Open study is getting a modern shake-up, as a fresh generation of online courses tempt corporate learners
Every new technology has its moment in the headlines, and for MOOCs (or Massive Open Online Courses) it came in 2012, when commentators were frenzied with excitement about the disruptive and democratising power these free courses could wield. The New York Times even declared it the ‘Year of the MOOC’
MOOCs’ penetration into academia has been slower than some predicted – though the likes of Harvard and Udacity, a not-for-profit offshoot of Stanford University, are still highly active in the space. But in 2014, they are still causing ripples, this time in corporate learning environments, where a growing number of L&D professionals are exploring how the platform could transform the way courses are delivered inside organisations.
“MOOCs are far better used for professional development – their design suits those wanting to update or upgrade their skills, while the involvement of conversations and online collaboration makes them informal and engaging,” says Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the Institute of Education, University of London.
She points out the fastest growth in MOOC sign-ups is among professional people who don’t necessarily want to be formally examined, but want to join a group where learning is about picking a topic they want to know more about. And she says involvement and completion rates are better than in educational settings too.
Bringing MOOCs into your organisation does require some forward planning. Traditionally, management topics have not been well-represented on MOOC platforms: Harvard’s popular edX offers 94 courses from 29 institutions, but only 13 per cent are in business. The FT runs a platform, but it’s the universities and business schools that really want your business.
In May, Henley Business School launched its first MOOC aimed at HR professionals – ‘Managing your people: engaging your workforce’, run by Martin Bicknell, director of studies in leadership, organisations and business. He says: “We were surprised by how few MOOCs existed in the management space, and as a business school feel we have a social responsibility to help create better managers for those who can’t afford to send their whole company on learning, but who want to give them development.”
Of course, to embrace MOOCs, businesses will have to see beyond the desire to pick up a recognised qualification. Henley’s nine-week, free course began in May and is pitched at managers with a few years’ experience, but it won’t contribute academic points: learners simply receive a certificate of completion from provider FutureLearn if they get through at least half the learning steps. Four weeks in, Bicknell says 52 per cent of the 7,868 students enrolled were actively contributing to discussions.
Course quality will be assessed. Henley admits there is a promotional aspect to running MOOCs: to introduce firms to its more immersive MBAs. But Bicknell says a MOOC is bona-fide learning in its own right.
Businesses will also have to consider how they handle dropouts, which have been high among academic MOOCs (just 2.7 per cent among the 12,725 who signed up to Duke University’s first MOOC in 2012 completed it).
“There’s a huge opportunity for MOOCs in personal development, but the challenge for HR is to move away from seeing drop-out rates as indicators of failure to looking at participation rates indicating success,” says Professor Neil Morris, director of digital learning at the University of Leeds. “Short courses we do reveal around 50 per cent engagement and 25 per cent completion, but just as important is the value learners say they get. People can dip in and out and still learn lots, but they would traditionally be classed as dropouts.”
Without paying for some form of special treatment, organisations wanting to use MOOCs have to time their learning with when the platform ‘broadcasts’. Some providers are beginning to mutate MOOCs into organisation-specific SPOCs (Specialist Private Online Courses) to recognise just such inadequacies: “These would also solve concerns from corporates that the conversations in public MOOCs can get too open-ended and stray from what they want their staff to take on,” says Morris.
Firms might argue these corporate versions are little different from conventional e-learning programmes. But there is another element to MOOCs that may yet provide the disruption promised – organisations volunteering their own content and insights for all to use, in the hope others will reciprocate for the common good. This September, the University of Leeds launches its ‘Innovation: The key to business success’ MOOC, in collaboration with Marks & Spencer. It provides insight into innovation that others can learn from.
Bicknell says: “MOOCs are blurring the line between education and training, but what’s clear is that they are changing perceptions about how continuous personal development should be done. The first wave of MOOCs was about people wanting to get good content out online. The next phase will be working out what is the ‘right’ content.”
How MOOCs work
MOOCs offer a platform for groups to learn simultaneously, using multimedia and chat facilities, moving away from the traditional “classroom” environs.
The immersive experience can be shared by anything from dozens to thousands of people.
MOOCS can be open to all, restricted to paying members of one organisation or ‘white labelled’ by a provider to represent a bespoke offering for a particular company.
McAfee calculates its sales associates create an extra $500,000 per year in revenue thanks to skills they learned through MOOC-led learning
A 2014 Future Workplaces survey found 70 per cent of HR professionals planned to integrate MOOCs into their learning programmes