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In 1996, Bill Gates declared that “content is king.” Gates was talking about the Internet, and the publishing, creating, and accessing capabilities that came as a result. However, the same has been true in education for a very long time. Education — from elementary to college to corporate learning — has relied on the “sage on the stage” approach: one teacher, explaining content to a class of students. The primary value, often assumed, of the teacher is his or her content knowledge and the ability to transfer this content effectively to the students in the class.
There are some good reasons why this is true; while education is about more than just the collection of facts, there is a baseline level of knowledge that learners need before they can move on to higher order critical and creative thinking. However, in higher education — and to an even greater extent, corporate education — our historical model of expert-to-student instruction becomes increasingly less relevant in an age where nearly any piece of information can be found with a few well-crafted Google queries.
The relationship structures inherent in this model of education do not reflect the realities of the workplace today. Companies are increasingly moving away from command and control organizations to more nimble, decentralized structures. While previously, workers were expected to take orders from a boss and then accomplish those objectives (an “I say/you do” structure common in education), workers now are expected to collaborate in teams, thinking strategically to overcome undefined challenges or improve processes in innovative ways.
While technology has changed the way we do nearly everything else, the experience of corporate education has remained fairly consistent over time. Even Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), one of the innovations with the greatest buzz in education, still rely on an expert presenting information, with limited opportunities for students to engage.
This wasn’t the early goal of MOOCs. Modern MOOCs focus on expanding access to high-quality content, while ignoring the relationship side of the equation. The first MOOCs, however, aimed to make online learning mimic the way people actually learn and solve problems, via collaboration and social interaction. Content is still important but plays a supporting role to the interactions, conversations, and engagement aspects of the experience. We would pose that today, context is king.
This is particularly valuable in the business setting. The concept of the “business MOOC” seems to be gaining some currency, with leaders won over by the idea of access to the brightest minds in business theory available via affordable technology solutions. Unfortunately, in a business setting, MOOCs fall short. Completion rates are low; outcomes are uncertain. Most importantly, the learning experience does not promote the same types of engagement and collaboration that businesses need. Corporations are inherently social; businesses, on average, reorganize every seven months, requiring new relationships be built and reporting structures developed. Additionally, research shows that more than half of the knowledge workers today collaborate with, and attempt to influence, at least 10 people every day.
To foster not only the content knowledge of employees, but also the social skills they require to succeed, businesses cannot rely on either lecture-format courses or their digital cousin, the MOOC. We need to return to the MOOC as originally envisioned: social learning. Best-in-class corporate education creates a place where colleagues can connect, form networks, and share ideas. It is increasingly important to engage learners socially, because they stand to learn as much from each other as from formal instruction. This does not require forgoing the best-in-class lectures, but rather re-packaging them as part of a broader pedagogical strategy that includes social learning as a core part of the student experience.
Alan Todd is CEO of CorpU. Dr. George Siemens, Executive Director of the LINK Lab at The University of Texas at Arlington, co-authored this post.
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