MOOCs: Not Just for College Students—How Organizations Can Use MOOCs for Professional Development

Fact or Myth? An Overvies of MooCs for their Capacity to Bridge the Skills Gap

“…MOOC providers would have access to a large database of students (i.e., potential purchasers of lucrative certificates or services), while universities benefitted from the expertise, logistics, and hardware/software capabilities of platforms that helped them to teach and engage with students at scale, at a similar or cheaper cost (Ong & Grigoryan, 2015). Radford et al (2015) noted that employees at lower salary grades, with less education, and shorter employment contracts were among those most inclined in sacrificing personal time to participate in a short MOOC to improve skills.…”

“…Leadership, management, and communication courses were among the most popular courses (Radford et al, 2015). This possibly indicates that these skills are the most sought-after by employers and considered most important by employees to fulfil their job duties, progress in their careers, and demonstrate their eagerness to improve their skillset while employed (i.e., potentially for performance reviews) (Radford et al, 2015).…”

“…Leadership, management, and communication courses were among the most popular courses (Radford et al, 2015). This possibly indicates that these skills are the most sought-after by employers and considered most important by employees to fulfil their job duties, progress in their careers, and demonstrate their eagerness to improve their skillset while employed (i.e., potentially for performance reviews) (Radford et al, 2015). Jason Wingard, from Goldman Sachs, described how MOOCs offered unprecedented opportunities for scalability ; "it's not feasible to take all of these people, put them in a room and have a group education session," accessibility to; "reach wider audiences," as well as variability and just-in-time learning as employees "can cherry-pick the topics they want to address specific challenges they're facing" (Pandya, 2015).…”

“…Kranz (2014) and Radford et al (2015) suggest that organisations have either used, have strongly considered using, or in the future could see their companies using MOOCs for employees' professional development. Palin (2014) suggested that this model may be attractive at scale, as it may provide a means of skilling up for large numbers of non-traditional students.…”

Blending MOOCs into Medical Education

“…This 'trough of disillusionment' (Gartner 2017), however, has now led to what is hopefully more profitable exploration of the potential roles of MOOCs in education more generally (Radford, Coningham & Horn 2015).…”