Startling thought I know!  In my usual magpie way, or if I am being more formal demonstrating Curious behaviour, I came across this new jargon – MOOCS. This stands for massive open online courses.

A good article by Matt Chittock writing for ILM’s Insight identifies the massive changes going on in learning delivery.  The digital revolution that surrounds us also helps free up approaches to learning.  The days of the badly photocopied handout and PowerPoint punishment must surely be at an end.  Old habits do die hard in the perceptions of learners and some deliverers of learning.

Is it really acceptable to pull people out of the workplace for a day a week, expect them to travel to that place to listen to a lecture?  For one thing just think about the costs:  releasing a person from the workplace and then the travelling time and expenses.  We often feel that organisations fail to take account of this when comparing the costs of our CIPD programmes. We are playing about with this as a topic for our first infographic so watch this space…

We have for a number of years now been trying to help our learners start to learn for themselves.  It is a pretty scary thing to do without the right support.  We feel that in this day and age we must be as self sufficient as possible and our access to the internet and its excellent treasure trove of resources has got to be accessed.  So what learning should be made available on a variety of platforms?

• facts and figures
• concepts and theories
• best practice and case studies
• descriptions of behaviours, consequences of poor behaviours, films showing this.

Large organisations will want to channel this through a Learning Portal so that data can be gathered on usage and results of tests taken.  Smaller organisations should be grateful that they do not have the resources for this as I believe that the days of Learning Portals may well be numbered.   If you subscribe to the benefits of flexible working and BYOD then finding a flexible way of providing learning has to be on the agenda.  If BYOD is a mystery to you give us a call and we can send you an excellent report on this.

We believe that face to face learning can never be totally abandoned but we do believe that organisations need to get smarter in their use of these learning methods.  Face to face learning is essential for skills development in a safe environment.  These are some of the skills that definitely need this:

The trick is to design the learning intervention in a blended way to ensure that knowledge aspects are acquired before, during and after the skills development session.  If you want to chat this over contact me – there is one thing you can rely on, we are never short of bright and relevant ideas!

So a little challenge for you this bank holiday weekend.  Either learn more about MOOC or certainly guess the name we have given our Crococow – excellently drawn by Eleanor Brough, one of our bright young things!!  Do remember that there is the opportunity to win a bottle of Ridgeview bubbly for the best three entries for our summer competition.  The deadline date for entries is 1^st October 2013.  Definitely something for you to play with whilst on the beach or as you return to work!