9 Lessons in Implementing a Blended Learning Approach for MOOCs Part 5

Part 5 of 12 Parts

This is part 5 of the article based on the talk “Lessons in Implementing a Blended Learning Approach for MOOCs” I delivered last May 15, 2022 at the Association for Training and Development (ATD) International Conference in Orlando, Florida. For Parts 1, 2, and 3, please refer to my earlier post.

In part 4, we discussed the first lesson as using blended learning as the overall approach in using MOOCs as the cornerstone of our corporate open university.

In part 5, we move to the 2nd lesson.

Lesson 2: Support Business Goals

In designing the curriculum for the corporate open university, we went beyond the customary training needs analysis. Most training needs analyses are administered to find the gap between the important competency requirements of the job and the developmental areas of the employee. One limitation of this approach is that the perceived gap may not be aligned anymore with the strategic priorities of the business. Another limitation is that most of these TNAs are focused on the addressing the “weaknesses” instead of finding ways to leverage the strengths of the employees in supporting the organization’s strategic priorities.

This change in our developmental philosophy has made us change the focus of our “Employee Development Plan” into “Employee Success Plans.” The question is not anymore, “How do we fix you?” but instead, “How do we help you become more successful?”

The organization, however, can only help the employee become more successful if the organization itself is successful. This means that the employee’s Success Plan should be aligned with the organization’s strategy to become more successful.

To make the online courses more relevant to the needs of the business, we sat with the business leaders to understand their business strategy and the competencies that should be strengthened among their employees. The impact of this was not only in the choice of the courses to be offered. This also enabled us to design job-relevant assignments that helped learners in their work, put the lessons in context, and apply them immediately to their jobs. This also ensured that learning results were tied to the achievement of business goals.

One of the early strategies that our organization decided to leverage on was digital marketing. All our businesses knew that much of the competition will be in the digital arena. At that time, companies that have leveraged the digital platforms like Uber and airb&b have already started making waves while social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram were giving birth to influencers (no, tiktok and has not yet emerged and podcasts were still emerging). Thus, digital marketing was one of the early focus of our MOOC courses. In a bit of hindsight now, we believe that early focus in developing skills in digital marketing enabled our companies to play better in the digital space when the pandemic happened in 2020 which forced all companies to adopt quickly to the arena of online selling and marketing.

The success of these MOOC training and course assignments by ensuring that they were strategy and business-relevant made the participants hungry for more and complete the courses. This is also a very good way of making our customers – the business leaders, become co-creators of our corporate university curriculum.

End of Part 5

Before I move on to Part 6, I would like to ask the readers how they ensure that their corporate university courses are aligned with the business strategy? What makes it sometimes difficult to engage the business in this process?

To read Part 1, click on the following link:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/9-lessons-implementing-blended-learning-approach-moocs-galvez

To read Part 2, click on the following link:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/9-lessons-implementing-blended-learning-approach-moocs-galvez-1e

To read Part 3, click on the following link:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/9-lessons-implementing-blended-learning-approach-moocs-galvez-1c

To read Part 4, click on the following link:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/9-lessons-implementing-blended-learning-approach-moocs-galvez-2c