Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/224037
connectedlearning than those programs can accommodate or than we can aford. Furthermore, a threeday workshop format isn't always feasible for most organizations facing fnancial, geographical, travel and time constraints. Te second disconnect is between the outstanding residential learning environment and the ofce environment: Because executives are learning in one environment and applying in another, lessons can get lost in translation. As an example, let's look at the "Program on Negotiation" from Harvard, a residential executive education course with a phenomenal reputation that's been extremely successful for more than 30 years. Senior leaders who have attended this three-day workshop come out of the course with a mutual sentiment: Tey've had an amazing transformational experience, they've crystalized their vision, and they're ready to drive key business initiatives in their organizations. But when they go back to the ofce on Monday, work gets busy, and the course manual gets put on a shelf. It would be great if companies could ofer their entire executive ranks outstanding executive experiences like Harvard's Program on Negotiation. We can't. So the question becomes whether it's possible to deliver the same content in executives' home environments in a way that fully captures the benefts of a residential experience. Taking it a step further, in delivering executive education locally, we might be able to overcome the disconnect inherent to residential programs — namely, the separation between the learning and doing environments. Te necessity to pack teaching into a three-day live course has consequences that can dilute the impact of learning, including: >> Compressed workshop schedules leave little time for refection, practice and reinforcement of lessons. >> When teachers and students don't share the same context and challenge, discussion can become more theoretical than practical. >> When participants are from diferent places and working on diferent challenges, their ability to support each other and work collectively is constrained. 24 December 2013 / January 2014 Elearning! >> Application of lessons to company challenges, as well as co-option of colleagues, falls on the shoulders of program participants rather than program organizers. >> Support material available to program participants is difcult to share and interpret for colleagues needed to implement program lessons. Understanding that it's not possible for everyone to attend Harvard's negotiation program in person and also knowing that, for all their strengths, elite residential programs have some structural constraints, the question arises of what we would build if we weren't confned to traditional executive education approaches. Tere is an answer. When connected, cohort members can stress-test ideas, recommend content and align communication across the enterprise. REVOLUTIONIZING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Dr. Larry Susskind is the master professor at M.I.T. and a co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Using his research and teaching as a prototype, we set out to answer the burning question: Bringing together all we know about the science of learning, if we were to design an executive education experience from scratch, what would it look like? It's not hard to imagine the broad outlines of that ideal learning system. Of course, we would still want Susskind's outstanding content. To ft into the busy days of attention-challenged executives, though, we would chop it up into short, delicious content bites and deliver it digitally. But those ingredients alone would only add up to a better MOOC. We would also want to time the delivery of content to ensure proximity to real-world decisions that executives were making while boosting retention. Critically, we would connect participants so that they can collectively make better decisions and adjust course. To get the most out of the cohort, we'd want to mix live and ofine eforts to take advantage of both types of learning. We'd also like a guide who can help navigate the content, keep the cohort on track and motivate contribution. All of these attributes add up to a powerful new way to harness social technologies to improve the depth of learning as well as business outcomes. CorpU's connected learning program brings together intellectual genius and real-world business results. It is a potent blend of new media, academic genius and 21st-century technologies that foster developmental growth of the community. Here's what it looks like to transform Harvard's Program on Negotiation to what we at CorpU call "connected learning": 1. A fve-week course is a guided, paced cohort (called a Guided Learning Journey) facilitated by a subject-matter expert. 2. Lessons are broken into 30 minutes per day, two to three hours per week. 3. Lessons include video lectures, case studies and research. 4. Te course is endorsed by senior leaders who frame a business problem, challenge or initiative. 5. Participants read, watch and refect, then discuss in live weekly forums. 6. Courses run fve weeks on, seven weeks of, in sync with the quarterly compartments of business. 7. During time of, participants engage in informal learning situated in a virtual learning community of practice connecting with other participants and experts. With this approach, you can deliver courses in a way that promotes sensemaking, learning and "real-world" application by leveraging technology used by all employees every day. It enables a communication loop that cascades and links the various groups, subgroups and knowledge. Participants can engage in rich