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How We Changed Our Learning Culture and Achieved 100% Learner Engagement at Coursera

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How We Changed Our Learning Culture and Achieved 100% Learner Engagement at Coursera

By Ian Stuart, Director of Learning & Development at Coursera

Coursera is the world’s learning platform, and education is in our DNA. Our employees are life-long learners who share a passion for our mission to transform lives with access to the world’s best learning experience. For these reasons alone, you might expect Courserians to complete courses like they’re binge watching the latest season of Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. As a fast-growing Silicon Valley start-up, we faced many of the same challenges as other companies do with making time for learning. We knew we needed to turn this around and make learning a top priority.  

The Challenge

At the start of 2018, we set out to drive deeper learning engagement amongst Courserians. In the past, we’d challenged the company to reach learning goals, but at best we’d only reached a 25% completion rate. With varying degrees of success, we tried everything from study groups and friendly competitions to marketing campaigns and regular email reminders. Like other companies, we were challenged by time constraints and competing priorities. Although they highly value learning, some of our executives even voiced concern that learning programs might divert energy away from important initiatives. We knew were going to have to up our game in order to move the needle past a 25% completion rate.  

The Solution

For 2018, we decided our approach needed to be aggressive and ambitious if we were going to make this shift happen. We put a stake in the ground by setting an aggressive goal for 90% of employees to complete at least one course on Coursera by the end of 2018. To back this up, our CEO became the ultimate champion of the goal, advocating for learning across the company and getting the leadership team onboard.  

That was just the tip of the iceberg. To hit our ambitious targets, we had to put the right engagement strategy in place. Below are a few of the most successful strategies we utilized:

  • Curated Course Collections — We met with each executive to understand near- and long-term learning needs in their organizations and mapped course collections to those needs. This gave employees a clear path to select courses that would build important skills for their roles. By aligning learning to organizational goals, leaders were able to see the value in making time for learning.
  • Executive Sponsorship and Accountability — Our executives bought in and became leading advocates who inspired their teams to learn. Each leader shot a launch video highlighting course collections, committed to completing courses themselves, and communicated progress updates within their organization and at the company-wide All Hands. At the end of the year, every executive had completed at least one course.
  • Learning Champions — Each organization appointed a Learning Champion, who became a source of expertise and helped others to learn by organizing learning groups, sharing updates and data, and holding everyone accountable. Learning Champions also met regularly with each other to share key learnings and best practices.  
  • Communication, Communication and more Communication — The company All Hands became a forum to inspire learning. As noted, leaders and Learning Champions shared progress updates at All Hands. Additionally, learners shared inspirational stories about how they applied their new skills in their roles. The L&D team inspired healthy competition across organizations through regular performance updates across teams.  

The Results

We didn’t just hit our learning goal of 90% completion — we knocked it out of the park by achieving 100% completion! We were also building critical role-relevant skills: over 50% of course completions came from courses in collections curated by our leaders. Most importantly, we achieved a true culture of learning where our employees weren’t just advocates and believers in our product, but regular users. We also created a successful and repeatable learning engagement model that can be built upon in 2019 because employees value it. As a matter of fact, when it came time to prepare our 2019 learning program, our executive team was ready to go and it took very little effort to assemble a group of new Learning Champions. Employees knew what the role was and its importance to the company, and they understood the unique leadership opportunity it provided. We’re now well on our way to repeating our feat of 100% completion, and more importantly, strengthening our learning DNA.

15

GUEST POST: The Emerging Consensus

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GUEST POST: The Emerging Consensus

By Mike Bell

Mike Bell taught science in UK secondary schools and then became interested in evidence. He now runs EBTN: the Evidence Based Teachers Network. EBTN has run dozens of training sessions in UK schools and college and about 7000 teachers receive their newsletter. He has a contract with an education publisher to write a book about the ideas he shares here.

In this article, Mike Bell suggests that there is sufficient consensus among those educationalists who look at the evidence to say that we now know how learning happens, why some students struggle and how to improve learning for any learner. By combining lists of effective methods derived from both classroom experiments and psychology and then checking them with the neuroscience to provide a brain-based explanation, it is now possible to implement the evidence in a simple, six-step process.

The experience of teachers

Karen and Kevin are both trainee teachers. They spend part of their week in college (which includes lectures from education department staff), and part in their placement schools (where they both have experienced teachers as mentors). They attend the same college, but different schools.

This week they hear a lecture on ‘Learning Styles’. The lecturer explains the theory and even puts up diagrams of the brain showing the different areas used for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning. It’s all very convincing and both decide to try the ideas in their lessons later that week.

They both discuss the idea with their school mentor. Karen’s mentor is dismissive. “Are they still teaching that stuff!? Don’t they know it’s disproved?” Karen quickly does a Google search and finds a Wikipedia page with links to the research. Yes, it been debunked. Kevin’s mentor listens and agrees that he should try it. “I used to use that myself, but haven’t for a while. I know that some of my students are visual learners because they struggle with reading and diagrams are better.”

Both trainees attend a staff training session at their schools. One school is single sex selective while the other is mixed comprehensive. At each school the principal extols the virtue of their school type and make a persuasive case for it. Kevin and Karen are both convinced – but in the opposite direction.

Throughout their training and teaching they find the same pattern.

Kevin reads a research paper which claims that a particular method is effective. His college lecturer warns against using individual studies and suggests research-reviews, or meta-analyses which combine the results from several experiments. Karen’s lecturer warns against the use of meta-analyses as we cannot be sure all the combined methods were actually the same.

They both watch a TV news magazine program. The education minister is outlining a new policy. She uses the same methods they had heard in their lectures: a well-reasoned argument. In response, the program gets reactions from leading ‘experts’ – but, again, they profoundly disagree. The union leader profoundly disagrees. The professor resolutely agrees. Not only the minister but also the journalist and even parents act as though they are more expert than the teacher.

The experience of other professions

How different this experience is from that of nearly every other profession. Engineers, archaeologists, midwives etc are generally respected for their expertise. Government tends to consult them rather than direct their day-to-day activities. If a disagreement arises, these professionals have a mechanism to resolve the dispute and arrive at a general consensus. They look to research and discuss the evidence, not their opinion.

Anita and Amrita are midwives in the UK and India. Despite their geographical and cultural separation, they both study their midwifery from the same textbook.

The need for consensus

Why are the judgements of most professions respected while teachers can be treated so badly? Is there a connection between the lack of shared ideas and the lack of respect? Are the politicians and journalists exploiting the lack of shared ideas in the teaching profession? What would it take to become more respected by them?

The main difference between teaching and the more respected professions is not just that we disagree, it is that there is no widely shared understanding of what we are doing. We lack a shared ‘theory of learning’ to underpin our thinking. This theory creates the questions which researchers then try to solve. The reason midwives Anita and Amrita agree is because they share a theoretical understanding of the birthing process and its complications.

The emerging consensus

The good news is that all the basic ingredients for a shared theory (and from there a more respected profession) already exist. Among those who look at the evidence there is very little disagreement. Blog posts by the Learning Scientists do not clash with the output from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Hattie’s Visible Learning list is quite compatible with the EEF and other evidence compilations.

There are three main sources for the shared theory:

  • Educational neuroscience (which explains what is happening in the brain)

  • Educational psychology (where experiments are sometimes done in laboratories)

  • Classroom evidence (where the methods are tried by teachers with regular students)

Taken individually, each of the three has problems. Most scientists agree that we are very far from being able to say “The neuroscience shows…., therefore, in your classroom you should …”. We may never get there without the usual extensive trails. Psychology experiments often start out in artificial environments and so we may not be able to translate the results into the classroom right away. Classroom experiments can be problematic for the reasons Karen and Kevin found above.

But, what if we stop relying on one source and apply the evidence only if it is backed up by another? What if we only implement a classroom method if it can be explained by neuroscience? What if we don’t implement psychology research unless it has had classroom trials?

At first this may sound far-fetched. “Surely it’ll take decades to do all that extra research?” I hear you say. The good news is – we don’t have to wait; there already exists enough cross-referencing for us to explain the learning process, suggest effective ways to improve it, understand why some students struggle (in different ways) and have ways to help them.

Examples:

  1. We know from psychology that spaced repetitions work better than repetitions massed at the end of the topic. We also know from neuroscience that long-term memories are formed when the links are made permanent by a process called ‘long-term potentiation’ – and this requires spaced repetitions.

  2. We know from classroom experiments that linking the new knowledge to what the student already knows is effective way to improve learning. This is supported by the neuroscience understanding that memories are simply links to the component parts – not separate memories (as they may be on a computer).

Further support for the idea that we already have a broad consensus is the way so many bloggers, gurus and conferences are saying very similar things. A consensus is already available. Let’s join in.

EBTN has worked to compile the evidence into an easy-to-implement order. By combining several different lists of effective methods, derived from classroom psychology experiments and checking them against the brain-science we have come up with a six-step process.

The sources are:

(More info in the evidence sources section of our website.)

A tick in the box shows that this method is supported by the source in that column.

Balloon Face

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Balloon Face

What story could this GIF tell?

Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem from the perspective of this floating balloon face.

Post it in the comments, then read the related article to find out the real story behind this image.

Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan.

Word + Quiz: expatiate

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Word + Quiz: expatiate

1. add details, such as to an account or idea

2. clarify the meaning of and discourse in a learned way, usually in writing

_________

The word expatiate has appeared in seven articles on NYTimes.com in the past six years, including on May 11, 2014, in the Bookends column “Do Critics Make Good Novelists?” in which Daniel Mendelsohn writes:

At the beginning of “In America,” Susan Sontag’s novelization of the life of a 19th-century Polish actress, the suspiciously Susan Sontag-esque American narrator takes a break from her Mitteleuropäisch milieu to talk about — well, Susan Sontag. Eavesdropping on some characters speaking Polish, she’s amazed to find she understands every word:

“I, with my command only of Romance languages (I dabble in German, know the names of 20 kinds of fish in Japanese, have soaked up a splash of Bosnian, and understand barely a word of the language of the country in which this room is to be found), I, as I’ve said, somehow did manage to understand most of what they were saying.”

If I had more space, I’d happily expatiate on what’s wrong with this mortifying passage. But two things leap out right away: the gratuitous humblebrag about the speaker’s fancy expertises (sashimi!), and the labored, self-conscious explanation of her narrative context. The author of this tortured self-advertisement wasn’t a born novelist.

_________

How Much Do You Trust Online Reviews?

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How Much Do You Trust Online Reviews?

Have you ever been burned by a bad online review? Have you ever made a fantastic discovery from a review you read online?

Do you find yourself swayed by the wisdom of crowds? Or do you fear “groupthink” and trust your own instincts?

The internet has democratized the ability to review. No longer do we have to wait for a select group of experts to give their stamp of approval. Instead, anybody can write what he or she thinks online. But who exactly is writing the reviews we read? How reliable are they? And what do they really mean when they give something five or zero stars?

In “Do Not Trust That Stranger’s 5-Star Review,” Joanne Chen, a senior writer at Wirecutter, The New York Times’s product review website, writes:

Last Saturday, I was desperate for Mozart sheet music. It had to be for piano, and it had to be easy to play. Out of 84 options on Amazon, a book with 4.7 stars caught my eye — good enough for a 9-year-old’s music-class presentation. Later that afternoon, I needed to book a hotel for our summer vacation and I trusted the 1,310 reviewers on TripAdvisor who gave my pick an average of four stars, along with a good number of “fantastics” and “wonderfuls.”

Dinner was a 4.5 star meatloaf recipe. And this weekend, with Memorial Day sales in full swing, I will turn to an army of online reviewers who will help me bite the bullet and replace a toilet that has mysteriously begun flushing of its own accord. Someone else will have put the time in at Home Depot so I don’t have to.

But which someone? Who are these reviewers I’m trusting with my purchasing decision, big and small? I don’t know for sure, and yet I feel completely stalled until I’ve scrolled through everything they have to say.

The Opinion essay continues:

According to a 2016 Pew Research Center report, 82 percent of Americans say they read online reviews at least some of the time. But only about 50 percent of online shoppers say they sometimes leave a review for a product or a service, and that number dwindles to 43 percent for restaurants. Only one in 10 people reports “nearly always” leaving a review.

Alex Haefner, who oversees content at Yelp, said the most prolific reviewers are “superpassionate about their local business experience, and they make it their hobby to write about them.” What else do we know about these “super-passionate” people who are shaping so much of how we spend our money?

Panagiotis Stamolampros, a lecturer on business analytics at the Center for Decision Research at the University of Leeds in England, said that research on reviewers is limited, but “what we know for sure is that extroverted and open individuals tend to engage more in social media, and they are also expected to be more involved with online reviews.”

That’s certainly not me. I usually roll my eyes when people in my social network share too much online, and I can’t fathom who would have the extra minutes in the day to write a thoughtful review. And yet I invite people from all over the country to have a say in virtually every aspect of my life.

Stars beget sales. According to an often mentioned Harvard Business School working paper that studied restaurant reviews on Yelp, each added star is associated with a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. Not surprisingly, then, new businesses have sprung up to exploit the rating system to the seller’s or the platform’s advantage.

In the case of both sellers and platforms, more is more. “Most providers and platforms just want to encourage more reviews,” said June Cotte, a professor of marketing at Western University in Canada. “More reviews signal quality, and it also mutes any bad reviews.”

The tactics to make this happen often lead to rendering the star-rating scale useless. I’m not even talking about asking friends or relatives or paying firms to crank out five-star reviews. (The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on dishonest practices, while some platforms, like Yelp and Amazon, have designed automated software to combat this, albeit to varying degrees of success.) I’m referring to usually perfectly legit methods, like asking loyal customers to write reviews.

Even if businesses don’t interfere at all, a five-star filter’s usefulness could eventually fizzle out anyway. That’s because in the star-rated universe, the wisdom of the crowd can morph into something more like “the madness of the crowd,” said Matthew Salganik, the author of “Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age” and a professor of sociology at Princeton.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— Do you read online reviews to help you make decisions — about movies, books, stores or music? Which kinds of reviews do you trust most? What kinds of reviews make you skeptical?

— Tell us about a memorable experience with online reviews, good or bad. Why did you follow the reviewers’ advice? How did the reviews compare with your actual experience of the product or service? What did you learn about reviews from this episode?

— Do you ever write online reviews yourself? If so, why?

— Do you think you will change any of your consumer behavior based on Ms. Chen’s article? Which of her tips on finding the right product or service do you find most helpful? What strategies do you employ to effectively use and filter online reviews?

— Ms. Chen writes:

“Knowing more about what other people are doing and thinking can help us all find the best things faster, but it can also lead to stronger fads where people are following people who are following people who are following people,” he said. “At a certain point, popularity can become separated from how good something actually is.”

Do you believe in the “wisdom of crowds” or do you tend to fear the “madness of the crowd”? Have you ever fallen for a fad because of online reviews? How much should we be worried about the growing power of online reviews?

— Do you think that companies or the Federal Trade Commission should take more steps to combat deceptive reviews on the internet?

Learning With: ‘‘‘It Was Like a Zoo”: Death on an Unruly, Overcrowded Everest’

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Learning With: ‘‘‘It Was Like a Zoo”: Death on an Unruly, Overcrowded Everest’

5. How have insurance and mountaineering companies along with the government of Nepal sought to commercialize Mount Everest? How has the Nepalese government responded to charges that it is providing too many permits to climbers?

6. How has the profile of the typical Everest climber changed over the last 20 years? How has this change contributed to the dangers on the mountain?

7. Rizza Alee, an 18-year-old climber from Kashmir, said:

“I saw some people like they had no emotions,” he said. “I asked people for water and no one gave me any. People are really obsessed with the summit. They are ready to kill themselves for the summit.”

What is your reaction to Mr. Alee’s claim? Why do you think people were willing to risk death to reach the top of Mount Everest? How do you view the ambitions of people like Mr. Dohring who wish to get to the top of the highest mountain in the world?

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

— The authors write:

Nepal has no strict rules about who can climb Everest, and veteran climbers say that is a recipe for disaster.

“You have to qualify to do the Ironman,” said Alan Arnette, a prominent Everest chronicler and climber. “But you don’t have to qualify to climb the highest mountain in the world? What’s wrong with this picture?”

What rules or regulations do you think the government of Nepal should create to ensure greater safety for climbers on Mount Everest? What responsibility do the climbers themselves have for improving safety on the mountain?

— The article describes the situation of Fatima Deryan, an experienced Lebanese mountaineer, as she made her way to the summit when less experienced climbers started collapsing in front of her:

Temperatures were dropping to -30 Celsius. Oxygen tanks were running low. And roughly 150 people were packed together, clipped to the same safety line.

“A lot of people were panicking, worrying about themselves — and nobody thinks about those who are collapsing,” Ms. Deryan said.

“It is a question of ethics,” she said. “We are all on oxygen. You figure out that if you help, you are going to die.”

She offered to help some of the sick people, she said, but then calculated she was beginning to endanger herself and kept going to the summit, which is currently measured at 29,029 feet. On the way back down, she had to fight her way again through the crowds.

“It was terrible,” she said.

What would you have done if you were Ms. Deryan? Would you have stopped to help other climbers, and perhaps risk your own life? What if your choice to help another would have jeopardized your lifelong dream to reach Everest’s summit?

— How adventurous are you? If so, what is it about adventure that entices you? If not, why not? What is the most adventurous or greatest physical challenge you have ever endured? What inspired you to attempt it? Was it worth it?

— Would you ever consider climbing Mount Everest? Why or why not?

Further Learning Network Resources:

Film Club: What if He Falls?

Student Opinion: Is It Selfish to Pursue Risky Sports Like Extreme Mountain Climbing?

Picture Prompt: One Last Adventure

Jack-of-all-trades

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Jack-of-all-trades

Would you consider yourself a specialist or a generalist? In other words, have you focused your talents on one area in particular? Or are you more of a “jack-of-all-trades” — someone who does a lot of different things and has many different interests?

Which do you think is the better approach to life? Is it better to focus on one thing early on and get really good at it? Or to pursue many different interests, hobbies and careers over a lifetime? Why do you think the way you do?

Tell us in the comments, then read the related Book Review to find out one author’s thoughts.

Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan.

Word + Quiz: rostrum

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Word + Quiz: rostrum

1. a platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it

2. beak-like projection of the anterior part of the head of certain insects such as weevils

_________

The word rostrum has appeared in 17 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 11 in “Real Madrid Rehires Zinedine Zidane as Its Coach” by Rory Smith:

Just 284 days after he left Madrid — after three Champions League titles in three years — after claiming that both he and the club needed a “change,” Zidane walked back into the media suite at the Santiago Bernabéu flanked by his wife, Veronique, Pérez, and a phalanx of Real legends.

… Little wonder, then, that Zidane — just as he did when he left Madrid, five days after lifting the third of those Champions Leagues — took to the rostrum once again speaking of the need for change. “This club is what had to and has to change,” he said. “Things have to change, in every way. We have to change for next season.”

_________

What Do You Plan to Catch Up On This Summer?

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What Do You Plan to Catch Up On This Summer?

Summer is just around the corner. Tell us how you would like to spend your time off from school, including the names of books, movies, television shows, albums, dance performances, plays and concerts you would like to check out.

In the introduction to “A Season to Catch Up on Reading,” John Williams writes:

Most years around this time, we ask The Times’s staff book critics what they’ll be reading over the summer. But book critics, when not reading, also spend the summer like the rest of us do: taking in movies, plays, ballets and the sun. So we’ve asked our book critics to tell us what other cultural offerings they’re looking forward to this season. And we’ve saved the “what you’re planning to read” question for The Times’s esteemed critics in other disciplines, bookish types all.

James Poniewozik, chief television critic, writes:

Having just finished writing a book that required a ton of nonfiction reading, I’m glad to read fiction again. First, I’m going to punch one of the remaining holes on my Nerd Card by finally reading “Watchmen,” the dark superhero alternative history by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, held to be one of the greatest graphic novels. It’s also the jumping-off point for an HBO series later this year, so I’m still reading for work as well as fun. But, baby steps.

Jennifer Szalai, book critic, writes:

My horror-movie-watching habits are seasonal: While I hesitate to watch anything with zombies in the winter (feeling trapped indoors by the weather makes for too much verisimilitude), I’m generally game to be terrified in the summer. Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die” is billed as a “zombie comedy” — the trailer makes it look more funny than scary, and the cast (including Tilda Swinton as a swordswoman-mortician) is a big draw for me. I was thinking that one of the shuffling, decaying figures looked suspiciously like Iggy Pop — and sure enough, it is.

The fifth season of “Black Mirror” is coming in June — brilliant and unsettling technological dystopia that’s so close to our present moment that I can only bear to consume a single episode at a time. I’m also looking forward to “I must create a Master Piece to pay the Rent,” the first museum survey of work by the Los Angeles artist Julie Becker, who died in 2016.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— Are there any recommendations you just read about that interest you? If so, which?

— If you were asked to contribute an item for the same article, what would you recommend? Why?

— Have a look at The Times’s 75 recommendations for summer reading. What is your favorite genre or genres? What selections look interesting to you?

— What do you hope to accomplish and enjoy over the next few months in terms of reading, watching, listening, museum-going or otherwise engaging with creative works?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Learning With: ‘European Parliament Elections: 5 Biggest Takeaways’

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Learning With: ‘European Parliament Elections: 5 Biggest Takeaways’

Before reading the article:

What have you heard, seen or read about the European parliamentary elections that took place throughout Europe in recent days?

Look at the photo above. Why do you think predicting the political parties that would gain and lose seats in advance of the elections was such a topic of interest? How does this compare to the focus of congressional election predictions in the United States at the state and national level?

Now, read the article, “European Parliament Elections: 5 Biggest Takeaways,” and answer the following questions:

1. The article begins: “The most prominent takeaways from the results of the elections for the European Parliament are fragmentation and polarization.” What evidence do the writers provide to back this claim?

2. How did voter turnout compare with recent previous elections? Who is Martin Selmayr? How did he characterize many citizens’ reasons for voting in this election?

3. What percentage of Parliament seats were secured by members of populist parties? How did this compare with the predicted “populist wave” that many expected? Where in Europe did populist candidates seem to have better results? Why, according to the article, might populist victories not lead to “influence on the European level” in Parliament?

4. Members of what sort of parties have run European Parliament for decades? Why has their influence weakened? What, according to the article, must happen in order to create a “working majority”?

5. What party in Britain took an estimated 31 percent of the vote? What is that party’s goal? Who leads it? How might not taking a stand on Brexit have affected the votes some candidates received? What parties do they represent?

6. What group will decide whether Britain will leave the European Union? When will this decision be made?

7. What are the goals and concerns of the Green Party? Where did this party see its greatest successes in the election?

Finally, tell us more about what you think:

The related article “European Election Results Show Growing Split Over Union’s Future” states:

The one thing the varying populists do agree on is disrupting the system, and they are bound to make consensus more difficult on future European budgets and legislation. This European Parliament will simply be messier and harder to control than before.

Read the entire article, identifying what the elected populists care most about in each nation mentioned. How do you think members of Parliament who are from centrist parties will respond? Explain why you think that.

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