What is a MOOC?
MOOCs seem to be all the rage with many analysts’ saying that 2012 was the year of the MOOC in academia. It is now almost half way through 2014 and we need to make an informed decision whether the MOOC approach is the correct one for our organization’s learning needs or not.
Now we need to get through the buzz and dig a bit deeper to get a good understanding of what a MOOC is. MOOCs have been around for quite some time now in academia. The big question each of us needs to ask is “can MOOCS work for my Organization?”
Massively Open Online Courses (also known as MOOCs) a Term or Acronym commonly credited to David Cormier (the University of Prince Edward Island) and Bryan Alexander (with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education). MOOCs have been propelled onto the main stage by a series of very high profile universities as well as startups launching a series of courses for free and open to anyone in the world with an internet connection and a desire to learn, some examples include Coursera, edX, Khan Academy and Udacity to name a few.
The courses typically follow a very similar – albeit basic – format to one another with recordings of professors providing a lesson (or learning object of some sort but typically a passive learning activity), a series of knowledge checks or assessments (usually in the form of discussion forums and some sort of assignments or often optional deliverable to be peer assessed). While this concept has been around in traditional education for quite some time and is a very common method for delivering traditional learning, the uniqueness of the model stems from the “O” or “Open” in the acronym MOOC. The ‘Open’ means that anyone can access this course. The rise in awareness stems from millions of people being provided with high-level university courses with world famous faculty for FREE, or at least low cost (paying for certificates or credentials seem to be common lately).
MOOCs have a broad appeal to many in the world especially now that we have unprecedented access to global knowledge. MOOCs have become an extension of this access allowing hundreds of thousands of individuals from all walks of life to interact with each other in an academic environment. There has been an unprecedented adoption in terms of numbers – and the sheer volume of students taking courses has led to the high level of buzz being generated the world over.
Do MOOCs work?
The question now becomes “are they effective?” While Academic MOOCs have seen massive drop out rates with upwards of 40% – 60% after registration and lower than 10% completion rate of the full course, it is important to understand the motivation behind enrolling for a MOOC prior to building one for your organization. Knowing the business motivators for building a MOOC are the key requirements for going down this path as a corporate organization. There have not been many large Corporate MOOCs that have made a mainstream splash to date that follow in the footsteps of the Academic definition of a MOOC, however, there are some companies (some have been around much longer than the concept) that have commercialized the concept of massive reach through a subscription based unlimited access approach that come close to maintaining the “O” for open in the MOOC acronym.
Such commercial applications of online open courses that have massive reach and have been successful include Lynda.com, codeschool.com or udemy.com. These provide a monthly access model (for a nominal fee) to their full library of courses, there are others that offer ad driven freemium tutorials or learning content. While these could be debatable by many in the academic world as to whether or not they qualify as proper MOOCs (where the first O in Open stands for Free) they are the closest in the market for skills-based training (please add your comments below if there are other great examples that you want to share!).
Can my organization create a MOOC?
Within an internal learning and development department, MOOCs are a great concept for facilitating a knowledge transfer society if your L&D team have the capacity for it. There are some large corporations that have very large databases of video content by internal employees expounding on a large array of business related topics (if you are one of these and would like to share please let us know we would love to hear from you!). From my perspective this is the best way to use the MOOC concept. Have employees do some ‘selfie’ video debriefings about things they are experts in, have the L&D department make some edits, add some assessments, and post some discussion boards, make it accessible to the entire organization, and you have an internal Corporate MOOC. If you make certain courses requirements for tenure and make creation of videos or learning objects part of an employee’s KPIs you would be on your way to creating a great alternative to a corporate knowledge base that is quite interactive and much more engaging.
Not sure? Still on the fence?
MOOCs, like them or not, are courses in a format that will be around for at least another few years. There are some business model issues to work out from the public side, however, from an internal corporate standpoint there is great potential for employee generated content to be transferred as course material to help train future employees. There are some powerful tools on the market that can help your organization build a corporate MOOC (shameless plug, please take a look at our platform), but as always please make sure you have a plan and look before you leap!
Author:
Josh Squires is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Docebo EMEA. Josh has spent the past 15 years researching and implementing creative learning solutions within corporate and higher education environments. With clients ranging from Motorola to Disney, he has been on the designing and implementing stage of a wide range of learning scenarios with customers spanning the globe. Josh has also taught Instructional Technology theory and tools as a consultant and faculty member for over 8 years in both Corporate and Higher Education environments.
You can contact him directly at josh.squires@docebo.com or connect with him via LinkedIn
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