Have You Tried MOOC As Part Of Organization's L & D Strategy?

Re-posting this article orignially written by Sourabh Soni on LinkedIn Pulse couple of months back.

With more and more universities, institutes and even corporates coming up with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), it is getting increasingly easier for online learners to find a desired course to broaden their knowledge and skills, and that too for free of cost. While this trend can only continue, it make lot of sense for Organizations to make MOOC as an inherent part of their Learning and Development (L & D) strategy.

MOOC! What's That?

If you are still wondering what MOOC is, let me briefly introduce you the same. As the name suggests, MOOC are a kind of online courses, are open to anyone in the world and targeted to large number of audience using technology platforms. MOOC are hosted over cloud and learners are free to register for a MOOC. Both learners and educators joins the course on the web, can join from anywhere as per their convenience. MOOC are built around learner-centric approach, where learners can work at their own pace and are responsible for their own learning.

Benefits of Taking MOOC

1. Anyone: MOOC are open to anyone in the world. As long as, you are interested in learning “something”, you can find out the course and freely register for the same. MOOC does not require a diploma/degree to attend the course, only the willingness to learn is enough.

2. Anywhere: MOOC are hosted over cloud. Both learners and educators joins the course on the web, can join from anywhere at a place of their convenience.

3. Anytime: MOOC are built around learner-centric approach, where learners can work at their own pace and are responsible for their own learning. The learning via MOOC happens in a more informal setting and often (depending upon which MOOC) around your own schedule.

4. Networking: MOOC offers an excellent opportunities to participants (both learners and educators) to connect with people coming from various disciplines, professions, corporate and institutions.

5. Content: MOOC offers enormous amount of content to the learners (which may be overwhelming sometimes). Even leaners have variety of MOOC available on same subject which covers the spectrum from general (introductory) to specialized (contextualized / interdisciplinary) content on a desired subject. This allows learner to go deeper into a subject or broaden the knowledge based on his/her own learning requirements.

6. Accreditation: The learners, who need an accreditation, have an option to pay nominal amount to get the certificate issued after successfully passing the evaluation tests and assignments.

As Part of L & D Strategy

The number and variety of high-quality MOOC available online are rapidly growing. While this trend can only continue, it make sense for organizations to make MOOC as an inherent part of their Learning and Development (L & D) strategy. The notable merits of adopting MOOC as part of L & D strategy are as below:

1. Reduced Lead Time: Some MOOC can always be found which suits the initial need of a corporate learner. This can help L & D department to shrink their lead time when new learning requirements being raised. When more specific learning solutions are expected, initial MOOC can be used to buy additional time for preparation of specific solutions.

2. Low Investment (& no marginal cost): Instructor-led-training (ILT) and traditional e-learning material creation requires significant investment from the organization. As many of MOOC are free or low-cost, this gives an additional lever to maximize the learning outcome with minimum L & D budget.

3. 24/7 Accessibility: 24/7 online accessibility and even offline content accessibility makes it very easy for learner to fit into their work schedule or personal life.

4. Social Platform: Discussion board, available in many MOOC, creates a social environment for learner to have peer-to-peer communication. This can boost the interest and motivate the learner to make more learning efforts. To take this to next level, organization can form the internal group of employees who can go through the course together.

5. Assignments: Organization can formally define their norm about assignment submission and examination to ensure the genuine participation of their employees.

As a closing note, here is a list of few popular MOOC which offer wide variety of technical and management courses:

• https://www.edx.org
• http://www.nptel.ac.in/
• http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
• https://www.udacity.com/
• https://www.coursera.org
• https://iversity.org/
• https://www.openlearning.com/
• https://alison.com/
• https://www.udemy.com/
• https://www.futurelearn.com/

With this, I welcome you to share your experience and feedback of trying MOOC as part of your L & D strategy.
Happy Learning!!

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