Benefits of MOOCs for Professional Development

What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is a "Massive Open Online Course" - it has a beginning and an end. Most MOOCs today are not fully open since all of the material is copyrighted and may not be used by anyone other than the university and the provider. MOOCs today close at the end of the course and are not openly available outside of the actual course.

When and why did they develop?

• Began in 2007 with experimental efforts to serve large numbers in truly open online classes
• 18 of the early MOOCs are chronicled by WikiEducator
• Largest of the early MOOCs was eduMOOC

Uses of MOOCs Outside of Subject-Based Higher Education

"Companies are taking the idea and often the structure of this next iteration of online learning, and creating their own MOOCs, both internal and external facing.”

• Employee Training
• Professional Development
• Information Sharing
• Collaboration
• Discussions & Debates on Public Interest Topics

2014: The Year of the Corporate MOOC

Online Corporate Learning is one of Inc.'s 5 Top Trends in Education Technology in 2015

MOOCs: From Academia to Corporate (Whitepaper)

When Will Professional Associations Start to Take MOOCs Seriously

Benefits of MOOCs for Professional Development

• Reduces Costs
  • Employee training expenditures is over $150 billion per year
  • Corporate e-learning training expenditures is $56.2 billion
  • Corporate e-learning market is expected to increase 13% annually until 2017
• Improves Efficiency, Reach & Employee Engagement
  • Saves employees time
  • Increases size of training (not limited to physical room size)
  • Efficient way to reach a global employee base, dispersed association members, or the general public
  • Build better relations with business partners, customers, potential employees
  • Increase company/brand visibility
• Increases Flexibility of Training
  • Increases relevancy and availability of training
  • Provides just-in-time training
  • Training for competencies not available through traditional higher education
  • Unifies the learning experience for employees
  • Employees can use their own devices
• Personalizes the Training Experience
  • Learning is self-paced and modular
    • Beneficial for employees who find it difficult to devote entire workdays to in-person training
  • Improves the learning experience for employees who find in-person training to be too fast or too slow for their learning needs
    • Employees can adapt their pace as needed to better consume the content
• Improves Assessment of Employees' Competencies
  • Training attendance does not equate to comprehension of training message or engagement in activities
  • Certification of completions, badges made available only after completion of pre-defined activities and assessments
  • LinkedIn has partnered with MOOC providers to create “Direct-to-Profile” certifications that appear in LinkedIn profile after participants successfully complete a class
• Improves Institutional Knowledge
  • Provides a platform for employees' tacit knowledge to be documented
  • Serves as a repository of resources for future reference
  • Newly-hired employees can "ramp up" more quickly