Professional Education

Many professional learning institutions have mission statements related to convenience.  You may have seen commercials that talk about learning in your pajamas, whenever and however you want, with world-class services to help you achieve your goals. Mobile access to education is the embodiment of that convenience. For career colleges, the “anytime, anywhere” access to education provided by online learning is increasingly important.

Our recent post comparing online and traditional learners highlights that demand for online courses exceeds demand for traditional courses across higher ed institutions, and that 30% of today’s students take at least one class online.  This should come as no surprise when we consider that today’s learners are accustomed to a highly-connected world, with access to social networks and other online tools constantly at their fingertips.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, corporations must equip employees with relevant, accessible training to stay on the cutting edge.  Classroom-style education is no longer adequate to provide professionals with the continuous engagement they need to learn online and on-the-go. That’s why so many highly achieving companies have turned to Blackboard Learn to bring their professional training to the next level.

Blackboard Learn for Corporations is much more than an LMS. It’s an online learning and professional development solution that engages professionals and drives knowledge retention, which ultimately impacts your bottom line. Watch the video below to see how Blackboard is leveraging our vast experience in education to provide solutions for the corporate market:

I recently came across a thought-provoking article from Will Thalheimer’s Will at Work Learning blog.  The post, entitled The Five Failures of Workplace Learning Professionals, offers insights on how to improve some of the most significant weaknesses of on-the-job training. One of the most interesting points Thalheimer makes in this post is that “we forget to minimize forgetting and improve remembering.” In short, his point is that professional educators need to provide tools for memory retention so that knowledge gained during training can be used in the long term.

The article lists these three mechanisms that can help support remembering:

·         Aligning the learning and performance contexts

·         Providing retrieval practice

·         Utilizing spaced repetitions

In today’s hyper-connected world, it should come as no surprise that educators are constantly seeking ways to engage students through the Internet.  Even though more and more students are taking classes entirely online, traditional classroom-based education can also be greatly enhanced with web-based capabilities.  This blended strategy, which combines face-to-face classes with online components, has proven to be highly effective amongst various types of educational institutions. Blackboard’s solutions for online learning and content management are perfect for enhancing classroom learning with engaging, social, online capabilities. Here are a few best practices for leveraging these solutions after your students have left the classroom:

Extend the School Day: Drive traffic to the learning environment by allowing access to important information online as an incentive.  Post grades, homework, or anything else interesting to the student inside your LMS, and make sure the students are aware that this desirable content is available there. Once learners are in the system, engage them with additional learning content to help reinforce what happens in the classroom to achieve greater learning outcomes.

In a recent article, CNN listed the top 25 companies for leaders according to Fortune Magazine.  The article states that the companies listed “go above an beyond the call of duty when it comes to grooming talent from within.” Though there is great diversity in the Fortune list, which includes an American fast-food company, a Chinese property developer, and a Spanish bank, what the companies share in common is the view that cultivating strong leaders is a “strategic priority.”

Many of these corporations begin fostering leadership at the entry level and promote continuous learning for those leaders all the way up to the C-suite.  This helps to form leaders who are knowledgeable of and invested in their companies, especially when leadership is developed over the long term. So what’s their secret to talent and leadership success?  Well, we know that Blackboard plays a role with several of the listed companies, which demonstrates how our solution is key to building an exceptional professional learning culture. This commonality indicates that organizations dedicated to effective training and development are gravitating towards Blackboard for professional education solutions… and are getting results they desire.