The MobiMOOC is now in its second week and there have been some very interesting discussions happening there. Personally, it’s been a great experience getting to understand the very diverse opinions and views. If you’ve not joined in yet I’d urge you to do so by joining the Google Groups here. If you are completely new to MOOC you’d do well to check the Wikipedia page here for a quick intro and lots of links to read further if you wish. The concept of a MOOC is itself not very old (started in 2007-2008), so I wouldn’t really worry if it sounds completely alien. In the short while they have been around, it has outgrown the buzzword stage and some MOOCs in the university space seem to be flourishing already. Some prominent ones that come to mind are – Coursera, edx, Udacity. In some senses, I’m quite convinced that MOOCs are the future of higher education.
However, when it comes to applying MOOCs to corporate or workplace learning I’m not very sure how and how well it will work. So far on the MobiMOOC, almost all the discussions have had an academic bent or context. It made me think that corporate executives are not keen to get into MOOCs (I’m just hoping that the next two weeks will be more active on corporate mlearning front). I googled ‘Corporate MOOC’ but could not find any examples of corporate MOOCs.
You know an idea’s time has come when ASTD and CLO Magazine start talking about it and when Google launches a product (free BTW) to support the movement. Perhaps the biggest validation of the concept comes from Bersin in this article analyzing the proposed acquisition of MindLeaders by SkillSoft. I think we should get ready to hear more of MOOC in corporate and workplace learning in near future.
Based on the little I’ve understood of MOOCs so far, I believe they can be applied to corporate training if done well. A more pertinent question will probably be –
Are there any examples of MOOCs being used for corporate learning? Any problems you see in applying MOOCs to corporate world?
Look forward to your thoughts
