Author: Rédaction Blog

Government of the Principality of Monaco Chooses Coorpacademy to Help Train its Community of Public Servants

 

The Government of the Principality of Monaco has confirmed e-learning leader Coorpacademy as its new digital training platform to underpin Monaco’s strategic transformation programme, Extended Monaco – a plan to digitise all of its public sector and economy.

In this context, the Principality’s government is launching a digital university, the Monaco Digital Academy, with a detailed training syllabus for its 3,600 public servants and agents in order to help them transition successfully to new way of working and processes.

A major player on the European Corporate Digital Learning scene and born on the campus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Coorpacademy develops innovative digital training solutions for businesses, government and third sector.

The Monaco Digital Academy will provide Monaco public sector professionals with an online training platform that integrates new digital functionalities, such as gamification and mobile learning, the latest pedagogical innovations including reverse pedagogy and 5-minute targeted training modules and multiple forms of high value content, so supporting letting learners develop vital new skills in a rapidly changing world.

The courses available online will focus on reinforcing and acquiring new soft and digital skills, and will be accessible via a catalogue of over 1,000 courses published by Coorpacademy in collaboration with its expert partners. The courses cover 90% of the skills deemed fundamental as identified by the World Economic Forum (The Future of Jobs 2018 study). In addition, the Government of the Principality will complement this digital resource with bespoke training, such as on wellbeing in the workplace and development of capabilities for specific positions.

The Academy is envisaged as a flexible and progressive training asset, enabling civil servants and agents to receive training on the subjects of their choice, whenever and wherever they want, using a computer, a smartphone or any other digital device.

For Frédéric Genta, Interministerial Delegate in charge of Digital Transformation in the Principality of Monaco: “In order for our public services to be a model in the digital world, we must help everyone, starting with our people in charge of carrying out our public policies. They must be able to benefit from an ambitious training programme, as there is no better investment than investing in one’s teams and their training.”

Stéphan Bruno, Head of Human Resources for the Government of the Principality of Monaco, explains the choice of Coorpacademy: “We wanted to create a training offer for our public service teams that is accessible, fun and diversified, and not limited to job skills. The user-centric learning experience offered by the Coorpacademy platform and the depth of its catalogue of courses elaborated with experts offered what we were looking for.”

“We are proud to have been selected as a core training supplier for this strategic digital plan that will impact all Monaco’s public policies,” adds Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy.

“The importance of training in the strategy of the Principality’s government and leaders demonstrates the ambition of this plan and their global understanding of the issue of digital transformation.”

How to Stop Worrying About a Jobless Future? An article from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy

 

This article has been originally published in Bdaily Business News. It has been written by Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy. To read it in its original form, it’s here.

Digital business transformation and training expert Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy and former head of Google France, says new ways of helping employees to ’upskill’ are on their way.

Here are some extracts of the article:

“We all know that Artificial Intelligence and automation are coming at us at breakneck speed. So how will business cope? Will we all be unemployed soon?

According to The World Economic Forum, technologies like AI and Robotic Process Automation are indeed entering every profession, and at speed. But does that mean fewer jobs, as so many fear – or a completely new set of career opportunities?”

[…]

“That means we all need to change jobs and careers multiple times throughout our lives: an ability to adapt will be critical. Against this backdrop, the job of the responsible business owner is to create ways to help their employees access the kind of training that might help them adjust, as well as cope with any new advanced tech you introduce yourself.

This is being crystallised down as the need to create a ‘learning culture’ – encouraging workers to gain new skills that organisations require now or in the future and in attracting and retaining talent.

One problem: we’re not doing that yet. Training and HR teams are there to provide the resources, tools and time to support learning, scheduling the diaries and career plans of staff, booking the armies of trainers and projectors, and making hundreds of hours of relevant content available. But, traditional training culture seems to assume staff are passive objects that simply get shuffled in and out of all those training rooms!”

[…]

“To get workplace training back to where it should be, this needs to change. In particular, if we are serious about our commitment to re- and up-skill and prepare for that near future, we need a way to connect back with the employee and deliver what they want. We also need to rethink the way training has traditionally been delivered – and we have to ask ourselves if it is realistic to expect people who work remotely and anytime, to stop everything and sit in front of a trainer with a PPT and a laser pointer for eight solid hours.

What does that look like in practice? Actually, very similar to what you and I are already doing in our day-to-day lives, and especially the Millennials and digital natives on your team. We live on our phones and we all try and make dead time waiting for a train as useful as possible, looking for content. We refuse to be delayed by a knowledge gap, turning to the Internet to plug any lack of understanding – and we might play a mobile game for a minute or two during a lunch break.”

[…]

“The old method of scheduling fixed hours needs to be discarded in favour of a blended learner-chosen model, where classroom training could be supported by a virtual environment in which all lessons and material are digital and available, 24×7 and increasingly via mobile and in short bursts. In addition, incorporating gamification and collaboration features will increase staff engagement by activating the joy of competition, too.

Such learner-centric approaches really work – and can, our data shows, secure user engagement levels for digital training content of more than 80%.”

You can read the article in its complete and original form here!

Discover other articles from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy:

Let’s welcome a new dawn of behavioural learning analytics – TrainingZone

Why Training is an Under-Used Source of Employee Insight – Incentive & Motivation

Jean-Marc Tassetto’s interview for French television (BFM Business).

 

What’s next with the French publishing house Dunod? Interview of Éric Pommat, Digital and Business Development Director

At the beginning of 2018, when we started our collaboration with the French publishing house Éditions Dunod, we had the chance to meet Éric Pommat, Digital and Business Development Director of the famous French publishing house to celebrate the beginning of our content partnership (to read this interview, it’s here).

After the co-edition of 4 courses, it was the right moment to see what had been done, to talk about the next steps and to see how we envision the follow-up of this insightful collaboration.

In 2018, learners discovered mindfulness at work, a meditation technique which fits very well in the corporate world to increase one’s energy levels and avoid stress-inducing “attention thieves”. Learners also developed their creativity with mind mapping, a mental mapping technique to leverage ideas, generate more ideas and become more creative at work. Do you sometimes feel non-productive at work? Our Learners discovered 9 tools to work efficiently, including the Eisenhower matrix and the Getting Things Done methodology. And finally, in 2018, our learners (re)discovered inbound marketing and growth hacking, those cost-effective, efficient and fast-to-implement marketing techniques. 4 new skills, between soft skills and toolboxes to feel better at work and work smarter, that pleased Coorpacademy’s learners in 2018 (and viewing numbers prove it!)

Here we are with Éric Pommat for a new interview, to discuss prospections for 2019.

Hello Éric, thanks for meeting us again. First of all, what did you think of the co-edition process with Coorpacademy? How the publishing house Dunod ensures the communication with content creators and Coorpacademy’s instructional designers for the course conception runs smoothly? 

The co-edition of the first 4 courses Dunod by Coorpacademy was flawless and efficient!

It’s important to note that Dunod is an atypical kind of partner for Coorpacademy. At the end of 2017, our publishing house – and it’s distinctive enough to highlight it – recruited its own team of instructional designers. Developing a new Digital Learning activity was indeed one of the major steps of our digital transformation.

Today, in addition to our legacy core work of publishing books, we want to put our editorial know-how, our pedagogical and digital expertise and the depth of content we have already to the benefit of companies and organisations. In order to advise them and to support them in their communication, custom edition and digital learning projects. Naturally, we’re on Datadock!

Those first courses have been created by our instructional designers, with experts on the topics and with the help of the instructional design team at Coorpacademy: everything was reunited to create engaging and attractive content for learners.

And a few months after our courses came out, the statistics speak for themselves: the Dunod by Coorpacademy courses are among the most played and appreciated on the Coorpacademy platforms.

How are topics selected for next courses?

We proceed in a “collective thinking way” by crossing propositions made by Dunod and Coorpacademy.

The Coorpacademy Team submits hot themes and topics among Coorpacademy’s customers or spots inspiring topics in the Dunod content catalogue.

On our side we use our editorial know-how, our experts network and our sales numbers to pick the most interesting and Coorpacademy-friendly matters.

After analyzing both insights, the collective intelligence of both teams then define the courses we’ll co-edit together!

What are the new courses to be released this year? 

In 2019, we’ll be working on soft skills with 4 new essential themes:

  • 1 hour to stop stressing and stay zen.
  • The best Lean tools for improving performance
  • Intrapreneurship and change makers
  • Learn how to learn

Are you noticing – in your day-to-day life – the importance soft skills are taking over hard skills?

Of course. The necessity to develop soft skills is becoming tangible everyday, in our jobs and day-to-day tasks. Sales techniques change, our readers’ ways of consuming content change, technology is becoming more and more important in our lives.

“…We’ve entered in the planned obsolescence of skills era (which have a life span between 6 months and 5 years)”  as Jérémy Lamri says it very well in its latest book 21st Century Skills: how to make a difference? “The skill to learn how to learn new skills become the central skill for someone, to allow that person to maintain his or her skills portfolio, to keep improving and to save his or her adaptability, meaning in the end his or her employability.”

It’s becoming obvious: uncertainty lies with the future of the job market, with the game-changing technological innovations or with jobs creation. How do Dunod publications adapt to this fast-changing environment?

We learn and we try to reinvent ourselves everyday, supported by our triple expertise (editorial, pedagogical and digital) and our content catalogue (7,000 books written by 5,500 experts, enriched with 365 new books every year, both digital and paper).

Let me show you a few examples.

At the end of 2016, facing the structural decrease of our specialized markets, we started a transformation by creating a general public department at Dunod.

In 2017, we started to work on the digital learning market, first with soft skills programme (Stress Management/Self-confidence, Management, Time Management) developed for a group of private universities, and then with Coorpacademy.

In 2018, we launched an innovative online training tools for infancy professionals with the Pros of Infancy.

In 2019, we just launched the Dunod Atelier, a new B2B service of custom edition.

What is your favorite course co-edited with Coorpacademy? And why?

“Mindfulness at Work“, “Boost your Creativity with Mind-Mapping“, “Working efficiently: The 9 tools you need to know about“, “Inbound Marketing & Growth Hacking“, “1 hour to stop stressing and stay zen“, “The best Lean tools for improving performance”… and the list will grow bigger!

Each new course is our favorite. We are in a continuous improvement process, we learn and we do better each time. It’s very motivating. I can’t wait for the next course to come out!”

Let’s welcome a new dawn of behavioural learning analytics – an article from Jean-Marc Tassetto in TrainingZone

 

This article has been originally published in TrainingZone, which is the UK’s leading learning & development publication, covering everything you need to know to deliver absolute excellence in L&D. It has been written by Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy.

With the rise of learning experience platforms, L&D teams will be able to measure and assess the behaviour of employees as they progress through their learning journey, taking learning analytics to a whole new level.

Discover the article in its original form here!

Here are some extracts of the article:

“Like it or not, the L&D sector is not where it should be when it comes to proving its worth to the wider business. The good news is that a way of mapping training investment to measurable bottom-line results may be about to become available at last.

Let’s review how important that is.

[…]

“By not providing hard evidence of how learning is adding value on an individual, team or organisational level, practitioners are missing a huge opportunity to gain recognition of their contribution to the organisation and much-needed investment for future learning,” warned the organisation’s [Fosway Group, Editor’s Note] Director of Research David Perring.

Only 14% of respondents could say with confidence that they are effectively measuring the impact of learning, while around half are ineffectively doing so – and a third not measuring impact at all.

No wonder Perring answered a question about how the L&D industry is faring with measuring learning impact, with just one word: “Terribly.”

[…]

“However help may finally be at hand in the shape of learning experience platforms (LEPs), recently formalised as a new market category by Gartner, which has started to become increasingly common in L&D work in the past few years. Highly user-centric in their delivery model and usability it’s maybe less well known that they have also revolutionised the analytical L&D palette.

How? Because LEPs track any behaviour traces and use them to test what works and what doesn’t, based on a powerful new way of collecting such data, the ‘Experience API’ or xAPI standard.”

[…]

“Finally, with the LEP much more flexible and interesting ways of working with corporate learning have started to deliver much richer datasets that are the basis for really useful analysis.

The consequence for learning analytics of the LEP is that the data we’re getting back now is much more complete and behavioural.

That’s because in order to constantly improve the learning experience, the most advanced xAPI-enabled LEP tracks any behaviour indicators it can spot and uses them to test what works and what doesn’t, based on tracking the stream of learning activities – and not just completion of modules.

The results are highly promising. For a start, the learner, not just the trainer and administrator, can get a sense of his/her progress and experience. That really matters if we want our teams to be truly autonomous learners able to ensure their own long-term employability.”

[…]

“L&D managers and administrators benefit because they can access all sorts of new types of insight – not only finding out what someone successfully learned, but how the learner got there and which learning approach they chose. […] Take curiosity, identified as an “important variable for the prediction and explanation of work-related behavior” (Mussel, 2013). That is really critical, as motivation to engage in lifelong learning is a sine qua non of employability for today’s worker.

Notably, another important effect of curious collaborators is that they contribute to a company’s innovation potential, particularly in the light of the “death of top-down management” (cf. John Bell, 2013).

Employee learning perseverance is another potential new KPI example. When you next need to decide who to recruit to lead a project, or who to train, it may be useful to select those who are qualified but also the most resilient candidate (cf. Amy Ahearn, 2017).”

[…]

“Could a new ‘behavioural learning analytics’ emerge that will put learning and training back in the centre of your organisation? It’s starting to look that way.”

To read this article in its original form, it’s here!

If you want to discover other articles from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, you can click on those links:

Why Training is an Under-Used Source of Employee Insight – Incentive & Motivation

Jean-Marc Tassetto’s interview for French television (BFM Business).

Is LXP the new LMS – Enterprise Times

 

1 million Battles have been played on all Coorpacademy platforms!

 

Learning is difficult.

Learning new skills has always been tough, in school or in corporations. To remedy this situation, we provide on the Coorpacademy platforms features coming from the gaming world to sparks engagement and make training fun, addictive and attractive.

Gaming features provided by the Coorpacademy platform

The Battle mode, one of our most iconic gaming feature, has a significative impact on learning, in the short-term but also in the long-term. What’s a Battle? A mode where the learner can challenge another one in a quick quiz battle.

You think you’re unbeatable on cognitive biases, those thinking traps that can easily trick your mind and ways of thinking? You want to challenge your colleague Anna on the topic? It’s easy: launch the Battle mode, click on “Create a Battle”, choose your Playlist, the course and the course level (in this case the “Always one step ahead!” Playlist and the course Cognitive Biases: Thinking Traps) and answer the questions.

Once the quiz is done, Anna will receive an email inviting her to answer the same questions. The one who has the most right answers wins the Battle, and then Stars to climb up the ranking. If it’s a draw, the one who answered the fastest wins the Battle.

You won? Anna wants her revenge and challenges you again on her favorite course, Inbound Marketing and Growth Hacking! Anna challenges you with the Battle mode

Because you’re doing Battles, Anna and yourself are more engaged in your training courses. It’s been proven that Battles were improving coworkers’ engagement in corporate training.

In our Learning Report 2018, we identified a type of learners, the Players (the learners who played at least one Battle) and we realized that Players were more engaged and more efficient in training. The Players are 2x more present: the number of months that a learner is active on the platform during his/her whole learner life cycle is two times higher for Battle players than for non-players. The Players are also 3x more active, with more than 3x more lessons viewed. They also dive deeper into the content: they have started and completed 7 more modules on average than non-players. Finally, the Players are 13% more successful (success rate is measured as the completion rate of started modules) than non-Players.

Our clients are also seeing the difference. In our latest interview with BNP Paribas Asset Management (they launched their Coorpacademy-powered platform Digit’Learning in May 2018), Sylvie Vazelle-Tenaud, Head of Marketing Europe for Individuals, Advisors and Online Banks, told us:

We present the platform as a tool for gaining expertise with a gaming aspect. In our communication, we mainly highlight the functionality of “lives”. We also highlight the fact they can earn stars. This functionality enables us to generate emulation between employees and make them want to take the courses again. Conversely, we didn’t communicate very much about battles but the employees discovered that functionality on their own and loved it! Coorpacademy offers flexibility in learning without being time-consuming, as the average duration of an entire learning journey is 20 minutes. Employees build their expertise in record time while having fun!

Indeed, more than 70,000 Battles have been launched on the BNP Paribas Asset Management platform in only one year. Playing is natural, it doesn’t seem to require a lot of effort and at the same time it helps and favour learning.

Learning becomes easier.

On all our platforms, we reached 1 million Battles played!

Will you launch the 1 million and one?

Ready, steady, challenge!

Ever Heard of Machine Teaching?

 

This article is part of our new Learning research and innovation series, offered by Coorpacademy in association with the EPFL’s (Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, Switzerland) LEARN Center. The author is Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg, Professor at the EPFL, Head of the CHILI Lab (Computer-Human Interaction for Learning & Instruction) and Director of the Swiss EdTech Collider.

The terms Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence are on everyone’s lips. But what if we extended this list to something we call ‘Machine Teaching’ – and then speculate on what it might mean for education?

Towards ‘Machine Teaching’

Let’s imagine an algorithm that needs to learn how to identify elephants in pictures. In supervised Machine Learning, it gets an example – e.g. picture-3465 – and a label, such as ‘elephant’ or ‘non-elephant’. Picture-3465 may just be the next in a set of thousands of labelled pictures. But if the 3,464 previous pictures were all of African elephants, the system would learn less from yet another African elephant picture, than if an Asian elephant picture was introduced for the first time.

Similarly, if all the previous pictures showed mostly mature elephants, it would be better for the algorithm’s training to select a younger one. Again, if most of them were side on pictures, a frontal view would improve the knowledge acquired by the algorithm.

In other words, if the examples were not fed to the learning algorithm randomly, but strategically selected, one could optimize the machine’s overall learning performance. In a classroom setting, selecting examples is the role of the teacher: she knows that if all examples of squares given to learners are in a horizontal position, learners will logically infer that a square with a 45 degree rotation is not a square.

Any algorithm that determines the optimal sequence of examples such that they are diverse and sufficiently dissimilar from what has been shown previously to a Machine Learning system can be called a Machine Teaching algorithm.

Why Should We Care about Machine Teaching?

If an algorithm receives random examples as inputs, with no strategic consideration of the type of example and what the algorithm will go on to learn from exposure to this example, then clearly problems will arise. First, we should not confuse the size of the sample data with its intrinsic usefulness: merely feeding big data to a Machine Learning algorithm is not enough to guarantee the AI has learnt well and will perform well in its tasks. Secondly, the algorithm could tend towards taking wrong or biased decisions. Let’s reuse the above example of the identification of elephants from pictures: if the only pictures labeled as “non-elephant” are pictures of white animals, the algorithm might infer that only white animals are to be categorised as non-elephants. Sounds silly, but this kind of biases creep in, and matter. Biased algorithms can reinforce gender stereotypes (as was the case in Google’s translation service), or might suggest wrong decisions about humans (as, for example, decision support systems for judges which over-estimated the probability of recidivism for African-American people).

How Does All This Apply to Education?

The impact of AI on education spreads over three layers: (1) Method: AI may enhance the effectiveness of learning technologies where it is expected to enable a fine adaptation of instruction to individual learner needs: over time, a system may learn which learning activity is optimal for a certain learner profile. (2) Content: AI is changing what students should learn or should not learn and is also accelerating the production of learning material, for instance generating questions from Wikipedia. (3) Management: AI and especially data sciences offer new ways to manage education systems (e.g. predicting students’ failure).

Machine Teaching turns out to be relevant in all of those applications. Personalised learning, based on recommender systems, can only be well adapted to the personal needs of a learner if the data set on which the recommendation is based on is large and equilibrated enough. That means we need non-random data selection in any machine learning, i.e. the algorithm needs to be fed with data on what is effective for all types of learners.

In terms of content, when learning about data science and machine learning, learners need to also learn how to design the optimal dataset that the algorithm will learn from. Engineers are becoming teachers of algorithms by default, because you cannot simply program a Machine Learning algorithm. We need to better facilitate the correct decision-making of the algorithm – the same way a good teacher helps her students to develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Innovation in Learning Science and Educational Technologies are top of our agenda at Coorpacademy, as we see them as critical to our mission to continuously improve the learning experience on our platform, making it even more personalized, flexible and enjoyable for learners.

The author Pierre Dillenbourg

Why Training Is an Under-Used Source of Employee Insight

 

This article was written by Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy and former Managing Director of Google France, and originally published in Incentive & Motivation. Incentive & Motivation magazine offers the latest news in incentives, employee rewards, employee engagement, motivation and employee benefits. Distributed to HR, Sales and Managing Directors with key industry senior incentive level incentive buyers.

Why Training Is an Under-Used Source of Employee Insight

Here are a few extracts of the article:

Co-founder of Coorpacademy, Jean-Marc Tassetto, outlines how new training analytics could offer unexpected help to HR professionals

Training is, as we know, a key source of workforce engagement – an important component of helping employees feel a real sense of belonging and identification and a tangible way to underline your commitment to their future learning and development as their employer.

[…]

Up until recently learning analytics only existed in a very partial way. That was because the dominant training technology we’ve been using – the Learning Management System (LMS) – managed access and tracked participation of learners, namely the attendee list and the scheduling of trainer time, but little else.

The LMS might offer information on content downloads, task completions and module completion, but the data was very thin to say the least. What’s changed in this picture is the debut of a much more flexible and useful L&D technology tool  – new-style Learning Experience Platforms (LEPs), as recently formalised as a separate market category by Gartner.

What’s different about the LEP contribution, as opposed to the LMS support idea, is that they are all about the learner experience – being highly user-centric in their delivery model and usability. Less well-known is the fact that some of the most advanced have revolutionised the analytical possibilities for L&D professionals because LEPs track delegate behaviour and tests what works and what doesn’t (based on internal new ways of collecting data such as the xAPI).

[…]

What this means in practice is that the HR or Chief Learning Officer is increasingly the recipient of data-based insights and gets to exploit all sorts of new types of insight – not only what someone has learnt, but how the learner got there and which learning approach they chose. This opens up the possibility for new performance indicators, such as Curiosity, or Resilience – both hugely valuable HR metrics. And of course, this will ultimately aid the workplace learner – as the learner become aware of what her own data says about her progress and experience so as to ensure long-term employability.

The transformative potential of these new indicators is even greater if you consider that the World Economic Forum identified re- and up-skilling of the current workforce as the number one strategy companies need to embrace in light of our continuing transformation into a knowledge economy. Knowledge, in the Google age is easily acquired, curiosity on the other hand seems less ubiquitous, and many commentators believe we need to boost employee curiosity as well as to build greater resilience and adaptability to change.

[…]

So let’s help prepare our teams for this uncertain but dynamic future and see what LEP and xAPI-enabled training feedback and KPIs can give us: a new source of analytics that means that HR professionals and incentives professionals can use multiple, appropriate, data sources to properly consider the full candidate potential of a person for a specific job – not only in terms of their knowledge and skills, but also their curiosity and aptitude for change. Not only are these traits important ones to cultivate, but they are also important ones to keep.”

You can read the entire article here.

You can also read these other articles from Jean-Marc Tassetto.

Jean-Marc Tassetto’s interview for French television (BFM Business).

Is LXP the new LMS – Enterprise Times

Computational Thinking: a key skill in the 21st century

 

Interview BNP Paribas Asset Management: Digit’learning, an upskilling tool with gaming elements

 

To accelerate the upskilling of branch advisors and “deliver durable returns on investment for our customers in the long term”, BNP PARIBAS ASSET MANAGEMENT, the group’s division specialising in asset management, chose to complement its training package (in-class and online) with an innovative digital learning solution: the Digit’learning platform.

Developed by Coorpacademy and co-created with the company’s marketing department, the platform offers several training courses on BNP Paribas Asset Management’s financial products. 6,000 advisors have used the platform since 2018 to develop their expertise.

On the forefront of innovation, the company headed by Frédéric Janbon just announced the reinforcement of its commitment to sustainable investments.

We sat down with Sylvie Vazelle-Tenaud, Head Of Marketing For Individuals, Advisors and Online Banks, and Camille Lafon, E-Marketing Manager, who were kind enough to answer our questions.

 What are your main functions within BNP Paribas Asset Management?

Our role is to conduct the promotion of BNP Paribas Asset Management products within the BNP Paribas group’s distribution networks and towards individual clients. We also provide our sales teams in different countries innovative digital marketing solutions to help them conduct efficient training and provide the right information for branch advisors.

What was the problem you wanted to solve with Coorpacademy? And what was your objective?

We wanted to increase the expertise of our branch advisors on BNP Paribas Asset Management products. Considering the number of people targeted (nearly 12,000 employees), we needed a solution that would complement the training and information provided by BNP Paribas Asset Management sales representatives in the field. The digital solution was the most efficient way to reach that objective quickly.

How do advisors become familiar with BNP Paribas Asset Management products?

We use two ways to help them build their expertise and learn on BNP Paribas Asset Management products.

The first way is conducted either through physical presence in the field or via web-conferences with BNP Paribas Asset Management sales teams in every country where BNP Paribas has a distribution network.

The second way is done remotely, with pedagogical videos, online learning modules and games on digital platforms deployed across the entire network worldwide (challenges for building virtual allocation portfolios, for example)

What did the Coorpacademy platform add to the equation?

The Coorpacademy platform provided innovation and pedagogy. It is different from traditional online learning thanks to its additional gaming aspect. It also offers flexibility in learning without being time-consuming, as the average duration of an entire learning journey is 20 minutes. Employees build their expertise in record time while having fun!

The learners seem to be open to playing and use the gaming functionalities a lot (over 70,000 battles have been initiated). Do you think gamification is a key success factor in acquiring expertise?

Yes, absolutely. We present the platform as a tool for gaining expertise with a gaming aspect. In our communication, we mainly highlight the functionality of “lives” (to complete a level, an employee has 3 lives, represented as hearts on the platform; one wrong answer and they lose a heart/life, after 3 wrong answers, they must start again with a new quiz). We also highlight the fact they can earn stars (stars reward the completion of a course: the ranking of employees is ultimately defined by the number of stars earned). This functionality enables us to generate emulation between employees and make them want to take the courses again. Conversely, we didn’t communicate very much about battles (a functionality on the Coorpacademy platform which lets a player challenge another one on a course, with stars to win for the player with the most correct answers) but the employees discovered that functionality on their own and loved it!

 What are the main results you observed?

Lots of enthusiasm! User feedback is a good indicator:

  • “Great digital initiative! Very good pedagogical approach.”
  • “The platform is user-friendly thanks to the battles, much better than traditional online learning!”
  • “Very clear, the videos are graphically pleasing, and just the right length!”
  • “A way of revising that is quick and efficient, very succinct content, congenial platform.”

And once people are connected, the activation rate is high, the courses are often taken to the end, and the employees are even asking for more programs. The gaming functionalities are highly used and have a strong part in the enthusiasm surrounding the platform.

How do you create your tailor-made courses on the Coorpacademy platform?

We work according to the commercial calendar of each country and create upskilling programs designed to support the reach of pre-defined commercial objectives. At the marketing department, we define with the BNP Paribas Asset Management sales teams the content of the courses, which is then validated by the concerned distribution network. Once this step is over, the marketing team takes charge of the writing process of the scripts, makes suggestions for the videos, and everything is sent for production to Coorpacademy.

We generally launch one program per trimester in each country. We have already completed 10, and we have a dozen more in the pipeline for 2019!

Thank you very much! 

Thank you!

 

How Manor’s top executives and managers train on soft skills and digital culture: exclusive interview of Graziella Ribic

 

Manor is the largest department store chain in Switzerland. It has its own online shop. With a market share of 60%, it is the market leader. The company employs around 9,750 people in its 60 department stores, 28 Manora restaurants, 31 Manor Food supermarkets, 4 distribution centres and in its headquarters in Basel. Tradition and innovation come together in this company; since its founding in 1902, it has reinvented itself time and again. After all, change is – and will remain – a great constant. As the dynamic, fast-paced and innovative company that it is, Manor began working with Coorpacademy in October 2018, mainly to help its employees adapt to digitalisation.

The partnership with Coorpacademy is based on the following premises: no content generated, but the desire to train Manor employees on topics related to digital culture, the future of retail, management and leadership skills. On the occasion of the beginning of this partnership, we met with Graziella Ribic, Head of Executive Development, who is leading the project.

How does Manor implement its innovation strategy in everyday life, particularly in the areas of human resources and employees’ personal development? What does the company do in real terms?

We offer a range of professional development courses in these four areas: Digital Basics, Sales, Leadership and Purchasing. These courses are tailored to the future needs of the company and of the market, which we continually adjust in the face of emerging changes. For example, we are currently offering our managers the ‘Leading Change’ training course, which is made of 2 parts: digital courses with Coorpacademy and a subsequent classroom training component. In addition, our managers have free access to all Coorpacademy course offerings. This allows them to engage in continuous training in an independent manner on a whim.

You already have a process for designing training content. What were the requirements and what did you like so much about Coorpacademy and its catalogue that you wanted to add it to your existing content catalogue?

Since we were primarily looking for content and methods that would help us in the areas of digitalisation and leadership, Coorpacademy suited us immediately. The playful approach also appealed to us, as we already make sure our self-made e-learning courses have content that is as easy to understand as possible and that the knowledge is tested using short quizzes. The option of doing a five-minute learning session on a break or on the go is something that really goes down well with us, as our days usually have too few hours. Such short learning nuggets always fit in somewhere in the day!

Why do you think having a proper digital culture and learning soft skills are a key 21st century challenge?

Digitalisation has brought with it – and continues to bring with it – so many innovations that directly or indirectly change our daily lives. Who can imagine life without smartphones today? And we must know about all these innovations and learn how to use them. People who cannot keep up will one day – sooner rather than later – be left standing puzzled in front of a machine, helplessly looking around for staff that will no longer be available. But in my opinion, the question will not be one of ‘humans or machines‘ but rather of ‘both humans and machines‘. There will be areas where machines will dominate, but there will also be areas where humans will prevail. In order to find our way in daily life, we need to engage with the digital world. After all, digitalisation has come to stay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Discover Graziella Ribic’s interview in video! (in German).

When Struggle Helps You Learn: The Mechanisms Behind Productive Failure

 

Here is the first in our new series of articles focused on learning research and innovation, in association with the EPFL’s (Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, Switzerland) LEARN Center.

The author of this contribution is Dr Jessica Dehler Zufferey, Executive Director at the Center for Learning Sciences (LEARN) at the EPFL, and a former R&D director at Coorpacademy.

Innovation in Learning Science and Educational Technologies are at the top of our agenda at Coorpacademy – as we see them as critical to our mission to continuously improve the learning experience on our platform, making it even more personalized, flexible and enjoyable for learners.

Can the best learning only happen in a culture where errors are not just accepted but are seen as valuable occasions to improve skills?

When learning a new topic on the Coorpacademy platform, learners always have the choice to engage with questions first or to see the learning material first.

Intuitively one would expect that someone with high prior knowledge on the topic should start with questions, while someone with no or low prior knowledge should start with the instructional content before going on to answering questions. But is this actually true? Research on a method called ‘Productive Failure’ arrives at the opposite conclusion.

How does it work?

Initially developed in Singapore by Manu Kapur, now professor at ETH Zurich, and now established worldwide, Productive Failure emphasises the positive nature of the learner challenge. When learning new content, learners benefit from an initial phase of creative and conceptual brainstorming before turning towards the content, information, and explanation. If you want to learn something about data science, for example, you should first play with some data, invent some measures you could apply, and experiment with what you can come up with. The quality of the ideas you generate is not that important since even wrong ideas can create the productive failure effect. For Kapur, productive failure ‘is the preparation for learning’, not the learning per se.

What impact does it have?

Literature on the approach shows that not only will your conceptual understanding be better if you ‘fail first’, but your interest and motivation for the topic will be increased. A valuable side effect is also to train persistence. The number of ideas generated is also higher when failing first, so the method also stimulates creativity.

Why does it work?

The cognitive learning mechanisms behind the productive failure effect are actually quite well understood. First, any cognitive activation is beneficial for learning as it puts the brain in ‘active mode’. Second, all learning is situated and by developing their own ideas learners are creating the context in which to situate any upcoming learning. Third, by developing ideas before the instructional part, learners create a feeling for the types of problems that are similar so they are more likely to apply the to be learned content in future situations, and so improve performance as a result of learning.

What does it mean for you as a lifelong learner?

Whenever you start learning a new subject, do not go straight towards the instructional content in the belief that you need to begin by getting some basic understanding. Rather, profit from this initial ‘naïve’ phase and develop various ideas, right or wrong – and only then, once engaged, turn towards the content and enjoy learning.

Author first article Learning Research and Innovation

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