At gap intelligence, employees are encouraged to develop their personal and professional growth. From attending seminars to workshops to classes, employees have choices as to how they can learn, develop, and grow. MOOCs are a great choice for employees to continue learning with their busy schedules.

 

What’s a MOOC you ask? MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, which are online courses that can be accessed on the web.  It’s not your traditional classroom setting compared to classes taken in person, but materials to encourage learning such as films, webinars, articles, and interactive forums for participation are made available.  

For full-time employees, the flexibility of taking an online course is appealing as material can be accessed any time. Forbes just recently highlighted the ever-growing online learning environment in a recent article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lucielapovsky/2015/05/26/online-learning-what-next/

However just like a traditional classroom course, classes do have a start and end date. Many classes though can be audited after the course has ended. Archived courses are a great way to study something new at your own pace, but you do miss the participation component with your fellow online students who can literally be in any part of the world. Courses are free, but for a small fee students can pay to have an official certificate to state that they have completed the course.  

Courses range from a wide variety of topics from Inclusive Leadership, Introduction to Cloud Computing, Nutrition, and Data Analytics. Some of the top universities such as Harvard University, MIT, and Berkeley to name a few offer courses in a MOOC format. The number of participating universities allows students to sample the different curricula at various schools.

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/online-learning-campus-2-0-1.12590

For a list of a few MOOCs to consider, please see the links below:

There are other MOOCs besides the list provided. Finding the courses of interest and platforms has never been easier with the options available. To read more about the different MOOC providers and some of the participating universities, follow the link to Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

Personally, I have taken an Inclusive Leadership and Stress Management course through edX. Each course was about four weeks long and required a few hours each week to go through the weekly assignments.  Assignments ranged from videos to articles. Participation in discussion boards is also a key component to get the most out of the online learning experience. Overall, I really enjoyed the classes and the new content that I learned.

MOOCs are a convenient way to master a new skill or expand your knowledge in a variety of topics in a short amount of time. This allows you to learn and experience as many courses as possible, which will only help employees to continue to learn and grow.