Employers & MOOCs

An exciting revolution is emerging among the online higher education world – MOOCs (massive open online courses).  MOOCs are free online college courses taught by top professors from distinguished universities (e.g., Stanford, MIT, Harvard) through websites such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX.  Colleges typically don’t grant academic credit for completing MOOCs; however, the self-motivated participant will find him or herself rewarded by gaining new or necessary information or skills, as well as connections with other students with shared interests.

Thomas L. Friedman, in his article for the New York Times, “Revolution Hits the Universities,” sees this new online platform for education as being an egalitarian force and as having the potential to “unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems” and to “enable us to reimagine higher education.”  Perks include:

• Free courses taught by top professors
• Courses can reach a much broader demographic
• Connection to students around the globe
• Ability to sculpt your own college education

Friedman goes so far as to say that MOOCs will change not only how we teach and learn, but also our pathways to employment.  Courses are offered that teach real-world skills that employers want to see in interviewees and improve in their current employees.  Practical computer-related instruction and business development are among many areas that MOOCs cover:

• Udacity offers courses in programming languages and software debugging
• Coursera offers business/management courses, such as “Surviving Disruptive Technologies” and “Foundations of Business Strategy”
• edX provides a Harvard-sponsored course in current copyright law

However, the usefulness of MOOCs for employers is still being ironed out.  Many MOOCs do award certificates of completion, and through Coursera, if you complete a course taught by a Stanford professor, for example, you receive a certificate from Stanford.  This certificate, stamped by a respected college or university, could show prospective employers you’ve taken the initiative to gain usable job skills, as well as further your self-improvement.  Still, MOOC providers have not yet completely established a process, upon which an employer can rely, to guarantee credible credentials that verify a student has mastered the subject (and without cheating).

MOOC providers do have employment in mind – Coursera is developing their Career Services program, a recruiting service that matches you to potential employers based on your interests, skills, and knowledge.  By opting into the service, you allow Coursera to share your good marks in applicable courses with interested employers.  MOOCs, as they change the way higher education is perceived, may inevitably change the way hiring and ongoing employee development is approached.  What do you think – do you believe this trend will be helpful for employers in hiring?  How can MOOCs be used to further employees’ continued education? 

Mindfulness through Meditation: A Potential Tool for Employers

Mindfulness in the workplace has been an on-going topic of interest here at CEC Associates.  We’ve produced many emails and articles on the subject with the goal of sharing information with employers and human resources professionals.  Now, we’ve discovered a new book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova, and a recent study, both of which explore mindfulness through meditation.  Konnikova, in an article for The New York Times, explains that “mindfulness is less about spirituality and more about concentration: the ability to quiet your mind, focus your attention, and dismiss any distractions that come your way.”  She uses Holmes, the quintessential “unitasker,” to illustrate how practiced mindfulness can help us in a quick-paced world:

Through modifying our practices of thought towards a more Holmes-like concentration, we can build up neural real estate that is better able to deal with the variegated demands of the endlessly multitasking, infinitely connected modern world.  And even if we’ve never attempted mindfulness in the past, we might be surprised at how quickly the benefits become noticeable.

The study was conducted in 2012 by faculty at the University of Washington.  The aim was to determine the effects of meditation training on the multitasking behavior of “knowledge workers,” presumably as opposed to workers who do repetitive labor or “mindless” work.  Those participants who received the 8-week training and subsequently engaged in a 20-minute frenzy of assigned clerical tasks reported:

·     fewer negative emotions at the end of the assignment;

·     that they could stay on task longer and switch between tasks less frequently; and

·     that they remembered what they did better than those participants who underwent the same task assignment without the meditation training.

The findings of the study and the new approach of Konnikova’s book both promote the benefits of mindfulness and suggest potentially useful ways meditation training can be used to achieve it in a work setting.  If any employers already train staff in mindfulness and/or meditation, please share your experience.  How do you think mindfulness would benefit you in your daily workload, if at all?  Do you think meditation training for employees would be the way to achieve that mindfulness, or just a waste of time?