run an internal marketing campaign You’ve got buy-in, but now it’s time to get people excited! Run an internal marketing campaign for your MOOC. This doesn’t have to be elaborate, but there are many ways you can get the word out — email campaigns, company newsletters, internal blogs, videos, etc. Think about your MOOC not just as another course, but as a product or a service that directly benefits learners by helping them do their job better. With this perspective, market the course by showing learners the features and benefits that are most relevant to them. You could even ask your marketing department for help, such as in creating a website with content for employees to learn more about this new training format. Here are some additional ideas for driving pre-training engagement. 5. Host a pre-training virtual Q&A session Unless your employees are really up on new educational technologies, the whole idea of a MOOC will be new to them. Even after you’ve announced the course and run an internal marketing campaign, there are are still bound to be plenty of questions about how it will work and what is expected of the participants. Rather than waiting until the course starts (and potentially losing the first week or so of real learning to "housekeeping"), host a virtual Q&A session in advance of the MOOC. Spend some time introducing the format, the benefits, and the technology that will be used, and then open it up for questions. This approach has several benefits: Your Q&A session serves as part of your marketing campaign. You can introduce learners to one or more of the collaboration tools that will be used in the MOOC. You can demonstrate how interaction in the MOOC will take place. You will show learners that they will receive the support they need to succeed. You can potentially address any negative comments or concerns before they become larger problems. 6. Provide learners with tips and strategies for success Finally, give learners some tools and strategies that will help them succeed in the MOOC. It may have been a long time since they took a course like this, and perhaps the first time they’ve taken a course online. This article from Learning Solutions Magazine has good tips for MOOC learners, ranging from time management to etiquette. Getting an organization ready for a MOOC requires careful management and a good dose of effective leadership. These six steps will help you prepare your learners and other stakeholders for what’s to come. 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:Training Reboot: Assessing Your Company’s MOOC ReadinessCorporate MOOCs: Getting Buy-In from EmployeesWhat’s the Difference Between a MOOC and an LMS?How to Choose the Right MOOC for Your EmployeesStrategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…(Visited 173 times, 1 visits today)

Aside from the time savings, the cost savings, and the boost in learner engagement, one of the biggest areas where massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide benefit is education research. MOOCs generate a huge amount of data, which can be collected and analyzed to gain insights into how people learn, what teaching methods are most effective, and many other areas related to learning. Here we’ll review some of the new research that has come out of MOOCs and other technology-enabled learning environments and explore what the findings mean for corporate training. Online learning works, so let’s shift the conversation to how to make it successful Despite a plethora of research that online, blended, and other technology-enabled learning works just as well as face-to-face learning, many companies still hold tight to the belief that there is something special about in-person instructor-led training (ILT). A new analysis by MOOC pioneer George Siemens will hopefully finally put this issue to rest. Siemens and colleagues analyzed a large number of studies that included several types of digital delivery. They concluded that "distance learning is more effective, or at least as effective as traditional classroom instruction." Siemens commented: "This is essentially about building a foundation so that we can get past the ‘but does online learning work’ argument that often arises in the conversations. It works. Now, institutions must begin preparing their system for the digital movement." If we can get past this argument, we can instead focus on what factors determine the success of new digital learning environments, which Siemens and his colleagues also explored. Most of their findings are not too surprising, but there are a few that challenge current assumptions about how people learn best. Here’s what they found: Distance education is "far more effective for adult professional learners" than for college students [emphasis in the original]. Pedagogy is more important than technology. Asynchronous delivery is more effective than synchronous delivery. Student-student, student-content, and student-teacher interactions all have a positive effect on learning outcomes, with student-student and student-content interactions being the most important. Academic support is important for student success. Implications for corporate training There are three main implications of this analysis: Online learning works, especially for the target audience for most corporate training programs (i.e., adult professional learners). Asynchronous courses, like MOOCs, may work better than synchronous online courses. Interactive activities, like collaborative projects (student-student) and simulations (student-content), are essential for effective online learning. Trainers who are set in their traditional ways are likely to be surprised by #2 and #3. But these findings likely reflect the changing preferences of learners and the growing availability of educational content. Asynchronous courses may work better because people want to have control over their own time and schedule — convenience is one of the top reasons people sign up for online courses. And with content available at the touch of a finger, while interaction remains important for learning, that interaction doesn’t necessarily need to be with instructors. Having some skin in the game boosts participation big time The fuss over the generally low MOOC completion rates has for the most part died down. The focus is now on how to increase engagement. Research out of edX suggests that learners who have some skin in the game are much more likely to follow courses through to completion: almost 60% of learners who pay for a verified certificate complete the course, as opposed to about 5% who don’t. Implications for corporate training Obviously, you can’t charge people to attend your training courses, but giving them a reason to be invested — for example, some sort of formal recognition or reward — can boost their motivation to participate. We need to focus on measuring learning, not just participation Earlier this year, Justin Reich, of HarvardX, published an overview of the state of MOOC research (watch a summary video here). One of his main conclusions was that MOOC research needs to focus more on measuring learning, not just participation. Measuring learning is a much harder task — requiring first the identification of what metrics are most appropriate — but it is the only way we will be able to determine the true effectiveness of different learning environments, which will become even more important as new digital tools and technologies emerge. Implications for corporate training Measurement has also been a long-standing problem in corporate training, where too often training effectiveness has been measured by attitudes toward training or by time-on-task, rather than by metrics that reflect actual learning. In corporate training, there are two basic types of training metrics: those that are directly related to a course and those that are reflected in what employees can do after they have completed a course. Whereas the former might be required in certain circumstances for compliance, what we really need to focus on is the latter. Employee retention, sales, revenue generation, customer service results — these are all metrics that L&D departments should be using to measure the effectiveness and the ROI of their training programs. Read more about the Top 10 Training Metrics. What all of these studies suggest is that the way organizations approach training needs to change — enterprise L&D needs to become more technology-enabled, it needs to focus on learner motivation, and it needs to track metrics that accurately reflect success. 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:Face-to-Face Learning has FAILEDHow Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?By the Numbers: Learning from MOOCsPublic Libraries Are Failures (and So Are MOOCs)What Corporate Trainers Can Learn from MOOCs (Even If You…(Visited 209 times, 1 visits today)

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) recently celebrated their third anniversary. What started as an ambitious experiment is now becoming a standard component of education. Learners around the country and around the world are taking MOOCs. Even many students at traditional brick and mortar institutions are taking MOOCs, sometimes as standalone courses, sometimes as part of a hybrid learning program. And there are new developments all of the time. Just this month, Coursera and the University of Illinois announced that the school’s entire MBA program would be put online in a MOOC format. Students can take the courses for free; they can sign up for paid course sequences called Specializations, such as "Digital Marketing" and "Improving Business Finances and Operations"; or they can complete the entire curriculum and earn an iMBA from the University of Illinois. This last option costs $20,000, but that is about $80,000 less than what an MBA costs elsewhere. Last week, we started looking at new research coming out of MOOCs and its implications for using the courses in corporate training. This week, we’ll look at three lessons that corporate trainers can learn from MOOCs, even if they haven’t yet adopted the format in their organization. Activities, modules, and courses should be short This is a topic we’ve touched on several times, but it bears repeating: course content and activities are most effective when they are bite-sized. This is in direct contrast to how traditional corporate training is delivered — i.e., in long sessions — which is often determined more by budgetary constraints (such as instructor costs) rather than by learning considerations. But plenty of research has now been done showing that after a few minutes of a lecture learners are more likely to be thinking about what they eat for dinner than about the course material. No matter what type of course you are designing — in-person, online, or hybrid — it’s time to start putting learners first by keeping it short. Personalization is the key to boosting engagement Learners start to tune out for many reasons — they may already know the material, or it may be too advanced, or maybe they just have something else on their mind. Personalized learning, which is tailored to individuals’ learning needs, styles, and schedules is the best way to engage learners because it allows them to participate in the course when, where, and how they want to. A study recently released by edX demonstrates the incredible power of personalized learning. edX experimented with adaptive MOOCs, courses where some students took interactive, personalized lessons rather than just watching passive videos. The results were staggering — while students watching passive videos dropped out in droves after about 4 minutes, those who took interactive, personalized lessons stayed with them for about 22 minutes. That’s a 450% increase! The lesson for corporate trainers is that whether you are delivering traditional instructor-led training or designing a traditional e-learning module, make it active and, to the extent that you can, make it personalized. Even just allowing students to learn at their own pace can make a difference. The 2013 Towards Maturity Benchmark study found that 88% of learners like to be able to learn at their own pace and 75% are happy to engage with online learning without prompting. There is much more to training than just content The main focus of most training efforts is on content and content delivery, but this is really only part of the equation. And the truth is, it isn’t even the most important part — the most important part is the learning. In an article for the Vanderbilt University blog, Derek Bruff writes that one of the lessons from Vanderbilt’s first MOOCs was "there’s more to MOOCs than lecture videos." He continues: "Sure, lecture videos are part of that experience, but students wanted meaningful, tractable assignments and both informal and formal feedback on their learning. Our teams had paid attention to such things before the launch, of course, but student requests and feedback in those first days made clear that producing high quality lecture videos was only part of the whole picture." We can extrapolate from this lesson to training of all kinds — whether it is ILT, e-learning, MOOCs, or some hybrid format, developing and delivering the content is only the first step, not the final one. The real value comes in providing meaningful learning experiences, including feedback and opportunities for learners to share what they know with one another. These things are often missing in corporate training, which is part of the reason why in most organizations it isn’t very popular. When Stanford, Harvard, and MIT originated MOOCs, one of their stated goals was to provide a laboratory of sorts for education research. Thanks to this research, we are now able to identify training methodologies that work best and implement them in all of our training courses and programs — online or off. 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:Video Production and Learner Engagement in MOOCsMegatrends in MOOCs: #9 Flipping the MOOCNew MOOC Environments: Distributed Open Collaborative…Face-to-Face Learning has FAILEDBy the Numbers: Learning from MOOCs(Visited 141 times, 1 visits today)

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been around long enough that most people in the training industry have at least a general understanding of what they are. But there is still some confusion about how they differ from more familiar forms of elearning and online courses. In particular, a question I’m often asked is: "What’s the difference between a MOOC and a learning management system (LMS)?" The basic answer is that an LMS is a platform for hosting a course, while a MOOC is the course itself. A MOOC can be run on an LMS, but it doesn’t have to be. In the same vein, an LMS can be used to host a course that is not a MOOC. Misunderstanding often creeps in because the major MOOC platforms — Coursera, edX, and so on — involve both an LMS and a MOOC. For example, if you take a course on Coursera, you are taking a Coursera MOOC that is hosted on the Coursera LMS. In general, however, I don’t think the real question is about the difference between a MOOC as a course and an LMS as a platform. I think what people are asking is about difference between MOOCs and the types of courses that are typically run on LMSs. So here I’ll identify seven main areas where MOOCs and traditional LMS-style courses differ and point out what these differences mean for corporate training. Small versus large (or massive) In theory MOOCs can accommodate an unlimited number of learners. In practice most corporate training MOOCs are not open to the general public. However, they are still much larger than traditional courses, involving hundreds or even thousands of learners distributed across multiple locations. Discrete versus continuous Traditional courses hosted on LMSs are usually discrete entities, meaning that that they start on a particular day, end on a particular day, have particular due dates, and so on. Like instructor-led training (ILT), this is usually a result of the instructor cost and schedule. MOOCs can be run this way, but they can also be offered on an ongoing basis to accommodate staggered enrollments. For example, the same orientation MOOC can be used (at the same time if needed) for new hires who start a week or a month (or a year) apart. Content versus context This is a common distinction that is made. Traditional online courses focus primarily on content. They are similar to ILT in that content is delivered, and then learners are tested on the content. MOOCs are much more about context. The content is still the centerpiece, but the learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum — it takes place in a context of interactions with other learners through discussions, projects, and collaborations. Individual versus group learning Like elearning, most traditional online courses are individual pursuits. MOOCs can be individual pursuits, but their real effectiveness as learning environments comes from the collaboration and teamwork that they make possible. Static versus dynamic The context versus content aspect also speaks to the nature of the course. Traditional courses are static — the content, learning activities, and so on are designed before launch and the same for every learner, every time. This is not necessarily true of MOOCs. Instead, through the discussions, collaboration, and sharing that are part of the MOOC context, the course can change over time. For example, many MOOCs require learners to write blogs or find content that they then share with one another. This means that the course materials and discussions can change as a product of user-generated content and knowledge sharing. In addition, because MOOCs are based on the concept of bite-sized learning, individual learning objects can easily be replaced to keep up with current knowledge and best practices. Just-in-case versus just-in-time By now, you’re probably starting to notice a pattern. Traditional courses — which are discrete and static — are offered just-in-case. This means that learners work through the material, but then may or may not have the opportunity to use their newly acquired knowledge before they’ve forgotten it. Since MOOCs are continuous and dynamic, they provide the opportunity for just-in-time learning: learners can access the course materials when needed and they can access them long after the course has ended. Learners can potentially login on an indefinite basis to participate in discussions and share knowledge. This is a feature that is currently underused, but in essence it allows a MOOC to serve as a topic-specific internal knowledge base where employees can connect with subject-matter experts for answers and solutions. Pre-defined versus emerging organically This point is similar to those above, but it refers to how the course is designed and developed. Usually, with traditional courses, instructional designers start with a set of learning objectives and then work with subject matter experts to develop content to help learners meet those objectives. The course is designed with an authoring tool, loaded into an LMS, and then everyone crosses their fingers and hopes for the best. It’s a pre-defined, pre-built package based on assumptions that may or may not be correct, but the results aren’t analyzed until the end (if they are analyzed at all). MOOCs tend to be much more organic. For example, if instructors notice that there is a lot of discussion about a particular topic that indicates confusion, they can easily create new videos, add new materials, or introduce new discussion topics. In this way, MOOCs are able to respond organically to learners’ needs better than traditional courses. If I had to distil the essence of what differentiates a MOOC from a traditional course offered on a traditional LMS into one word, it would be this: flexibility. MOOCs are flexible in a way that most other learning formats simply aren’t. As corporate training struggles to keep up with changing knowledge, changing technologies, and the changing demands of learners, this flexibility is key to developing training programs that are effective, engaging, and meet your company’s needs. 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:What Style of MOOC is Right for You?How to Choose the Right MOOC for Your EmployeesWhat a MOOC Is and What It Isn’tStrategies for Making the Transition from Instructor-Led…MOOCs Treat All Learners the Same(Visited 259 times, 1 visits today)

The buzz around massive open online courses (MOOCs) has finally started to infiltrate the corporate training space. After a couple of years of waiting to see where the online course trajectory was going, companies are starting to embrace MOOCs as a practical, economical, and effective solution to their growing training problems. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post called "What Type of MOOC is Right for You?" At that time, there were only about a handful of different types of MOOCs. Today, the landscape is much larger, and it continues to grow as technology improves and trainers discover (or invent) new ways to use the technologies to the greatest benefit of learners and organizations. As I’ve tried to get across in this blog, a MOOC is more of a framework than a strict course format. Because of this, a huge variety of online courses fall under the MOOC umbrella. To help organizations identify the best types of MOOCs to use in their training programs, we’ll take it from the perspective of the employees. We’ll consider three MOOC variables: xMOOC versus cMOOC Public MOOC versus private MOOC Scheduled MOOC versus self-paced MOOC xMOOC versus cMOOC This distinction goes back to the early days of MOOCs. The first course that was ever called a MOOC sprang from the theory of connectivism, which is based on the idea of distributed community and emphasizes knowledge sharing and the development of personal learning networks. The xMOOC came later and is today the most common type of MOOC — in structure, content, and activities, it looks very much like a traditional course. There has been lot of debate about which type is "better," but the more useful conversation surrounds which one is more appropriate in different contexts. In deciding between an xMOOC and a cMOOC, the key question is: "What do the learners need to learn?" Is the goal for learners to gain introductory knowledge about a concept? Do they need to learn pure content, such as for compliance? Do they need to learn task-related skills, such as how to use a particular software program? → xMOOC On the other hand, do they need to learn more in-depth problem-solving skills? Do they need to work in a team? Do the learning goals cross departmental boundaries? Would learners benefit from meeting SMEs or others in the organization who are working on the same types of projects? → cMOOC It’s also important to note that these types aren’t mutually exclusive: most courses today fall somewhere between the two extremes, with the basic structure of a traditional course, but with an emphasis on networking. This model can promote the building of learner communities within organizations that can foster knowledge sharing and collaboration long after the course is over. Michael Caulfield of Washington State University puts it well when he says that to build communities that are based not just around the course, but around, "more authentic applications of course content…the xMOOC will have to become the chewy center of the cMOOC." Public MOOC versus Private MOOC MOOCs used in corporate training can be public or private. Public MOOCs can take a couple of forms — you could recommend that employees take a course available on Coursera, edX, or one of the other MOOC providers, or you could run your own MOOC and make it available to the public. Private MOOCs are restricted to the company’s employees and can be either developed in-house or purchased from a vendor. While there are certainly various factors to consider, such as cost, in terms of learners’ needs, the question to ask here is: "Where is the knowledge located?" Is the knowledge specific to your industry? Is it proprietary to your organization? Do you have SMEs to help develop the course? → Private MOOC Does the knowledge span industries? Is it readily available from other sources? Are you relying on outside SMEs? → Public MOOC Again, there are many possibilities within these categories. For example, for courses that are general in nature, but for which employees would benefit from collaboration, you could use a publicly available xMOOC, but then create a private cMOOC by using internal tools (i.e., your company intranet) where people can connect. Scheduled MOOC versus Self-Paced MOOC Finally, MOOCs can be either scheduled or self-paced. The question here is: "When do employees need to learn the information?" Is it must-have-now information (e.g., compliance, policy changes, new product rollouts)? Does everyone need to be at the same knowledge level? → Scheduled MOOC Is the course optional? Is the goal professional development rather than training? → Self-paced MOOC As before, these factors can be mix-and-matched to provide the best learning experiences for employees in each situation. Here are a few examples: Public, scheduled cMOOC: Employees from JLT Group took a Coursera course on public speaking. Once a week, they met in person to watch videos and discuss course material. Public, scheduled xMOOC: Just this week, steel manufacturer Tenaris launched an "Introduction to Steel" MOOC on the edX platform. It’s free and open to the public. Private, scheduled or self-paced xMOOC: It’s impossible to know exactly how many organizations are adopting this model, but a good number of companies are either developing or licensing MOOCs to be used solely within their organization. The fact that organizations are starting to consider MOOCs for their programs is positive — for the organizations, the learners, and the training industry. But it’s important to recognize the amazing variety that is possible so that we don’t fall into the trap of trying to use the same type of course to meet all training needs. A major benefit of MOOCs is their flexibility, and organizations will get the most out of the courses by using them flexibly based on the needs of the learners. 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:What Style of MOOC is Right for You?What’s the Difference Between a MOOC and an LMS?How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 2What a MOOC Is and What It Isn’tAre MOOCs Too Risky for Your Corporate Training Program?(Visited 166 times, 1 visits today)

If you are in corporate training, this statistic should concern you: 70% of employees are either not engaged or actively disengaged (source: Gallup) Gamification is often touted as a sure-fire strategy to increase employee engagement, because people like points, right? But there is a dark side here: many gamification implementations fail. In 2012, Gartner predicted that by this year, 40% of Global 1000 organizations would "use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations." But a little while later, Garter also predicted that 80% of gamified implementations would fail. That’s a huge number, and it has caused many to argue against gamification as a whole — why should companies spend any time, money, or effort on something that will fail eight out of 10 times? But let’s look a little more closely at that number. According to Gartner, these implementation were not doomed to fail because gamification is a bad concept altogether. They were doomed to fail because of "poor design" — because the tools of gamification were being used incorrectly. Now this was just a prediction, and I haven’t seen any recent statistics about whether or not it has come true, but I don’t doubt it. Because while gamification is a based on a relatively simple concept — making training (or any other work activity) more like a game will increase motivation and engagement — it is surprisingly difficult to do well. Or, rather, it is surprisingly easy to do poorly! So, if you are thinking about gamifying your training, here are three things you need to do to make sure your training is one of the success stories. Gamify the right things In almost every description of failed gamification I’ve seen, the top reason for the failure is a failure of the gamification to align with business objectives. Translated, what this means is that the designers gamified the wrong things. Gartner analysts suggest that gamification can be useful for meeting three broad types of business objectives: Changing behaviors Developing skills Enabling innovation Let’s focus on the first two here, because they are related. Gamification is an excellent way to change behavior, which includes developing skills. Because this is true, for gamification to work, you need to make sure you gamify the right things. For example, if you have a training course, what is the desired learning outcome: that learners consume the content or that they can apply what they’ve learned to boost sales, or learn a new technology, or whatever happens to be the end goal? This is a simplistic example, but if you were to gamify only the content consumption, such as awarding points for watching videos, you may have just motivated your learners to play the videos on mute while they are doing something else. In contrast, if you gamify a task, such as working through tutorials, it becomes much more likely that employees will actually learn that task. Make sure that everyone can win When people hear the word gamification, they often immediately think of a competition. Indeed, leaderboards are considered one of the staples of game mechanics. But leaderboards are a double-edged sword: they are highly motivating to the people at the top, but they can be extremely demotivating to the people at the bottom. Adam Hollander, CEO of sales gamification platform Fantasy Sales Team, wrote in Fast Company that as a sales manager, he was always looking for new motivation tactics, so he would "constantly run sales contests and offer bonuses" to his reps. But, he noticed a couple of problems: The same reps won every time. And these were the reps who were already performing at a high level. Hollander wrote: "these were not the reps I wanted to motivate. Ideally I wanted to incentivize everyone else; not the reps that would perform anyway." Reps stopped caring once they fell behind. "The day I rolled out a new contest, everyone would get excited about it. But inevitably, reps would fall out of contention, at which point they would disengage and stop caring about the contest." Winning needs to be something that everyone can achieve. Rather than individual contests, consider group competitions. Or, better yet, have winning be an individual pursuit that isn’t tied to a contest at all, such as beating a level. You can still have rewards, but they should be rewards that everyone could conceivably achieve. Understand that gamification isn’t always the answer There are some very good reasons to gamify, but just like any other learning solution, gamification isn’t always the answer. Here are a couple of times you shouldn’t gamify a training course: The content is inappropriate. The most common example here is sexual harassment training. Just don’t do it. There is too much content to deliver. As Julie Brink wrote in Training Magazine, "This would make the game too long and possibly confusing." Your learners really don’t like it. Games are not motivating for all learners. Before rolling out a huge gamification initiative, test it out on a smaller scale. If it doesn’t succeed in motivating your learners, do it differently or try something else. You can’t force people to have fun! Ultimately, I believe that gamification can solve many of the engagement problems companies have today, particularly in training. To learn more about gamification and how to do it well, check out my other articles on the topic. Also explore these great resources from the Capterra blog: The 15 Best Gamification Resources for Trainers and Educators. 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:The Gamification Design Process- How not to fail and what…Gamify Your MOOCMegatrends in MOOCs: #7 GamificationGamification and the Hype CycleStrategies for Implementing Gamification in Your Training…(Visited 200 times, 1 visits today)

On this blog, I’ve mainly discussed attitudes about MOOCs and online learning from the perspective of trainers, managers, and others higher up in the organization. But, there is an even more important group of people whose attitudes need to be addressed: the learners themselves. While it’s true that many learners prefer technology-enabled learning and would rather take a MOOC than a traditional course, you may also encounter employees who fear online learning. Here, we’ll look at the four biggest fears about online learning — from the learner’s perspective — and explore ways to overcome them. Fear of trying something new For someone who has never taken an online course before, or who hasn’t been in a classroom in a long time, the fear of trying something new can be very real…and very debilitating. This fear can have many different sources — a fear of looking foolish, a fear of the unknown, and so on. In a training environment, it is often a fear of being a beginner. This is especially true for managers and others in advanced positions, who might not be comfortable looking like a newbie in front of their subordinates. This fear can manifest in many different ways. If you encounter objections from learners that don’t seem to make sense, they may indicate a fear of something new. How to overcome it Sports psychologist Michelle Cleere has some good advice for overcoming this fear that can be easily translated into a training context: goal setting. She suggests that when learning a new skill, you should set small goals for yourself and check them off as you accomplish them. This practice gives you a feeling of accomplishment and helps keep you motivated. You can use this in your training. Create a checklist of small tasks associated with the beginning of your online course. These tasks could include registering for the course, setting up a learner profile, watching an introductory video, posting a personal introduction on the class discussion board, and so on. This will help your learners get comfortable with the format and provide them small successes along the way. Fear of the technology We live in such a digital world that this is hopefully becoming less of a problem, but it still exists in some organizations and among some audiences. The fear here is not of the technology itself, but of not understanding how to use it. For example, if you have learners who have never posted to social media, participated in online chats, or left comments on an article or a video, then participating in online discussions could be a hard sell. How to overcome it This fear is relatively easy to handle — train your learners how to use the technology before the course starts. For example, if you are running a MOOC, start with a short module on how to use the MOOC. In addition, provide technical support for your learners to help everyone get up to speed and stay there. Fear of not having enough time This fear is common among online learners. In a traditional training course, a chunk of time is blocked off — four hours here or two days there. In an online course, and particularly in a self-paced one, learners determine their own schedules. This aspect of MOOCs appeals to many, and is one of the reasons the courses have become so popular. But, for some, it can lead to the fear that they will not have time to participate in the course during normal working hours and thus will need to sacrifice their free time. How to overcome it If a training course is designed to take 20 hours, then 20 hours need to be set aside for it, even if it is self-paced. This doesn’t mean that the training needs to be specifically scheduled, but it does mean that during the training, managers need to allow their subordinates time to take the course. Some employees may choose to take the course at home in their spare time, but if you require them to do so, you will likely not only hear grumbling, but also find that many people are simply opting out. Fear that the training won’t succeed Finally, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, there is still an attitude among many that online training simply doesn’t work as well as traditional face-to-face training. This attitude is dangerous because it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: if learners believe online courses are subpar, then they may lack motivation and commitment, which, in turn, will lead to subpar results. How to overcome it A two-pronged approach is necessary here. First, there needs to be buy-in from executives and managers, as well as from the L&D department so that this attitude is not the result of a trickle-down effect. Second, prove it wrong by running an excellent online course. Give your learners a great experience of online learning — one that is meaningful and relevant, and that helps them do their job better, and this fear will quickly disappear. Fear — of trying something new, of technology, and so on — is at the root of most of the objections you may hear to online training. The best approach is to address these fears head-on by providing learners with the knowledge and the tools they need to succeed. 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:Why 65% Savings Isn’t Enough: Barriers to Organizational…How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1How to MOOC: Social Media in the Corporate Classroom, Part 1What Style of MOOC is Right for You?(Visited 149 times, 4 visits today)

For too long, corporate training has focused on teaching, rather than on learning. This is the fundamental reason why so much corporate training fails: the way it is presented simply doesn’t have anything to do with the way people learn. But as demands for training increase — not just training that satisfies butt-in-seat compliance requirements, but real training that leads to real results — learning is finally being acknowledged as the real goal. Over the past few years, there has also been a huge amount of new research into the brain basis of learning, which has lead to a host of new and more effective teaching strategies. Here, we’ll look at some of the research behind brain-based learning and discuss how technology-enabled learning, like massive open online courses (MOOCs), fits with this research. We’ll also look at some ways to effectively implement brain-based learning in MOOCs. What does the research say about how the brain learns? Neuroscience has revealed a lot about how the brain learns. Here are three of the key findings and what they mean for training. Brains like novelty Our brains are wired to detect change. Novelty triggers the dopamine system, which is widely known as the brain’s pleasure center, but it is also involved in learning and memory. Basically, when dopamine is released, the brain knows it’s time to pay attention. The implications of this for training are clear: hour-long lectures don’t activate many dopamine systems. If you want people to learn, you need to change things up, and that means more than just moving to the next PowerPoint slide. Well-designed MOOCs have plenty of variety — videos, readings, discussions, simulations, interactions, etc. — which provides the novelty our brains need. Brains like spaced repetition Our brains are not computers. You can’t just stuff in more information. We also forget, so repetition is important. Studies have shown that people who are exposed to the same information multiple times learn better when those exposures take place over time, rather than all at once. In other words, you will remember a paragraph better if you read it four times over the course of two weeks than over the course of 30 minutes. Traditional training sessions are run over a few days or maybe a week…and then learners are expected to remember what they learned until the next training, which may take place a year later. Fat chance! MOOCs, which take place over weeks or months, allow for spaced repetition, which means learners at least have a fighting chance. Emotions affect the ability to learn There are two sides to this one. On one hand, positive emotions are associated with better learning. Lessons and activities that are relevant and engaging produce positive emotions, which involve the dopamine system, which leads to better learning. On the other hand, negative emotions like stress and boredom impair the ability to learn. MOOCs can simultaneously increase positive emotions and decrease negative ones. Learners work on real-world problems that are relevant to their jobs and, because MOOCs are a pull rather than a push method of training, learners can choose to participate during the times they are most engaged. This also helps eliminate any stress individuals may feel about being away from their desks at inopportune times. These are just a few of the neuroscience findings that apply to learning. Explore the topic more fully here and here. How can you apply the principles of brain-based learning to online courses? Because of their format, online courses are perfect environments for applying the principles of brain-based learning. Instructional specialist Abreena Tompkins performed a huge meta-analysis of brain-based learning research and developed an online course design model based on her findings. Her model is called IGNITE: Intervals. Activities should be presented in intervals of about 15 to 20 minutes, followed by a break. Grouping. The brain works best in small chunks, so you shouldn’t present too much information all at once. Novelty. Make sure there is enough change to prevent wandering attention. Interconnectedness. Learning needs to be relevant and connected to the reason for taking the course. Technology and time. Select the appropriate technologies and give students time to do the work. Environment. Pay attention to the emotional environment to keep it positive and free of stress. MOOCs can satisfy these design requirements: They use bite-sized learning that presents information in small chunks. They use a variety of formats for content delivery and collaboration. They focus on relevant knowledge and skills. They use different technologies depending on the content and the learners’ needs, and they allow learners to control the pace of their learning. They promote a positive emotional environment through agency and engagement. The goal of training is not to teach (at least it shouldn’t be!). The goal of training is for employees to learn the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs better. More than traditional training formats, MOOCs seem to be able to provide the positive, engaging, and relevant experiences that are required for real learning to take place. 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:MOOCs, Games, and the BrainHow to MOOC: Bite-Sized ContentHow Much Learning Really Occurs in MOOCs?What Corporate Trainers Can Learn from MOOCs (Even If You…MOOCs and Microlearning(Visited 76 times, 3 visits today)