Back in November I first wrote about the emerging potential of iTunes University as a vehicle for learning, when Yale University Dean Joel Podolny joined the Apple team to serve as Dean of their own learning system. This past February I wrote about iTunes U once more, as new research was released which confirmed the power learning via this method as university students who listened to podcast lectures received consistently better test scores than those who didn’t.

One University in Australia, however, is taking this a step further, and is now offering college credit to high school students who watch video footage of lectures on YouTube. Professor Richard Buckland of the University of NSW in Sydney, Australia, wanted a way to allow high school students who lived too far away but were capable of handling college level programs, to actually attend Buckland’s classes by watching videos of his lectures on YouTube. Though students go through a rigorous selection procedure, if accepted, they must not only watch videos on YouTube but also hand in other work assignments in order to receive the transferable college credit which is of no cost to them. And, of course, only those accepted to the program receive the credit, but once the lectures are up on YouTube, they are freely available to be streamed by anyone.

This is another example of Open Learning–how will this impact corporate universities? Right now many companies are creating a Youtube version behind the firewall to share “how to lessons,” will taking an entire course on YouTube be next? Share your thoughts here.

[tags]YouTube, eLearning, Higher Education, Corporate University, Chief Learning Officer, Corporate Learning[/tags]

Chris argues that with cost of digital products rapidly dropping, it’s time to give them away for FREE. There are plenty of examples in the article including: free web web mail from Google and Yahoo, free access to online content from the New York Times, and free DVR’s from Comcast. According to Wired article:

FREE was once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

The rise of “freeconomics” is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

Just last week the United Nations University was launched. At this stage, the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of UN’s Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio.

The goal of the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal is to make the course materials used by UN Research and Training Centres available on the Web, free of charge. This is not meant to replace degree-granting higher education or for-credit courses, or even customized learning programs, but to provide content that can be used by educators for curriculum development, by students to augment their current learning resources and by individuals for independent self-study.

As more of these initiatives are launched and heavily promoted I can see senior executives of companies asking learning and talent management professionals the tough questions including how to integrate FREE content into some of their customized learning programs and in the process lower the cost and improve the quality of these programs?

On a final note, I wanted to take Wired Magazine up on their offer for a FREE March, 2008 issue where this article is the cover story. But on the Wired web site you will see the following notice: The March 2008 Issue For Free Offer is Now Closed. So much for walking the walk…

Consider some of the benefits in adopting social media to attract, develop and retain top talent:

Increases in Creativity and Innovation
Deloitte has come up with the innovative idea of hosting an employee film festival, where employees submit creative videos articulating the company’s values and culture. The best of these are now on YouTube. Deloitte has engaged in social media in a variety of other ways, with a special focus on using social networking in new hire on boarding. You can visit the Deloitte New Hire Facebook group from London of September 2007 to get an idea of how social networking can be utilized by new hires.

Increases in Employee Engagement
We know from the Gallup Organization that engaged employees lead to greater productivity, customer engagement and, by extension, higher profits. Hence, companies with populations of mostly actively engaged employees tend to outperform those with populations of mainly disengaged employees.

Increases in Communication with the Troops
Some aspects of social networking have already found their way onto the CEO agenda. Consider the growth in the number of CEO’s of publicly traded companies who have their own blog:

• Jonathan Schwartz, “Jonathan’s Blog” — CEO of Sun Microsystems
• Bill Marriott, “On the Move” — CEO of Marriott International
• Mike Critelli, “Open Mike” — executive chairman of Pitney Bowes
• Robert Lutz, “Fast Lane” — GM vice chairman
• David Neeleman, “Flight Log”— chairman of JetBlue Airways
• Michael Hyatt, “From Where I Sit” — CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers

While CEO’s that blog are still rare, what is more common is the company department that starts a blog to share their lessons, insights and practices to a global workforce.

Whatever road your company takes to developing a high performing workplace, the key will be to recruit, develop and retain the best talent and that talent may in fact demand you equip them with the latest tools in order to more closely match the way they run the rest of their lives.

Why are wiki’s the “communication mode of choice” for workers who are 30 years old or younger? According to a 2007 comScore study (and validated by my 18-year-old daughter) teen email usage was down by 8 percent, compared with a 6 percent increase in e-mailing for users of all ages. So the potential Net Generation workers are already accustomed to going around email and finding faster, and more efficient ways of communicating and getting the job done.

Companies are starting to experiment with wiki’s as a way to better manage work. For example, MWW Group, a mid-sized public relations firm, recently deployed wiki’s to track real-time news updates and facilitate communications with clients.

According to MWW, the benefits include:

• Reduced time spent on e-mail, as the wiki allowed group editing and saved employees from sending hundreds of back-and-forth e-mails.
• Better and faster real-time collaboration among employees.
• A new knowledge base for market intelligence data which workers can collaborate on on a daily basis.

Lastly, as companies experiment with the wiki format they also have to put in place a set of policy guidelines to ensure sensitive and proprietary data stays off of public wiki’s. This happens to be one of the major hurdles in effectively deploying and utilizing wiki’s in a corporate atmosphere. Some issues to be sure to include are:

• Nominating employees as moderators
• Creating explicit policies on what to include and what to avoid in wiki posts
• Encouraging employees to create wiki’s on specific topics which lend themselves to be used as a repository for knowledge sharing
]]> http://2020workplace.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=93 0 http://2020workplace.com/blog/?p=253 http://2020workplace.com/blog/?p=253#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:38:07 +0000 Jeanne Meister http://newlearningplaybook.com/blog/2008/01/24/open-source-innovation-for-clo%e2%80%99s/ Open source innovation creates a Linux style approach to involving employees, customers and outside experts in the creation of new products and services. Fast forward to the world of corporate learning and ask yourself: Are you involving your learners so that they can contribute their input to enhance your organization’s learning offerings?

Think about the many ways to involve both the learners and your learning staff. Sun Microsystems CLO Karie Willyerd has suggested a number of ways to use open source innovation in learning, like creating wiki sites for your learning department in multiple areas. Here are some of her great examples:

1) A course design site. Give the URL to subject matter experts and let them start unleashing their power, which includes allowing them to edit online in real time.

2) A learning terms site – for use by those interacting with the learning function. So many of us tend to use training jargon, so this will be a great benefit for interacting with business leaders and important collaborators.

3) A wiki devoted to your learning organization’s vision and goals. Remember those long sessions in the conference room devoted to coming up with the optimal vision statement? This can now all happen online through this site. You can generate input from contributors across the organization, edit immediately and seek feedback just as fast.

4) An acronym site, for the most frequently used terms within your company. Instead of having to update that dusty New Employee Manual the old way, it can happen online.

5) A course wiki for use by learners that includes regular updates of all the common terms and concepts. Perhaps most important of all, thogh, is to allow learners to easily add content and then instruct them in how to tag this content so it is easily located by everyone.

[tags]Open Source, CLO[/tags]

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