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Knowledge can be seen as a key success factor for any company. Internet technologies have brought many possibilities for easing the transfer of know-how and made it possible to access knowledge anywhere and at any time. MOOCs are in essence a restatement of online learning environments that have been in use for some time. What is new is the numbers of participants, being asynchronous, and the fact that the format concentrates on short form videos, automated or peer/self– assessment, case studies, problem-based scenarios, forums and ultimately open content from a representation of the world’s leading HEIs.
Which Companies use MOOCs?
Some companies have already realised the potential of MOOCs as they can be applied in various forms in the daily business routine. Some businesses engage in the creation of MOOCs and utilise these MOOCs for staff training and development, others do not engage actively in the MOOC production, nevertheless they allow their employees to participate in these courses and in return, the employees get reimbursed. On the other hand, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in particular often do not have expertise in HRD or they lack the infrastructure and resources needed in order to conduct successful and effective staff training (Hill and Stewart, 2000). In this respect, it is assumed that all types of companies can profit by the application of MOOCs and indeed, more and more companies are implementing and utilising MOOCs for various purposes. Examples from the MOOC providing platform Iversity include large corporations like L’Oréal, Deutsche Bahn, Hermes, Variant, but also medium-sized companies like Dräxlmaier, Baur Versand and many more (Iversity, 2015a). Some platforms for example a PRO version of courses, a for-pay offer specially tailored for the professional needs and staff development with a smaller amount of participants (Iversity, 2015a). Also the platform mooc.house from openhpi is offering a wide range of business-related courses which find applicability within the corporate context (openhpi, 2017).
Some businesses also produce MOOCs in cooperation with universities and offer these MOOCs afterwards on the aforementioned platforms. The accountancy firm KPMG for example produces MOOCs that can be accessed on the Iversity platform (Iversity, 2015b). The American business consultancy company McKinsey is engaging in the production of MOOCs as well; they are collaborating with the open platform edX (Lapal, 2015). Moreover, the British retail company Marks & Spencer is producing MOOCs in collaboration with the University of Leeds, and they provide their MOOCs on the platform FutureLearn (Coughlan, 2014). The platform FutureLearn has further collaborations with partners like BBC or the UK Government and they also work with ‘professional bodies such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and Institution of Engineering and Technology’ (FutureLearn, 2016). Businesses like IBM, National Geographic or the World Bank Group are cooperating with Coursera (Coursera, 2016).
Accrediting Learning
Accreditation of certificates received by institutions offering MOOCs has to take place alongside other legal negotiations such as additional contracts between the binding entities. In order to adequately accept and integrate certificates into the internal education history of a company, several steps have to be taken. For example, the costs involved in taking a MOOC e.g. for the issuing of certificates etc. needs to be taken into consideration. Many big corporation have their own internal buying software, e.g. SAP etc. with specific procurement processes in place. Allowing employees to participate in external courses often means a substantial increase in bureaucracy.
Screening the curriculum and comparing it to similar education programs can be seen as a first step. Not all of the content provided in a MOOC may be adequate for internal training needs. Moreover, since company specific topics will probably not be included in the MOOC’s curriculum, missing or additional topics or courses may be highlighted or named within the internal learning path for a certain skill or necessary training program.
Furthermore, a conversion of the workload has to take place. Since parts of a MOOC may take place outside of standard working hours, the amount of hours that may be required for a certificate needs to be converted. Additionally, an agreement with working hours, taking place on evenings and weekends, needs to be achieved. Here the decision may vary due to country and company specific laws and regulations. Finally, the outcome, (the achieved skills set or capability) has to be aligned with global development policies and therefore integrated into internal career programs. Since technology-oriented corporations tend to have a very specific focus towards technical skills, the conversion of skills acquired by MOOCs might become very complex.
The learning environment has to support the learning process by allowing learners to test new competences and by confronting them with graphical representations of their progress. Assessment tools need to be user-friendly and interactive in a way to engage and motivate learners. The synthetic representation of learning progress must be easily accessible from any part of the platform. Learners should be able to annotate the content with personal notes, only available to them, and with shared notes and comments that trigger reactions from the teaching team and discussions in the learning community. In this respect, a certain equilibrium of individual learning and interaction is necessary in order to improve the learning success.
Promoting (Human) Development
One of the often mentioned drawbacks of MOOCs is the limited interaction between the course participants. This lack of interactivity might not be a big problem for private users, but from a company’s perspective this interaction might be one crucial factor for the learning success as with this interaction the contents are reviewed and repeated. In order to create a supportive community, a professional trainer / team of experts should guide and supervise the discussions and answer any questions that might arise regarding the content. In this respect, the trainer team should have the possibility to question the content and trigger questions in order to revive the discussions.
However, it needs to be taken into consideration that many learners are less comfortable when taking part anonymously in large groups and prefer the intimacy of small groups, eventually defined by similar characteristics like age, location, or interests. The platform should allow learners to find like-minded learners, and to define protected spaces for groups to organize a collaborative learning experience.
It is also important that the trainer team supports the learning community in this way, that there are no inhibitions as some learners might have the fear of posting questions in a forum as they don’t want to show deficiencies in their knowledge in front of the community. This point is especially important when it is visible who is posting questions and depends on the design of the forum.
In HRD MOOCs are used to maximize global organization training and are building a variety of MOOC learning solutions for the employees’ professional development as the average annual expenditure per employee is increasing. The reasons for committing to trainings vary: improving product quality, introducing technology to gain operational efficiency and reducing errors. For HR it is important to analyse the effectiveness of the trainings to identify benefits that have in addition increased the operational effectiveness. In order to provide a holistic view of the training a return on investment performance analysis on the employees who attended the training has to be conducted.
HR works closely with management of all levels in order to define how valuable trainings were relevant to the effectiveness of their organization. For example, when accidents in manufacturing facilities are reduced because employees get trained in safety at work, it may also be possible to quantify the amount of time quality assurance representatives spend in reworking products prior to shipment to customers. Tracking all this may also relieve the budgeting process as for instance, based on an approved record of training cost per employee, HR can evaluate the expenses for the training of new employees. In addition, comparing the training cost per employee with similar organizations, the data can be helpful for HR to justify training initiatives for their organization. Developing the skills of a company’s own manpower is an important way to enhance the competitive ability in the market (Esen and Collison, 2005).
How Much Does It Cost?
Regarding the State of the Industry Report (ASTD) in 2012, companies have spent about $ 1,200 per employee on training annually. Companies can amortize investments in course content development and potentially save costs related to a company’s training. An increased interest in MOOCs is caused by the stagnant economy considering the high cost of achieving college degrees to be in demand for today’s job market. MOOCs provide positive effects for training through partnerships with companies such as Udacity and Coursera. There are various reasons why this model could make sense for companies today. Some of the most attractive features of MOOCs are their combination of autonomous learning and online collaboration with colleagues and lecturers, so developing an effective MOOC for corporations should be done in the same way as any other HRD intervention.
An important first step for developing a MOOC for an organization is to ascertain a needs assessment or analysis to determine which manpower skill-gaps should be addressed. Corporations are flexible in developing a MOOC for their own purposes or using free MOOCs offered at distinguished universities. Nevertheless, MOOCs could be a significant aspect of an employee’s development plan – and also for cost reduction – instead of sending the employee to several conferences. Some organizations, like Yahoo, collaborate with Coursera to provide employees with access to MOOCs for various topics such as Cryptography, Java and so on. After completion of a MOOC they receive a certificate of completion. This certificate strengthens the motivation that the organization deems to be important for productivity.
However, MOOCs still face some challenges regarding the design of the courses and some questions still need to be addressed, such as whether MOOCs could replace traditional education and training in all of its facets of personal development. Another big challenge is also present from the employee’s side. Many employees are still sceptical concerning e-learning and prefer the personal contact in traditional trainings. Once the employees are convinced that e-learning can indeed have benefits for them, that it can improve the learning environment in general and increase the compatibility of further education with social needs, the learners will accept online learning and will be more satisfied with this new training method (Lee et al., 2012, p. 404).
Vision
Moreover, organizations have changed their way of thinking towards providing their employees training. Corporations focus on employee development opportunities that act immediately on the employee’s performance. MOOCs are therefore perfect since employers put the career development in the hands of the employees. Hence employers can order development requirements as conditions of employment and allocate time during the month or year for professional development. The implementation of MOOCs in multinational corporations has many benefits to HRD as they can be considered a tool that assists HR in developing multinational learning communities. This can be challenging for those who organize these learning environments. Today it’s important to collaborate with others and learn in a diverse workplace – this is an important aspect of professional development. Employees who cannot collaborate with others from diverse cultures and backgrounds fall behind employees who do not have this ability as this often means the difference between success and failure in business (Slotte and Tynjälä, 2005).
Online education does not constitute a threat to company revenues or branding. Using MOOCs for employee development provides enormous benefits including accessibility, affordability and specific training. The specific training allows collaborations to develop employees’ skills and possibly gain competitive edge. Moreover, companies need every tool to grow in a competitive global marketplace because the threat of lacking behind is all around.
