This word has appeared in 611 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
Exploratory learning that counts and professional networking that matters
The Master of Business Administration (iMBA) from Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a great option for learners like Molly Johnson who want to explore continuing their education by first completing stackable courses on Coursera. With these courses, learners can build their skills into a master’s degree. The iMBA is also an excellent choice for those who are looking for powerful networking opportunities, because students in the program get to enhance their abilities alongside ambitious peers while learning from industry-connected experts. Plus, with Gies receiving recognitions such as the “#1 Biggest B-School Innovation of the Decade” from Poets&Quants, learners like Molly can pursue the iMBA with plenty of confidence.
Molly originally went to school for psychology to become a school counselor, but she eventually found her way into the corporate world instead. Rising through the ranks of the flooring industry—from sales assistant to a senior director of sales enablement—she grew to like the business while separately realizing she could use her psychology background for volunteer work. As she was assuming more roles and projects in her career, Molly decided to advance in a particular area. She says, “I thought digital marketing would be a real skill to gain, and I wanted to add something to my toolkit.”
After searching online for digital marketing courses, Molly discovered the Digital Marketing Specialization from Gies on Coursera. She was familiar with the strong reputation of the university because both her sister and brother-in-law had attended it. The ability to make progress toward the iMBA through the Specialization, before committing to the full degree program, instantly caught her eye as well. By learning about digital marketing this way, Molly could acquire specific skills with immediate value for her career while knowing her coursework could ultimately be applied to an impressive degree. Loving the flexible learning that could fit her schedule, and the tuition costs that she could afford, Molly soon completed the Specialization and applied to the iMBA.
Throughout her journey with the Gies iMBA, Molly says she has significantly enjoyed her quantitative and finance courses. She especially cites learning how to read financial statements as one of the several new talents she’s developed. As part of her degree program, Molly even visited Brazil for over a week to obtain international experience with identifying solutions to business problems. But one of the most important outcomes for Molly has been the professional connections she’s made all along the way. “My biggest concern was the networking opportunities. I didn’t know if I would be getting as much of that, but I was impressed.”
Because of the online nature of her iMBA program, Molly was able to work as a consultant while earning her degree. Since her graduation, she’s landed a new job as the Associate Manager of Strategic Initiatives for a global manufacturing company. Molly is now working on high-profile projects that are driving meaningful business results for her company, and she says she’s doing exactly what she wants to do at a higher compensation level than she would’ve had before earning her iMBA.
If your story sounds similar to Molly’s, you too can start with a Specialization on Coursera to get a feel for the learning before jumping into the full degree program. Experience reputable, flexible, and affordable learning for yourself.
Learn more about Gies College of Business iMBA program.
A Letter to Midjourney
We are honoring the Top 9 winners of our Student Open Letter Contest by publishing their entries. This one is by Justin Kim, age 16.
Digest #175: Authentic Assessments
cover image by Skitterphoto on Pexels
The idea of authentic assessments has been around for over 30 years now. In 1990, Grant Wiggins coined the term ‘authentic assessment’ (1) and in recent years this assessment approach has received a considerable boost. The pandemic as well as the rise of AI in education have required educators to explore more innovative ways to assess knowledge and skills in their students. Specifically, there is a call for assessments for learning – the idea that students need to apply their knowledge and skills to complete an assessment which, in turn, leads to increases in their knowledge and skills. There are many definitions and approaches to authentic assessment and so today’s digest provides an overview of the concept with examples.
1. The Case for Authentic Assessment by Grant Wiggins, Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation
We’ll start with the original article by Wiggins on authentic assessments. It’s a quick read that provides an overview of the idea.
2. Authentic Assessment by Kim H. Koh, Oxford Research Encyclopedias – Education
Following up from the first resource, this article provides a more contemporary take on authentic assessments. It outlines the criteria for authenticity of assessments and highlights that for authentic assessments to work students need prior knowledge that they then apply. Thus, authentic assessments are no substitute for acquiring knowledge and basic skills in the first place. They are a way to elaborate and apply knowledge and skills.
3. A Step-By-Step Guide To Designing More Authentic Assessments by Sally Brown & Kay Sambell, Heriot-Watt University, UK
This is an excellent resource that provides – as the name suggests – step-by-step instructions on how to create authentic assessments. Plenty of concrete examples are offered to make the different steps in the design process graspable.
Word of the Day: surmise
This word has appeared in 30 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
Learning Technology and Learning Systems: Trust and Profitability
Learning Technology: LMS, LXP, LMS/LXP, Skills Platform, Learning Platform, Authoring Tools, Third-Party Content Providers, EdTech (K-12, Higher Education). E-Learning tools. EDP, and the list continues.
Trust.
Customer support, technical support, meeting obligations presented before or as part of the signing, promises unfilled, survival one minute, sale the next, consolidation (albeit the numbers are very small), internal reorganization, stealth. It’s hot now, but not so much in a year or two or three.
NPS scores
Trust us. Isn’t it great about our score? Funny, they never mention detractors—an audience that usually goes out of their way to post about issues or tell others about problems—far more than those promoters.
Put it this way. You go to a hotel with great service, and then they ask you to post it on Trip Advisor. How many times have you done this? You go to a hotel, and it is a fiasco. Problems such as dirty rooms are always noted in these complaints. Where do you see them? Oh, TA or Yelp or lots of places. So much for NPS.
You are at a trade show, looking for a new system, for example, and you are pretty confident that something is wrong—whatever it is. How is that NPS now?
The Proof is in the Pudding
One vendor (name withheld) made a huge deal about a year or two ago around their NPS. Publicity abounds. Press releases to be found. All is happy. Happy, Joy, Joy, Joy.
Meanwhile, they had yet to turn a profit. The year comes to an end? Non-profitable. Privately? Re-organization is the first one. The following year? Another reorganization. Another miss out of profitability. Lots of sales should be profitable; acquisitions aren’t the play here (some vendors over-extend themselves OR are purchased by another vendor expecting higher returns, and it fails to deliver – SumTotal and the Skillsoft marriage, anyone?).
Something else is causing this—OR multiple items.
Are they going to tell you this? Not a chance. But you would think it’s not possible. Big sales. Big name. Big burn rate (burn means they are burning capital each month. It happened with Grovo. Dariling one minute, burn of 73 million eventually. Acquired by Cornerstone).
What I see with the Pudding (Dairy-Free Butterscotch is the best)
- Mismanagement plays a significant role here – I mean, if your company isn’t breaking X dollars based on expectations and client listing, and you have been around for more than five years, there is a problem. Something isn’t working. Sure, it can be the product itself; more often than not, though, it comes from the top. The goal for any vendor, regardless of platform, product, or service, is to generate business = more growth (hitting targets sales-wise) = more money. End goal? Profitability.
- Sales flatline for far too long – It is one thing that the vendor or vendors’ sales are flat – due to outside economic conditions or unexpected global events – i.e., the Pandemic. It is another thing when none of these issues exist, and the company’s sales are flat. Flat isn’t a good thing. Unless it is a pizza dropped by the gig worker delivering it to your house, okay, that isn’t good either. On the bright side, they didn’t eat a slice.
- Capital infusion hits the wall – There are way too many PEs and investment firms that jumped into the corporate learning space, especially around LMS, LXP, and learning platforms, with the belief of rapid growth. I see this often in a PE whose portfolio includes other software companies. They think a software company is the same as a learning system in terms of the tech angle. Thus, a huge market generates lots of business and growth. Oops – it isn’t that easy. Some of these folks think a system can rapidly scale from 5M to 25M within two years or even 100M in less than three years. Reality though? Doesn’t happen that way. This industry requires patience and time—something PEs rarely have. I’m giving you capital – I’m expecting a return on my investment. Already today, a few PEs have found out that this isn’t an easy thing to do. Surprise! Did you want a slice? I found it with some grass sticks on it. Uh, I’m unsure how that happened.
Capital Truth Scenario
Perhaps this has happened to you as a vendor. I’m quite confident that you never mentioned it to any of your clients, nor the ones you were trying to get. I mean, it doesn’t scream—come by my system.
The vendor (name withheld) landed capital (i.e., money!) from another source (I can’t recall whether it was an angel investor, investment firm, or some PE)—but they got capital.
They then went on a hiring spree for more salespeople.
Then the bottom happened. They (the vendor) missed quarterly targets. Not for one quarter. Not for two quarters, but three, with everything pointing to miss on the next quarter. Let’s see – new salespeople and quite a few at that + missed sales targets (which, since you hired more salespeople – one would assume you would generate more sales, but maybe those targets were unattainable, to begin with – then again, I wasn’t the CRO) = layoffs.
Yep, all those new salespeople – gone.
Restructuring
The industry is not the only one that experiences this; it is extremely common in the corporate world and even education (although restructuring isn’t the word used).
When they say “restructure,” you think “layoffs.”
Does it happen with every vendor? No. There are plenty, and I mean plenty, who have never undergone any restructuring. This is a good thing.
Yet, others have and will continue to do so. I would not be surprised (only because I have already seen it), that due to the current business environment, sales across the board are flat. Yes, there are vendors where sales are not flat, but I often hear “flat.” Kudos to those who are not seeing it and are growing. In the flat cycle right now, external circumstances are the big reason. Again, though, there are those who will stipulate it is due to external, in reality though, they were already flat or declining before 2024.
A vendor may not say “flat,” some say pipe freeze (pipe as in the pipeline, i.e., sales pipeline or prospects pipeline – expected to close but have frozen – or frozen – due to other circumstances that are beyond the vendor’s control. Nevertheless, a backup on the pipe (client deals taking too long due to the vendor – understaffed factors often, but mismanagement isn’t too far behind) can happen.
Can it lead to restructuring? Absolutely. If the pipeline is backed up (and you have a lot of salespeople) and it is due to the client freezing or holding back, well, that is one thing. However, if that isn’t the reason, eventually two things will occur (can be either/or): a. Missed sales targets and underperformance thereafter; b. restructuring—you need to tighten the belt, as they say.
Is restructuring limited only to learning system vendors? Nope. Third-party content providers, authoring tools, e-learning tools, and Learning Technology are all over the place.
Failing to be profitable doesn’t limit itself to one industry segment.
Restructure Scenario
There are plenty of examples around the restructuring impact (yes, people, but business-wise, it goes beyond the people), and thus there may be people who say, “Hey, be considerate of so-so losing their jobs.” I am respectful of that, which is why it is rare for me to state that X vendor is going through a restructuring. Even though I know vendors who have (in 2023), are in 2024 or are considering doing so. There may have been just one restructuring or multiple (again, this is not just in our industry; the corporate world’s streets are lined up with companies that went through lots of restructuring – and failed in the end).
The situation
A vendor (name withheld) – I learned that they had just laid off some folks (to me, layoffs mean restructuring). Reached out to the CEO – denial. Followed-up saying so-so says this happened. Next up? CEO admits but says something along the lines: successful companies always do this. Plus the company is doing great, hiring more people, blah blah.
I’ve never been a big fan of companies making layoffs while hiring new people (and this is not limited to our industry). There is just something off about it. If you are doing so well, why do you need to lay off? It’s often the adage that savings equals financial stability or growth.
As an analyst, I’m always concerned – in this case, within our industry.
AI, here we come
It’s already happening—the freeze. In talks with more than two dozen vendors who heavily use AI in the learning tech side, sales are flat or unstable. Not everybody is having an issue, as with anything, but those I spoke with mentioned it far more often than not. It was/is a common theme.
The freeze is due to those looking at AI for their companies and thus identifying AI learning tech vendors – i.e., learning tech vendors, where AI is at the forefront.
The shine of AI is off for the corporate world. Plenty of anecdotal evidence is out there (via various articles, which are nonindustry related).
The hallucination issue is cited as the number one reason. Unfortunately, for those thinking that hallucinations will be eliminated, say, by next year, it is unlikely. There is no timetable for removing fake or false information (hallucinations). Maybe it goes bye-bye; perhaps it never does (there are experts in AI who think this is probable). You can add dozens of LLMs and believe it will solve the hallucination issue, but it won’t. You can think it is only my content, thus I won’t have a hallucinations issue. Guess what? You will (well, maybe not you, but someone at your company will).
AI bias is of concern. I often see many really smart people who forget that AI is nascent. It’s super early. Issues, well, problems will arise—things nobody thought would happen.
Heck, a few weeks back, there was an article about McDonald’s pulling the plug on their AI initiative with 100 restaurants (maybe it was a bit over 100, but anyway). The article stated that the AI had problems with people who have accents. I had never heard of that before. I can’t say that perhaps it was due only to this specific LLM (developed by IBM, and not a great look, BTW) or if it happens with other LLMs out there or far more than people realize.
Speaking of brilliant people, I’m equally surprised at the number who ignore the strengths and weaknesses of the LLM or LLMs they choose. I’m not just talking about vendors here (which is of grave concern to me), but folks adding AI to their company without doing due diligence on the strengths and weaknesses, regardless of fine-tuning and adding guardrails.
On our side – the industry of learning systems and AI
It continues to be developed and rolled out. Equally, the knowledge level of CEOs and Managing Directors who oversee these companies and add AI—you would think they would know at least something about it. Yes, there are companies that have hired in-house AI experts or AI experts who know the ins and outs. But there are a lot of people, sales executives included, who are thus selling their system who know nearly nothing. Okay, nothing. Can you imagine a CRO not knowing something about the AI in their system that the company is pushing as a key focus or USP (Unique Sales Proposition)?
I understand why a CEO or MD wouldn’t know the ins and outs unless they were steeped in the knowledge and insight or even development aspects of it, but if you are talking to people about your system and you have zero knowledge of the AI in your platform or tech, then now is the time you should.
If your own people say that it is “accurate,” then what does that really mean? To me, this implies that it is always accurate, which is impossible.
One vendor ( who pushes AI-powered for their learning system) notes all the wonderful things it can do. Nowhere on the site does it ever say that any LLM (including their own) can produce fake or false information. I would think this is relevant. They also say they are “The AI-first learning platform.” This is funny because others out there say the same thing. A reason, BTW, to ignore any marketing spiel, including their comparison table – I assume the traditional software is a CD-ROM or a board game.
I decided not to mention their name—sorry, there is no free publicity here. Perhaps you know them already. Their pitch is LLM-agnostic, which, if you read my LinkedIn post this week, I noted will be a big term in the industry. Not the vendor’s name—the wordage LLM-Agnostic.
Bottom Line
Trust. Trust the economics of doing business. Trust the process—the cycle.
The support.
Most importantly, trust us.
We always deliver.
E-Learning 24/7
Reclaiming Singapore’s Credit for Success: Removing Colonialist Statues
We are honoring the Top 9 winners of our Student Open Letter Contest by publishing their entries. This one is by Emma Wang, age 15.
Word of the Day: locus
This word has appeared in 43 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
Word of the Day: compatible
This word has appeared in 131 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
How Customer Support Jobs Can Kick-Start Your Tech Career
Good news: There are lots of entry-level Customer Support roles that don’t require coding experience, which makes it a great option for early-career job seekers or career changers. Because the technical barrier to entry is lower than with other tech roles, Customer Support can be a great place to get a foot in the door.
To learn more about how to launch a career in Customer Support, we talked to two of Codecademy’s own Customer Support team, Allyn Faenza, Manager of Customer Support, and Kaitlin Jaggers, Customer Support Team Lead.
For some job seekers, working in Support can be a stepping stone to learn more about the tech world. “It’s a great way to be able to view a product or site from behind the scenes and really learn everything about it before exploring the developer side of things,” Kaitlin says. You also get a lot of exposure to the types of tasks different types of developers do, so you can build your future career based on the work you’re more interested in. In fact, Customer Support is such a valuable crash course in a company’s product and customers that some high-profile tech companies ask all their team members to do a rotation in support. (We have a Customer Support shadowing program at Codecademy!)
Learn professional skills for free
Customer Support is a rewarding career path that requires strong interpersonal skills like communication, problem-solving, and empathy. If your goal is to specialize in people ops, Customer Support is a valuable place to start. “I’m personally more interested in the people management and operations side of things,” Kaitlin says, “so after starting at Codecademy as an entry-level Customer Support Specialist, I’ve worked my way up to Team Lead to help support this team and onboard new team members.”
Want to start honing these skills so you can stand out when applying for Customer Support positions? We recently added over 70 professional skills courses to our catalog, including free courses on the techniques and key practices that Customer Support Specialists use on a daily basis.
What is a typical day like in Customer Support?
Customer Support is usually the first point of contact when a person needs help using a company’s product or service. “For Codecademy’s Support team, a typical day mainly focuses on working directly with our learners,” Kaitlin says. “This includes following up on previous correspondence as well as any new tickets that come in.”
Processing a ticket queue
Most tech companies, including Codecademy, use a ticketing system to manage and respond to customer enquiries submitted via email. Some might offer phone or chat support, which can mean less flexibility with your working hours (although AI-powered support chatbots are becoming more common). The same is true for companies whose products are mission-critical for their users — if you’re working in Customer Support for a bank, for example, there’s more likely to be an on-call element as the bank needs to deliver 24/7 service to its customers.
Some companies employ Support Engineers who dig into the code and submit bug fixes themselves, but it’s more common for Customer Support Agents or Specialists to act as the go-between for customers and developers. This involves:
- Gathering as much information as possible about an issue
- Attempting to replicate the problem
- Reporting the issue to the correct engineering team
- Occasionally working with that engineering team to troubleshoot
Once resolved, the Support Agent follows up with the learner to share the resolution and close the ticket.
Testing new features
A cool perk of working in Customer Support is getting a sneak peek at upcoming features. Our Customer Support team often helps our Engineering team with testing ahead of a product or new feature release, Kaitlin says. “Our team is great at being a fresh pair of eyes and are really in tune with how our learners think, so we work with them regularly to help test something before we launch on our site,” she says.
Handling billing and payment queries
Depending on your skillset and career aspirations, you might decide to specialize in a specific area of customer support work, like billing or upgrades. “I took on dispute resolution because I got really interested in payments,” Allyn says. “That means working through an additional queue and communicating with banks to provide evidence about what Codecademy is and educating people about what charges mean.”
Collaborating with other departments
Since customers are key stakeholders, supporting them influences almost every aspect of a business. Customer Support teams frequently share their findings across other departments or will collaborate with a specific team. “Sometimes Finance, Design, or Product, for example, might have questions about what our learners think about some aspect of the product or website,” Allyn says. “We can go gather feedback from customer communications and provide that for them in a report or in a meeting.”
The Codecademy Customer Support team also recently launched a shadow program. “Anyone on the Codecademy team can join to learn more about the Support team and our learners as well,” Kaitlin says. The team can customize their shadow sessions based on the shadower’s interests or what they’re working on. “If you’re part of a team that launched a new product recently and want to see what questions or feedback our learners have on this product, we’ll pull tickets that cover this beforehand and walk through them with the team member shadowing.”
How to become a Customer Support Specialist
While many Customer Support roles have entry-level opportunities, if you want to get a taste for working in the field and start developing relevant skills now, check out Codecademy’s new Customer Support courses to learn about discovering customer needs, engaging with customers, fostering a service mindset, and more.
It’s expected that you’ll learn a lot on the job, eventually becoming an expert on the product (or at least knowing the right teams to reach out to for answers). “We’ll provide all the education someone needs about our product,” Allyn says.
Gaining experience using the product or service you’re supporting is important so you can understand what each feature is supposed to do, and respond when a user reports it acting differently, Kaitlin explains. The nature of the product or industry you’re in will determine how steep a learning curve there is (think of the difference between supporting customers trying to use a mobile banking app versus customers deploying containerized software, for example).
While you typically don’t write code in these types of roles, knowing how to read and understand code can help you be more efficient. “Attempting to replicate a learner issue on our site might mean digging into developer tools in the console and seeing what errors we’re getting,” Allyn says. Kaitlin puts her SQL knowledge to use to pull up data and reports for her team and provide evidence for learner reports.
The soft skills you need for Customer Support
While you probably already know that working in tech isn’t just about writing code in solitude, Customer Support especially entails a lot of talking to people to understand their problems. “Having an open mind is great!” Kaitlin says. “A lot of our reports require some deep diving and playing around to recreate the issue so put on your problem-solving hat.”
While some larger companies will allocate tickets based on a team member’s specialization, at a small startup you might not have that option, so having a sense of ownership over your tickets will be important. “When everyone works on everything, you have to be ready to get your hands dirty and work with others,” Kaitlin says.
“If you’re more of a solo worker and like to rely on yourself and just put your head down, support may not be for you,” Allyn says. “We work so closely with our learners, and we rely on them so much to give us the information we need to solve problems.” You can develop collaboration skills over time on the job, but if you want to get a head start, take our free course on becoming a successful collaborator.
Developing empathy is a big one: “At Codecademy, we work with individuals who are learning a new skill, which we all know can be extremely frustrating at times,” Kaitlin says. “You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and help them the best you can.”
The soft skills you develop in Customer Support are universally useful in any tech role, whether you work your way up the ladder in Support or see it as a launchpad for other career paths. Check out our catalog of professional skills courses to start learning today.
