Our team has chosen to explore Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and will be looking at The Science of Wellbeing (TSW), a free course offered by Yale through Coursera. My previous experience with MOOCs came when I worked for The City of Calgary’s IT Education department. Our department was responsible for distributing free licenses for Lynda.com (now called LinkedIn Learning) to City employees, and while I did not complete any courses, I spent time perusing course offerings to make suggestions on ones that would be of interest to City employees. While this experience allowed me to engage with a MOOC, at the time I did not know that Lynda.com was a MOOC – I was unfamiliar with the term and did not differentiate Lynda.com from YouTube. Interestingly, despite being unaware of what a MOOC was at the time, I now realize that this experience helped shape the issue I have chosen to examine for this assignment: MOOCs and corporate training.
According to Dodson, Kitburi and Berge (2015), while MOOCs have primarily been associated with higher education, MOOC providers are increasingly pursuing possibilities in corporate training. The authors further suggest that “since 2013, greater consideration has focused on how MOOCs may play a role in the corporate world” (p. 15). The increase in popularity of MOOCs in corporate training even led to the year 2014 being considered the “Year of the Corporate MOOC”, just two years after 2012 was dubbed “The Year of the MOOC” as referenced in our team blog post.
One of the benefits of using MOOCs for corporate training is that existing MOOCs can be leveraged. Dodson, Kitburi and Berge (2015) point out that current MOOCs offer courses with high-quality content that have been developed in partnership with prominent institutions. Similarly, Silak-Riesinger (2017) suggests that implementing existing MOOCs in corporate settings can lead to employees engaging with people from around the world, leading employees to develop more culturally-diverse perspectives. Furthermore, leveraging existing MOOCs can result in cost savings. Based on Josh Bersin’s 2013 Corporate Learning Factbook, Silak-Riesinger states “that training in basic management, office productivity, math, Excel and further core business skills generally cost a company about 100 to 500 dollars per employee and per year” (p. 20-21). Using existing MOOCs would provide a low cost, or even no cost, alternative to other corporate learning options.
To date, my interactions with TSW seem to align with these benefits since the course is offered by Yale, a prestigious institution, and delivered by a top instructor as per Coursera’s ratings. Additionally, the course is free, meaning a potential company would save money by having their employees take this course or a similar one that meets their company needs.
I look forward to continuing my research on MOOCs in corporate training and developing my critical inquiry on whether MOOCs in corporate training can disrupt MOOCs in higher education. I invite my fellow classmates to comment on their experiences with MOOCs in corporate training and how their employer would benefit from using MOOCs.
References
Dodson, M. N., Kitburi, K., & Berge, Z. L. (2015). Possibilities for moocs in corporate training and development. Performance Improvement, 54(10), 14–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.21532
Sillak-Riesinger, B. (2017). The potential of massive open online courses in the context of corporate training and development (Ser. Bestmasters). Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16649-6