Business Education For All

Table of Contents

Business Education For All

Some observations

“We’ll see if MOOCs bring about the democratisation of education or just the mass consumerisation of good lecturing.” — @gpetriglieri

If you explore the emerging trends in learning, you have not missed MOOCs’ emergence these days.

“A MOOC is not a substitute for a campus college experience. The question is if everyone needs 4 years of that. — @DaphneKoller” — @marciamarcia

Experimenting Learning Ways

Jay Cross wrote a post that shared his experience on a MOOC as he participated in a course on the complexity from the Santa Fé Institute:

“You want to understand what’s right and what’s wrong about the variety of activities people are calling MOOCs, just take some. JFDI.”

Like Jay Cross, I’ve also experienced some online courses:

Introduction to complexity with the Santa Fé Institute.

Lean Analytics Workshop with Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz

Map Making: Learn to Communicate Places Beautifully with Anne Ditmeyer

Demystifying Graphic Design: How Posters Work; Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design with Ellen Lupton

The Science of Happiness

Journey Into Minimalism with Leo Babauta

The Modern Marketing Workshop with Seth Godin

I have also dived into some online resources:

Community 101 by The Community Roundtable

News Lab Lessons by TheNewsLab

The jobs-to-be-done of MOOCs

But what are the jobs-to-be-done of MOOCs? Here’s another fascinating insight:

“So are MOOCs a fad ? Not at all. First because they actually meet some needs. Not needs related to the reinvention of the learning models by a social imperative of making knowledge accessible by anyone. It’s not a way to improve the performance of the existing model but addresses social responsibility challenges.” — Bertrand Duperrin

Morten T. Hansen also explained how executive education is riping for online disruption:

“In other words, they deploy a hybrid, mixing lectures with some interaction. And this hybrid can be lifted into online education, which is already happening: you listen to a lecture online, and then you discuss a case with a group of students and guided by an instructor in small groups in your own location (no need to travel for everyone to be in the same room).

At some point, it will overwhelm executive educators in companies and business schools. The question is when, not whether, it will happen.”

Other people think that MOOCs are also useful for research:

“Thanks to Coursera and the online learning explosion, we have the opportunity to reach many more students than would be possible at one university or even one country. There are students everywhere who could use this as a stepping stone to a career in a field that is going to change the world as we know it. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?” — Ray Kurzweil

But is there really something new under the sun? Here is the take of the ParisTech Review:

“In short, there is a virtual curriculum built locally with “bricks” selected from an essentially Anglo-Saxon global catalogue.”

“Changing the face of the world?

The societal objective of MOOCs is a worthy cause, viz., democratising access to high level university education. Seen from this angle, it is simply a digital extension of older projects such as the Britain’s Open University (1970) or France’s Université populaire (1963).”

Smart Modern Ways of Learning

I am not the only one who asks this question. Here are some observations:

“FOOCs — Better than MOOCs for business. Facilitated, optimized, online, collaboratories. I’m studying this phenomenon closely.” — @jaycross

If you are exploring emerging trends in learning as I do, you will also notice that MOOCs are just a way among other ways of learning. Jane Hart created a great visual: “The Comet’s Tail of Workplace Learning Trends.” So in a galaxy of learning ways, go beyond MOOCs! Emerging technologies and social tools are powerful tools for enabling continuous, collective learning and sense-making. As Donald Clark wrote down: For instance,

“Social media is a form of genuine communication and informal learning, which is how most of us learn most of the time. It’s the hokey-cokey, I’m in, I’m out and I shake it all about!”

Donald Clark takes Youtube and hyperlinks as profound disruptors for the MOOP (Massive Open Online Pedagogy).

Mentored Open Online Conversations

There is an interesting post by Sahana Chattopadhyay on “11 differences between a MOOC and an Online Course”. Her helpful post made me react by sharing with her and other learning pals the brilliant post of Anne Marie Rattray. She said that the acronym MOOCs could stand for something much more useful and meaningful than the acronym MOOC’s widespread sense.

“MOOCs move on?

What the MOOC explosion says to me is that despite our lack of time, we are using social technologies to educate ourselves. And this of course is good news.

But I think the real opportunity for self-driven learning is in the ‘C’ bit of MOOC, ‘c’ for conversation and connecting as well as courses. It is also in the ‘M’ bit. My vision is for Mentored Open Online Conversations supported by mentors, coaches, facilitators and — most importantly — each other.”

“This is why I think that social network technologies are so full of possibility for Mentored Open Online Conversations — it is a practical, timely, socially-engaging, supportive, reassuring and challenging way to learn. And it is all possible.”

Which intelligent and modern ways of learning do you use to develop yourself in networks and communities?