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Summer Reading Week 9: ‘On Used Clothes Ban May Crimp Kenyan Style. It May Also Lift Local Design.’

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Summer Reading Week 9: ‘On Used Clothes Ban May Crimp Kenyan Style. It May Also Lift Local Design.’

Lianna Paglia, 16, from Natick High School in Natick, Mass., chose an article headlined “Used Clothes Ban May Crimp Kenyan Style. It May Also Lift Local Design.” and wrote:

Almost all of the clothes hanging in my closet are thrifted. This makes sense, seeing as I virtually only shop secondhand, a habit I’ve adopted over the past few years, which has been motivated by environmental sustainability and the fight against fast fashion’s exploitation of child labor — it’s also just so fun. My desire for upcycling projects has only grown in “captivity,” and fortunately, my beloved thrift stores have begun opening again. But for countries like Kenya, that is not the case. Threats of Covid-19 have halted the importation of clothing donations in Kenya. For a country that relies heavily on shopping secondhand, the absence of used clothes is often the absence of options. But, I found joy in learning that designers like Wagura Kamwana are taking advantage of this situation to bring more of their designs — local designs — to Kenyan markets. While this will certainly produce economic benefits, what brings me joy are the opportunities that this change will create for style visionaries. With no distinguished fashion industry, it has been undoubtedly challenging for aspiring designers of the country to envision themselves being successful — think, “you can’t be what you can’t see.” As awful as this pandemic is, it’s degrading a substantial issue for Kenyan fashion; it’s giving some dreamers a chance. And as a dreamer myself, I know that sometimes, a chance is enough.

In alphabetical order by the writer’s first name.

Alexandra on “A Geopolitical Earthquake Just Hit the Mideast”

Anish on “The Artist Making Bulbous, Colorful Sculptures Out of Thrifted Clothes”

Bennie Beikun Wang on “The Ultimate Beethoven Symphony Collection”

Daliya on “He’s 83, She’s 84, and They Model Other People’s Forgotten Laundry”

Hanshu on “Gods, Monsters and H.P. Lovecraft’s Uncanny Legacy”

Sofia on “Frances Allen, Who Helped Hardware Understand Software, Dies at 88”

Victor Tong on “We All Speak a Language That Will Go Extinct”

Aarti Bhamidipati on “We All Speak a Language That Will Go Extinct”

Adora on “The Mask Slackers of 1918”

These Five Learners Achieved Career Success after Earning a Professional IT Certificate from Google

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These Five Learners Achieved Career Success after Earning a Professional IT Certificate from Google

COVID-19 has changed the world of work dramatically. Interviews and onboarding now happen virtually. Teams are distributed and working from home. Employee engagement is defined by on-screen interactions. For organizations of every size, across virtually every industry, adaptability and resilience are essential.  

For people navigating this unfamiliar employment landscape, learning new skills and refreshing existing ones can be an ideal way to find stability, and to make meaningful progress in the face of unexpected disruption. Below, we share stories from learners who’ve reimagined their existing jobs, landed new jobs, and enhanced their hireability with knowledge and experience gained through the Google IT Support Professional Certificate.

Let’s hear from these learners now!

Amie Hanbury (Virginia)

Prior experience: Marine Corps, Police Dispatcher

“I felt unfulfilled by my retail job. I have a strong desire to make a difference, and retail just didn’t give me that. I started taking the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, studying for a couple of hours after work, and more on the weekends. When the pandemic struck, I had time to think about what I wanted to do with my life, and I got motivated to complete the courses and go after my dreams.  As I finished up the System Administration and IT Infrastructure services course, I applied for an IT position. The interviewers were impressed by the amount of knowledge I had, and I got the job! I am now a Field Technician at Core Technologies, Inc.”

Maurice Gadegbeku (Maryland)

Prior experience: Call Center Customer Representative Quality Assurance, Warehouse Associate

“I took the Google IT Support Professional Certificate through Merit America. The pandemic was actually a blessing to me in the sense that it opened up a wealth of job opportunities. With most offices being closed nationwide, the demand for remote work and internet access grew exponentially. This paved the way for me to be offered a job with Amazon AWS and Verizon through their external recruiters. I strongly believe that the Google IT Support program served as a catalyst in my getting the job.” 

Jackson Hale (Washington)

Prior experience: Retail shift Supervisor

“I am currently enrolled in college part-time, and am in the process of getting my associates degree. As a result of my having earned the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, I was able to move from retail into an IT Service Desk role at Starbucks. From there, I moved to an MSP (Microsoft Student Partner) position in incident management at Microsoft. The Google IT Support Professional Certificate helped me stay employed during COVID-19, and now I can afford a down payment on a home.“

Stephanie Sidwell (British Columbia)

Prior experience: Esthetician, Receptionist/Assistant at a Chiropractic Clinic, Secretary at a Non-Profit Organization

“Four years ago, I was hired as a part-time secretary at a local non-profit, Sea to Sky Community Services Society (SSCS). I have since worked my way up to a Database Support Specialist. It wasn’t until March when COVID-19 hit, that I truly understood my takeaway from the Google IT Support Professional Certificate. SSCS is considered an “essential service’”because of the vulnerable clients we connect with. We needed to have over 100 employees set up to work from home and our Administration Manager and IT guru were both inaccessible. I stepped up and took on procurement, setting up hardware with remote access and IT support for the entire agency. If I didn’t have the skills I learned through the program, I wouldn’t have had the confidence and ability to step up and help when I was needed.”

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How to Position Yourself for a New Career (Coursera Career Change Guide)

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How to Position Yourself for a New Career (Coursera Career Change Guide)

Download this guide in PDF format

Starting a new career means not only developing a new skill set but also learning how to relate your previous experience and skills to the new role you’re pursuing. If you’re ready to start your journey on a new career path, this document will help you position yourself for success in your job search. You’ll learn how to understand what your potential employer is looking for and how to connect your background to their needs. The strategies outlined below are designed to help you become a strong job candidate, even if you don’t have directly relevant experience. 

The first step is to fully understand the role you’re targeting.

One of the primary challenges for anyone looking to launch a new career is how to stand out against candidates who already have experience in the field. Overcoming this challenge begins with developing a comprehensive understanding of the role you’re targeting. You’ll need to understand the role in the context of any company you’re applying to, and more broadly as well. Having a holistic understanding of what it takes to succeed in your target role will help you determine your suitability for the role, and identify any steps you can take to improve your chances of getting hired.

To understand everything from minimum must-have requirements to skills that might help you stand out from the crowd, you can begin by researching and analyzing job descriptions across different organizations. 

Below you’ll find our recommended strategy for how to approach this process effectively.

Analyze job listings

The first part of the process is to gather information from multiple job listings:

  1. Pull up ten job descriptions for your target role. To do this, you can use job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. Make sure the roles you select come from different companies, share similar titles, and are roles you would actually apply for. In each job description, you should be able to identify a section listing requirements for the role. 
  2. Combine all the job requirements. To do this, create a new Google document and copy over all the required responsibilities from all ten job descriptions. 
  3. Order requirements based on appearance frequency. Certain requirements will likely appear in multiple descriptions. The more commonly they appear, the more likely it is that they’re essential for the role. Put the most frequently appearing requirements at the top of your list. For example, a requirement that appears in all ten descriptions would go at the very top.

After completing these steps, you should have a clearer picture of which requirements are most common and important for the role. You may also have questions:

  • Why do requirements differ across job descriptions? 

One of the most common reasons for this has to do with overly general job titles, or job titles that don’t necessarily communicate the specific scope of a given role at a particular company. For example, a program manager at one company might be focused on customer management, while at another company, the emphasis might be on project management. A Data Analyst might primarily use SQL at one company and Python at another. Because of these differences, it’s important to look beyond job titles. This is why we recommend the process outlined above—to help ensure you’re targeting the exact roles that are right for you, and that you understand the requirements for those exact roles.

  • Why are some requirements higher on my list than I thought they would be, while others I expected to see barely show up at all? 

If you’re surprised by your results, you may need to spend more time learning what the role really entails, as you may have some early ideas about the role that require adjusting. You might also need to do additional research to ensure you’re targeting the right roles in your job search. 

  • How do I know if I’m really right for my target role?

It’s perfectly normal to experience self-doubt at this stage of the process. Remember, this is a new career for you. You’re not expected to know everything about the role, and it’s likely that your existing skills and experience won’t line up perfectly. The more you learn about the role, the better you’ll understand what’s required for success, and the more you’ll know about how to prepare yourself for that success.

Consult your network

Professionals in your target field can be an excellent resource for job-related information gathering. Because of their relevant experience, these individuals are well-equipped to help address any questions that come up during your job posting analysis  Review your existing network (LinkedIn connections, professional organizations, parent groups, civic groups, volunteer organizations, sports teams, and more) to see whether anyone you know might be able to answer questions about your target role. 

In addition, search LinkedIn, Facebook, and Meetup for groups connecting professionals in your target field and reach out to individuals within those groups. Generally, you’ll find that people who are proactive enough to join professional groups are also the kinds of people who enjoy talking about their careers, and who are eager to share their knowledge and their experience. Reach out to them and ask for a short 15-minute conversation to learn about their career.

Here is an example of a message you can use to reach out to people you don’t know: 

Hello [name], 

My name is [name], and I’m in the process of transitioning my career from [current field/role] to [new field/role]. I came across your profile during my research, and your career and role at [company] sound really interesting. I would appreciate an opportunity to ask you a few questions about the field and your experience. Thank you in advance for connecting with me!

Once you’ve gained a comprehensive understanding of your target role and its requirements, you are ready to begin the process of connecting your background to your new career.

Tip: Plan to speak with five professionals with your target job title. These conversations will help you develop a thorough and holistic understanding of what the role entails. It will also help you develop your ability to communicate with potential employers in a relevant way, and it’s a great way to build confidence.

For this next step, you can temporarily set aside the master list of role requirements you previously created. The focus here will be on your existing professional qualifications, and any other skills or experience you possess that might be relevant to your target role and of value to a potential employer. 

To begin, assemble a comprehensive list of the following:

  • Technical (hard) skills. These are skills relating to a specific task or situation such as programming, technical writing, project management, and more.
  • Non-technical (soft) skills. These are the skills that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. They include skills like communication, leadership, team management, and more.
  • Personal qualities. These are positive attributes and personality traits such as being honest, having a good sense of humor, and being dependable. You can also include your professional interests on this list.
  • Education. This includes any post-secondary education, certifications, or independent classes completed online or offline.

Tip: You do not need to limit your professional inventory to skills and qualities developed through professional experience. Consider any volunteer, extra-curricular, or personal experiences that might help a hiring manager understand your capabilities. 

Once you’ve created your inventory of skills and experience, you’re ready to line these up against your requirements list.

The concluding step in this process is to match your profile to the job requirements. The goal here is to make it easy for any hiring manager to see why you’re a great fit for their role. You’ll accomplish this by learning what to emphasize and focus on in your search, on your resume, and during interviews.

To begin, go through your professional inventory of skills and experience, highlighting each item in green, orange, or red, depending on its relevance to your target role. Relevance is determined by whether a given skill appears on your role requirements list, how high it appears on your list, and how directly it aligns with your list. 

For example, let’s say you’re interested in a graphic design career. If you’re skilled at using Adobe Creative Suite, and Adobe skills are high on your job requirements list, then highlight that item in green. If you have some graphic design experience with software that doesn’t consistently show up on job descriptions, highlight these skills in orange. If you’re an accomplished watercolorist, and you think you can make a case for how these skills might be relevant, you could highlight this in orange as well. If, however, your previous role involved debugging software, you’d definitely highlight that item in red, as it wouldn’t be relevant to your new career. 

  • Green should be used for skills that are directly relevant to your target role. You should look for roles that emphasize these skills. You should also highlight these skills on your resume, and be prepared to discuss them in an interview.
  • Orange should be used to identify those skills and experiences that are relevant for the role but not necessarily in a direct way. These are generally your transferable skills—skills that you bring with you from past experiences that can help you succeed in your new role. Plan to have to explain these to recruiters and hiring managers, as their relevance may not be immediately evident or intuitable.
  • Red should be used for items that are not relevant for your job search. De-prioritize these skills, and steer clear of highlighting them on your resume and focusing on them during interviews.

Of these three categories, the orange items are where you’ll need to focus extra attention. When it comes to transferable skills, you have to do the convincing, as you can’t count on a recruiter or hiring manager making the connection. For example, no job description for an IT Support role calls for waitstaff experience. However, that IT job description will likely mention excellent customer service skills—which you would have developed during your hospitality career. When applying for the IT Support role, make sure your resume specifically mentions customer service in addition to listing “waiter” or “waitress” as your previous occupation.

Once you’ve categorized your skills and experience based on how well they align with the requirements for your target role, you’re ready to move your job search forward.

At this point in your process, you’ve determined which skills are most relevant to your target role, performed a self-audit to identify your primary skills and experience, and color-coded your skills to determine their relevance to your target role. You know what primary skills to emphasize, and what transferable skills to highlight. All that remains is to start applying for jobs in your target career.

As you begin this new stage of your job search, it’s normal to feel a bit uncomfortable about how you’re presenting yourself. Career change involves a shift in perspective and a new articulation of your professional value. Things that used to be central to your identity may lose relevance, whereas you may find yourself focusing on aspects of your life and career you’re not used to discussing. This is all part of successfully positioning yourself for a new career. 

Remember, your goal is to catch the attention of your next employer. That’s going to require making a clear case for why you’re the right person for the job. After taking the steps we’ve outlined above, you’ll know exactly what that entails, and how to do it successfully.

Find more free Job Search Guides in the Coursera Community.

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Alieb Badara Sesay: “Education has the power to change lives and can ripple far beyond the individual learner to family and coworkers, even to nations.”

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Alieb Badara Sesay: “Education has the power to change lives and can ripple far beyond the individual learner to family and coworkers, even to nations.”

“My name is Alieb Badara Sesay, born and raised in Sierra Leone. I’m 37 years old. My education is in Accounting. I have a BSc in Accounting and Finance, a Diploma in Financial Management and an MBA in Finance. I also have achieved 5 Diplomas and 7 Certificates with Alison.”

How did you learn about Alison?

I came to know about Alison through a friend who was already pursuing an Alison course.

 

 

What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?

My first course with Alison was a Certificate in Health and Safety Management. I decided to start with this course as a result of my job at the time as a General Manager with Safeway Mining and Oil Investment Co.

How have Alison courses affected your career?

Alison courses have helped me greatly by improving my knowledge in Business Management, Financial Management and even increased my skills in undertaking audit proceedings and in working with the latest ISO 9001:2015 standards. I feel relaxed with the self-pacing and distance-learning of the Alison platform.

Where are you working now?

I’m currently self-employed with my private businesses. I’m also the Chairman of a community based organisation called TYNFD-SL.

 

What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?

I’m looking out for any opportunity that I can make use of in order to continue improving the abilities, skills and techniques that I have acquired already on my educational path. I’m going to continue my education with Alison courses at my own convenience.

If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?

More Accounting and Finance courses!

What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?

I will start by saying that Alison believes in raising awareness of social change and creating opportunity and prosperity for all their learners. They believe that education, more than anything  else, has the power to change lives and can ripple far beyond the individual learner to family and coworkers, even to nations. I am proud to recommend Alison to any individual that has the ambition to learn and educate him or her self for free, without any preconditions in terms of payment.

Catching the Buzz: A Young C.E.O. on Her Lemonade Business, Which Was Inspired by Bees

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Catching the Buzz: A Young C.E.O. on Her Lemonade Business, Which Was Inspired by Bees

A little more than halfway through “Bee Fearless,” the 10-year-old C.E.O. Mikaila Ulmer has her first encounter with a fancy advertising agency. Its experts love the mission of her lemonade business and wonder if they can help. She takes the meeting, and a designer lets her in on a secret: “It’s not the product you sell but the story you tell.” And so we get this rarest of book breeds: the middle grade start-up memoir, by a teenager.

Any C.E.O. book ought to do two things. First, it should be a rip-roaring tale of how the author did it, warts and all.

The origin story of Ulmer’s company begins with bee stings, after which her parents encourage her to learn about the insects rather than fear them. The bees are in danger, it turns out, as is a large amount of our food supply if conditions worsen and they no longer pollinate en masse.

So the 4-year-old sets up a lemonade stand outside her house in Austin, Texas. She sweetens her lemonade with honey, since bees make it and it’s healthy. She serves it with a side of education on all things apian. The first batch of lemonade is awful, but a series of sticky experiments yields something better — unique even, after she gets the idea, from her great-grandmother’s recipe, to add flaxseed. Best of all, it’s a product with a purpose, since she donates money to bee-related organizations.

People around Austin notice. The owner of a pizza place offers to sell the beverage if she bottles it. Then the head of the local Black Chamber of Commerce urges her to audition for the TV series “Shark Tank.”

You can guess what happens next, if you don’t already know. Ulmer gets on the show, goes to Hollywood and one of the sharks bites. She leaves town with a $60,000 investment, and by the end of the book Me & the Bees Lemonade is in more than 1,500 stores.

So we have our good yarn. The second task is harder — for anyone, let alone a teenager selling her story to other kids: How do you leave people believing that they too could pull something like this off?

As with any child prodigy, readers will wonder about the stage parents. Ulmer doesn’t sugarcoat. Both her parents have business degrees. Her father worked at Dell; her mother owned a marketing firm. Eventually her mom joins Me & the Bees full time. A group of current and former N.F.L. players invests $810,000 in the company, and increased scale enables it to lower the shelf price to $2.99 per 12-ounce bottle. But we don’t learn how much money Ulmer is taking out for herself or her college fund. Nor do we learn how much has gone to the bees. Private companies have no obligation to report such figures, but authors ought to give a little more up.

Like many founders’ stories, Ulmer’s book is meant partly as self-help. Here she delivers. Bless her for stressing the importance of thank-you notes. She also writes often and well about connecting with strangers over a brief transaction. Selling remains one of the most underappreciated and under-taught life skills; many grown-ups never learn the art of the pitch.

Remembering names is crucial, too. When Ulmer goes to the White House for the Kids’ State Dinner, Michelle Obama sees her and says, “Oh, Mikaila! I know you! Come here,” before acknowledging her work. “I noted it,” Ulmer writes. “Make people feel special and comfortable.”

Near the book’s end, Ulmer describes telling a group of girls in South Africa to “imagine what it would feel like” to buy things they want without having to ask others for help. Parents who recall their own first childhood purchase probably remember the tingle they felt in that moment — and want it for their own kids, too.

Warming up the Room: Icebreakers and Cold-Calling to Increase Partcipation

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Warming up the Room: Icebreakers and Cold-Calling to Increase Partcipation

by Althea Need Kaminske

As school is starting this fall, teachers and students are participating in a time honored first day of class ritual: the awkward icebreaker. While students might think they’re a bit cheesy, icebreakers serve several very important roles in class and are an excellent way to start a class. 

An obvious reason to use icebreakers is to help the teacher get to know the students and to help the students get to know each other. It’s questionable how much anyone remembers from the first day icebreakers, but that’s not the point. I usually go around the room and ask students to tell me their name, their major, and one piece of media they really got into over the break and would recommend (a TV show or a movie they watched, a book they read, etc.). While I don’t remember every detail from those initial interactions, it does open the door for some simple conversations and basic rapport building. It also gives me a sense of the personalities in the class. Were all of the students eager to share their experiences or were they more reserved and needed more coaxing to talk about what they were interested in? 

Even if the icebreaker doesn’t necessarily lead to any profound insights or immediate bonding, it serves another very important function: low-stakes participation that will help with retrieval practice later on. Once students are more comfortable talking in class, it makes it easier to get participation on course-related questions. While I like to use frequent quizzes as retrieval practice to improve students’ memory (1), asking questions throughout the lecture is a much faster way of getting feedback about students’ understanding and giving them some retrieval practice. When I ask students to share something about themselves in the icebreaker I do my best to make a positive comment about each of the things they shared so that participation is immediately rewarded, hopefully setting the tone for how I want participation to follow for the rest of the semester. Talking in front of groups can be intimidating, even more so if you are afraid of getting an answer wrong and looking silly or stupid in front of people. Icebreakers work because there is no wrong answer, removing at least one layer of potential anxiety about participating and lowering the stakes. 

Teaching Resources for Middle School Using The New York Times

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Teaching Resources for Middle School Using The New York Times

To learn more about how to use this resource, here’s a webinar.

_________

Whether you’re teaching in person or online, synchronously or asynchronously, you can use these strategies to build our features into your classroom routines and support students of all levels.

What other ideas do you have for teaching with these activities in your class? Share them in the comments.

Our Writing Prompts, What’s Going On in This Picture? and What’s Going On in This Graph? activities make great discussion starters for students of all ages and levels. Here’s how:

  • Build community. Get to know your students and help them get to know one another by using our writing prompts as icebreaker questions, like: What would your dream home look like? What have you learned about yourself during quarantine? What do the objects in your home say about you?

    Our What’s Going On in This Picture? and What’s Going On in This Graph? activities can also serve to build a positive classroom culture by fostering communication, collaboration and fun on a weekly basis.

  • Discuss and debate. Our writing prompts feature questions to inspire debate, too. Use these to practice accountable talk and civil conversations.

  • Chat in person or through video. During an in-person or live virtual session, you can post the prompt or image on a slide, then put students into (socially distanced) small groups or breakout rooms to discuss. Bring them back together and invite them to share what their partner or group said with the whole class.

  • Have conversations online. If you’re teaching remotely, you can post a question or image on your learning management system or a virtual bulletin board, like Padlet, and invite students to respond and reply to one another there in writing. For more fun, try posting it on Flipgrid and asking students to answer via video.

Teachers have told us that our regular features can provide a structure to their week that gives students something to look forward to and creates predictability in a chaotic time. Here are a few ways to try this in your classroom:

  • Begin class with a writing prompt. Whether you’re in-person or online you can use our prompts to build a daily writing habit or get students talking to one another.

  • Do What’s Going On in This Picture? or What’s Going On in This Graph? every week. You can lead a live session one day a week by projecting the image or graph on your screen and inviting students to discuss it verbally or using the chat if you are online. Watch this video of a fifth-grade teacher conducting the Visual Thinking Strategies protocol in her classroom.

    For asynchronous learning, post the image on your learning management system and invite students to comment all week. Be sure to check back for the reveal on Thursdays.

  • Start “Current Events Fridays” (or any other day of the week). Dig through our archive of Lessons of the Day to find high-interest, student-friendly articles to read and discuss. Or, invite a different student each week to present an article of their choice to the class. All of the Times articles on The Learning Network are free.

Though we try to choose the most student-friendly articles for these features, Times texts can be challenging for younger students and struggling readers. Here are some suggestions for scaffolding their use for your class:

  • Use images to activate schema. Use Picture Prompts, What’s Going On in This Picture? or the art included in our Lesson of the Day as a warm-up to activate prior knowledge, vocabulary or connections before reading the related article. Invite students to discuss the given prompts or try some of these: What do you think is going on in this image? What do you think the article is about if this is the image that illustrates it? What people, places, ideas or words might you associate with this image? What personal connections can you make to what you see?

  • Try our warm-ups. Our Lessons of the Day and Student Opinion questions come with warm-ups that can help students build background knowledge and make connections to the content before reading. These usually involve discussion or reflection questions, watching a video, or viewing images and graphs. You might do them as a class or in small groups.

  • Do a read-aloud: After completing the warm-up for our Lesson of the Day or Student Opinion questions, instead of letting students read the article on their own, read it aloud to them, encouraging them to follow along. You can do this during a live class session or record a video of yourself reading and post it on your learning management system for students to watch as they work through a lesson.

  • Chunk the text. Our Lesson of the Day and Student Opinion questions come with comprehension and discussion questions. Instead of having students read the entire article, then answer the questions, you might have them read only a few paragraphs at a time, then respond to the corresponding question before moving on to the next few paragraphs.

Our Picture Prompts and What’s Going On in This Picture? features are popular among students who are learning and developing English. They can use these images to practice vocabulary, brainstorm verbs and adjectives, or learn new words.

To further support English language learners, you might label the images with key words and encourage students to use them to build full sentences.

These make great writing or speaking and listening activities, depending on your students’ goals.

Each of these activities provides plenty of opportunity for student voice and choice in the curriculum.

For example, some teachers invite students to scroll through our list of writing prompts each week and respond to one of their choosing. You might have them post their responses on your preferred learning management system or share what they learned with the class via a live presentation or virtual bulletin board, like Padlet. You can try this with any of our features.

And if your students are fairly independent writers, as a bonus assignment, you can challenge them to enter at least one Learning Network contest of their choice throughout the school year.

Best Content Awards 2020

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Best Content Awards 2020

Welcome!  Anyone who tells you that 105 is uncomfortable, I am here to say, yeah, probably, unless you are like me and grew up in the Southwest (in the U.S.), then it is refreshing.  Especially with a pool.

Anyway, I am coming to you from the Tucson area of Arizona. Think desert and mountains, and you have Tucson, well the part I am in.

Why you ask, am I telling you such information, well, it is because it is from this area, that I will be announcing the debut Best 3rd Party Content Awards, from TCWG (The Craig Weiss Group).  I felt that having awards only for learning systems, wasn’t enough, because off-the-shelf content plays a huge role.  After all, without content what do you have? Nothing I tell, you nothing (Runaway Jury quote).  In all seriousness, without content you wouldn’t need a learning system of any sort, just give folks binders of paper (like the old days).

Before jumpining into the awards, it likely will make sense to discuss a few tidbits.

The awards are for off-the-shelf content, this is content that a 3rd party provider builds and sells to the client (business, orgs, companies, government, education, associations, etc.) who then offer it to their employees, customers, members, students or all of sum.  The learner audience doesn’t buy it or pay for it.  You will see this type of content with a chunk of learning systems, regardless of type, either in a visible marketplace (uh, the client sees it) or via the phone.  Other examples of this type of content can be found in what I refer to as content aggregators – where it is a platform of sorts, that has partnership agreements with multiple 3rd party providers (min of two).

These awards are not for custom developers, where you can go, pay $$ and get a properitary course (this is specifically based on whatever materials you provide them – maybe Widget Sales – How to Ripoff People) and they build it.  In the industry, we refer to these folks as custom development shops or boutique shops. 

There are a few points to remember about off-the-shelf content.

  • The industry refers to it as either off-the-shelf content, off-the-shelf 3rd party content, off-the-shelf 3rd party providers, content partners, or they just say content (with the assumption that you know it is built by another provider).  Some just say the name of the provider thinking you will automatically know it, or just push the topic/subject, again thinking you will know that it is not made by them (which leads me too..)
  • Everyone pitches micro-learning content, which means short – but short is ambigious – because it assumes that you are watching/taking/ in a linear fashion as in ABCDEF, rather than jumping around (which is why online learning was created in the first place, because ILT is linear), and that everyone has the same learning style or learns the same way and can acquire the information in that specific time frame.  In other words, some vendors say our content is micro and each piece is three minutes long. Others pull the spin, and say it is micro, but the module is 45 minutes long with 15 sub-modules or topics or chapters or sadly “lessons”  – as though you are in a schoolhouse from 1892. Anyway, those chapters range from five to 10 minutes – you know, micro.   As such, micro-learning is not an award category.
  • Micro-Learning by the way, doesn’t mean it is any good, just “short” as defined by the content provider. 
  • Attachments – Some off the shelf providers include an attachment with their content (in whatever format they have), others do not.  Again, an attachment may be of value or it may not.  Never make your decision on buying content based on whether the content comes with it or not.  A lot of it isn’t instructional design quality, and many is something you could create on your own – actually, most of it is. 
  • With vendors pushing micro-content you rarely see a TOC (Table of Contents), which is very doable, and honestly better for the learner.  But too many people think that the content has to be like YouTube or learning nuggets (a couple of pages of text) as though this will show them off as “edgy and with the times,” – respectfully I disagree.

Best of Content Awards

The debut received over 100 entrants, which is really quite nice, for just something brand new out of the gate. They had to provide several items, including catalog of content, types of content, what is their most popular titles/subjects of their content, where are their developers located (i.e. at the company, or on Mars, etc.), type of content they produce, and a few other items.

They had to provide two pieces of content in SCORM files.  A couple only provided them in AICC, which was converted, and some provided only MP4s or similar video formats.   The content could be any length, in any format – i.e. video, course approach, etc.  Ideally it should be in two different subject areas, but if the vendor only provides compliance for example, that was acceptable and did not put them at any disadvantage. 

The content they provided had to be representative of their catalog, but they could select any two they wanted.

We (the judges) looked at multiple sets of factors and judged each of them on a point scale 1 to 5, with one being the worst, and five being the best.

Obviously, the content had to be instructional design sound.  This played an important role, because if it isn’t, then you just have flashy content without if following any ID processes or approaches. Which is not effective for any learner.  

Judging Areas

  • Video – Only played a role – i.e. point wise if it was the content.  In other words, if it wasn’t a course that was purely video OR the course/content didn’t have any video parts in it, it was excluded in the judging criteria for that vendor.  This ensured that everything was equal.  So, if your course is 100% animation, you didn’t get a zero for video, it was just left blank by the judges and did not impact overall total score – since everything was weighted accordingly.
  • Animation  – Similar to above (i.e. video) piece. 
  • Audio Quality – Similar to above -in that if your course did not have any audio to it, you did not receive a zero.  Nowadays most of the 3rd party content has an audio overlay or what is referred to as a V/O (voice-over).

One that is very important, but way too many vendors lacked it…

  • ADA508 or similar (depending on the country, but most countries have it) support.  This by far, was the most disappointing. A lot of content our judges felt, lacked ADA508 support. It got to the point, that when calculating it was extracted and placed into a separate area, and not counted for/against any provider.  I will identify who we felt did the best at supporting ADA508 (and the UK for example, follows the ADA508 similar with their own term).  I created a course in 2002, that supported ADA508, trust me, it isn’t that difficult.

Played a bigger role than the above categories – when weighted

  • Usefulness – How useful would this be to the learner?  Tied clearly to the subject/topic at hand.  Honestly, this should be a top priority to anyone looking at content.  Just because it might be game like, doesn’t mean it will be useful to them for say upskilling or an acquirement of knowledge.
  • Interactivity (Quality and Usability)- This should be a mainstay in every piece of content anyone wants to buy. Without interactiviy, you have boring static content.  This isn’t something new, people were doing it with CBT in the 90s, and even WBT in the late 90s.  Learners of all ages want interactivity, otherwise just scan a piece of notebook paper with some text and give it to them. 
  • Engagment – Another mainstay and a must when you are looking at buying content. It has to be targeted to your audience, has to be compelling to engage the learner in wanting to acquire, retain, and snythesis the information.  Every piece of content IMO, should include a real-world scenario that applies to what people are learning – this will push the higher level of engagement, interactivity and usefulness.  Seriously, do not buy content that does not hit the trifecta here, but I know most people will just ignore – and as a result will complain later on, that their learners are not going back and re-taking it, or even taking it.  Oh, and with Compliance you can have the trifecta (UIE). 
  • Scenarios (if applicable) – Seriously, how hard is it to come up with one real world scenario that someone can take what they are learning and apply it to a situational experience?  I did it back in 2002. Trust me, it is nost a challenge.  Yet, so many providers do not offer it.  I will hear no one is asking for it, which is utter nonsense. I thought you were the expert in effective instructional design, not them, and who just wants an assessment at the end of each chapter?  That tells me nothing, expect you know how to memorize or guess.

Two other Essentials that were weighted higher

Description – Did the content include a description?  This you would think would be a no-brainer, but guess what, a lot of providers didn’t have one.  How would I know what this is about? Rely on the title?

Objectives – This is ID and honestly learning and training 101. Heck, even in education this is standard. Again, many vendors did not have it. Weird.

What was excluded

  • Assessments – Not relevant here, I know I will get a lot of pushback, but again, see the memorize or guess angle.  We in L&D and Training spend way too much time and effort pushing assessment, when there is so much data/research out there that shows it is not effective in learning synthesis, that people can fail due to anxiety, that there is no correlation between doing well on a test and actually retaining for a long period and thus synthesize. I never in all my years of providing online training (e-learning) ever had an assessment at the end of a course. What did I have? Scenarios.

Even with certification content, you do not need to do an assessment, but I know most folks do. That’s your choice, I just respectfully disagree.

And Now the Awards

BEST Off the Shelf Content (OVERALL)

Seven Dimensions – Go to Video/Courses in the header.

  • Scored high across the board, with usefulness, engagement, and interactivity doing well. Every course has objectives and a description. Even with video they did a very nice job. For attachment fans, the content we viewed had it and was effective. Likely many will not know the, showing proof that there is amazing content out there. Oh, and they won another award (to be noted shortly).

Intellezy – They presented two courses in technology, both of which were very good. In fact so good, they won the “best content for Technology”.

Scored high across the board, especially with usefulness. One judge scored them the highest across the board with seven dimensions just slightly behind them, two other judges gave them lower scores due to interactivty and engagment which fell a little short in their opinion. Still we all found them to be worthy and deserving of #2 in the Best Content Overall Awards. They are very good for tech-focused content.

Video Arts Another strong across the board, with judges giving them perfect marks for video content, scenarios and quality.

Usefulness and Interactivity was a slight point below (4/5) and objectives/description a slight point or two.

The Top 10 – Best Content Overall

  1. Seven Dimensions
  2. Intellezy
  3. Video Arts
  4. Cegos
  5. Traliant
  6. ej4
  7. Bigger Brains
  8. Skill Pill
  9. SAP Litmos
  10. Vado

Subject/Topic Award Winners

And the winner is

Traliant – Outstanding. Strong in Usefulness (okay the best for compliance), outstanding in scenarios, engagement and quality. Objectives quite good. We had numerous participants for Compliance, Traliant crushed them all.

And the winner is

Intellezy – Another win. As noted earlier, their technology content just rocked.

And the winner is, wait.. winners – That’s right a TIE

Skill Pill – Very good content in the business skills area, with a different way than you will find with other providers. They include workbooks, flash cards, and other supporting materials as part of their course and content design.

Seven Dimensions – You see that correctly, the overall Best Content Award Winner for 2020, achieves another award with their business skills content, which the judges found with one course could easily slide into personal and professional development (depending on your how you view it, yourselves). But at the end of the day, the judges felt it was more suited for business skills.

And the winner is…wait – Another TIE

Cegos – Only one of five vendors who achieved a perfect score with video, objectives were fantastic, interactivity, usefulness and quality were exceptional.

Video Arts – Two-time award winner. The #3 best overall content winner, scored perfect with their video content, outstanding with the content tied around personal and professional development, and just did a very nice job.

And the winner is…

Biz Library – Interactivity, Scenarios and Usefulness including quality is where they really shine. Video is quite good.

This category is based on four key components

  • Video – Quality, content, overall experience, talent level (if applicable) – Played the biggest role here, obviously
  • Usefulness
  • Scenarios
  • Interactivity a level that can exist in video, more so than you might think

The winner is

Seven Dimensions – Yes, a three-time award winner.

A very close second (by one point) is Intellezy and then only three points behind them is Video Arts.

ADA 

While there isn’t any award given out to the vendor whose content achieved excellence with ADA508 (and similar on other countries) in their content, here are the three providers who scored the highest in the category.

  • SAP Litmos
  • Vado
  • Skill Pill 

Bottom Line

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you for participating in this year’s debut awards. 

The Judges for the competition are Peter Phillips, former CEO of Unicorn Training, a pioneer in instructional design for WBT, and even with CBT;  he is currently CEO of Amuzo, a game-based learning company (makes awesome content).   Spencer Thorton, SVP of Curation for Open Sesame, and yours truly, Craig Weiss.

Lastly, a huge thank you to D2L for setting up a sandbox and helping us in so many ways, so that we could test the content using an LMS, to ensure that it was fair to everyone. 

Note:  Two vendors of note who declined to submit (they were offered to do so) were Skillsoft and LinkedIn Learning.  IMO and that even of the Judges, Skillsoft would not have even hit the top five. Most of the content is dated, linear in style and format, and sadly, underwhelming. They do create new content, but the quality, seems to have dropped off.  LinkedIn Learning, on the other hand – and this is just my perspective because I see the content a lot, and have it as part of my review (coming in early Sept of the system) is mainly made up of the Lynda.com content, which to me, just isn’t that good. Some of the newer stuff is better, but still, it has challenges.  

One vendor, that I still like for compliance is the Access Group.  There were some challenges that befell their entry, which is why they were not one of the finalists in the end.  But, because I see their content all the time, I do believe they would have been a strong contender in the compliance field.  That said, Traliant still would be the winner.  Their content is just better. 

Finally, I never charge a fee for an award submission nor application to do so.  This applies to all my awards including those for learning systems (in case you are wondering). 

E-Learning 24/7

Introducing Career Learning Paths: Learn the skills to advance your career with confidence

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Introducing Career Learning Paths: Learn the skills to advance your career with confidence

By Janani Subramanian, Senior Product Manager, Coursera

Embarking on a new chapter of your career journey can be a powerful emotional experience. You may feel excitement and anticipation, but also anxiety and stress. Whether you’re looking for your first job, pursuing a promotion, or contemplating a mid-career switch to a new field, there are always unknowns to manage. At a time when COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the employment landscape, this uncertainty can seem even more challenging.

Today, Coursera is launching Career Learning Paths, a free online resource to help you find the learning content you need to reach your career goals. Each path shows you a progression of job roles—from entry-level to experienced professional—for an in-demand field, details the skills necessary for career success in that field, and maps these skills to the relevant learning programs on Coursera. With Career Learning Paths, you can learn with confidence, knowing you’re on the right track to advance your career.

Career Learning Paths for six high-growth fields are now available: Digital Marketing, Agile Project Management, Network Engineering, Data Engineering, Design, and Data Science. Coursera’s content strategy experts chose these fields for their steady growth and competitive wages, and because the skills required for success in these fields can be learned online.

As an example, consider the field of Agile Project Management. Roles in this field—such as IT project manager—are at low risk of automation and have a median salary of $88,000 for entry-level roles. In programs like Atlassian’s Agile with Atlassian Jira stand-alone course and UC Irvine’s Project Management Professional Certificate, you can learn the skills to launch and advance your project management career.

How can you start using Career Learning Paths? Let’s say you’re interested in launching a data science career. You can begin by exploring the Data Science Career Learning Path, where you’ll find a general description of the field and expert-curated content for beginner, intermediate, and advanced data science professionals. The curated content provides a range of learning programs, from Guided Projects that can be completed in under two hours to full-fledged certificate and degree programs that offer more in-depth training in the field. Examples include the Data Science Professional Certificate from IBM or Imperial College London’s Master of Machine Learning and Data Science. Once you’ve identified the right level and type of content for your goals, you can begin learning. 

In the coming months, we’ll continue to introduce more Career Learning Paths across other growing fields. Our goal is to support you every step of the way as you pursue your goals, by providing the world-class learning resources that are right for your unique career journey.

Discover the next step in your career by exploring Career Learning Paths today: 

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Karar Muhammad: “There is no life without knowledge.”

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Karar Muhammad: “There is no life without knowledge.”

“My name is Karar Muhammad and I am a teacher. I was born in Babil Governorate, Iraq in 1997. I have a BA in Basic Education and History.”

How did you learn about Alison?

I learned about Alison by searching the internet for an educational specialist that produced courses in education.

What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?

My first course with Alison was the Diploma in Teaching Skills for Educators. I chose this course because I am a recent graduate from an educational college and I wanted to strengthen my teaching skills. I completed the course with a mark of 83%. It was a great experience of e-learning.

How have Alison courses affected your career?

I always attach my diploma from Alison to my cv when applying to community schools for a position.

What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?

I like sitting at home and learning from a distance with a snack and some juice.

 

Where are you working at the moment?

I don’t have a job right now, but soon I will get a job working in a private school, God willing.

What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?

I aspire to complete my academic career in the future with a master’s degree in teaching methods. I always aspire for more and I don’t stop seeking knowledge. As long as we are alive, there is no life without knowledge, and with knowledge, nations rise.

If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?

I would like to take more training courses for teachers, preferably on teaching methods.

What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?

Alison is one of the best educational platforms in the world. What distinguishes it is that it’s free and available in all countries. I wish them good luck. I have benefited a lot in my studies at Alison, and my skills have increased. I think it’s an important resource for any intellectual who wants to develop their skills and experience, in any of the sciences or humanities. Alison has many courses and diplomas and offers a valuable opportunity to study and obtain accredited certificates.

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