Tag: coorpacademy

Training is a big deal!

 

Training is above all a human adventure. It puts people at the heart of the company and helps the talents that make up the company to progress. Through the story of my experience, I would like to try to answer the following question: does the size of the company count when it comes to training?

 

Having had the opportunity to work within groups of different sizes and operating in different sectors or regions, I have always noticed a common denominator in these experiences: my desire to learn. Whether it was learning how to produce an editorial calendar, something very concrete, or developing my adaptability, a so-called soft skill, the size of the company was never a hindrance to progress. But then, if size doesn’t matter, what’s left to measure? To help you understand, let me tell you the story of my rise in skills.

 

Here we are 3 years ago, I land in Montreal, and I discover the queue to enter the bus. If I decided to join Céline, it’s not for the love of poutine but for an internship in a big international cosmetics company. The dream – with 20 degrees less. With more than 8,500 employees, this first experience in marketing will allow me to develop skills that will be essential to me later on… Because in addition to the management and coordination tasks that I carry out on a daily basis – and which I quickly adopted the basics of – I am developing an unfailing ability to adapt without even noticing it. FYI, I work in French with Quebecers who work half the time in English. Since Canada is an English and French speaking country, all communications are done in both languages, but not all communications can be adapted to both languages. I adapt the speech, change the slogans, arrange the visuals. And when I get back to France, I feel like I’ve become a chameleon who can’t wait to change my appearance.

 

I’m back in France, I’ve just got a work-study contract to validate my last year of a Master’s degree in Communication, I’m starting in 2 days. The chameleon that I have become is not disappointed: I will now work in a telemedicine start-up! A dream come true – minus the Quebec accent. From my very first days, I’m learning new tools, adopting a new tone in my communications and immersing myself in new subjects. Offering teleconsultations and understanding the care pathway is a bit different than selling perfumes and understanding different skin types. And while I’m gaining skills in the Adobe suite, developing my creativity and gaining self-confidence, something happens that turns my life upside down: a certain extremely contagious and dangerous virus has appeared in the Wuhan region. You already know the rest: confinement, teleworking, Zoom aperitif and increased screen time. For my company, which has about forty employees, the adaptation is fast, and that’s good because we are at the front line. Although size doesn’t matter when it comes to training employees, it does influence the available manpower. This is why I had the opportunity during this pivotal period to provide support for tasks other than those usually assigned to me. This experience and this unprecedented situation allowed me to develop resilience and flexibility. But as I finish my work placement and head towards the world of work, I know that I will miss the school benches because I am thirsty to learn… Unless?

 

Unless the world of work is finally similar to the school benches. To finish our story, we are – almost – out of the health crisis and I finally found my first job as a Community Manager! The dream – minus the terraces. So I work in a start-up that does digital learning. A platform for massively developing the skills of employees, while meeting the needs of each learner. If joining a digital learning company makes it easier to increase your skills – I admit it – I discovered that, in the end, what I want to do later on is learn. Indeed, today I have understood that the common denominator of my employability, and above all of my motivation, is to progress, to improve myself, to adapt my skills to my environment. And as my environment is constantly changing, the chameleon that I am wants to learn continuously.

 

Thus, I have noticed through the writing of this article that all my experiences have led me to mobilise essential soft skills. Adaptation, resilience, creativity, team spirit, stress management, etc. are the soft skills that I have developed and nurtured throughout my professional life. The development of my skills is mainly based on my motivation and, to a certain extent, on the tools or situations that allow it. If the size of the company does not matter for my motivation to learn, the tools that will be made available to me can be influenced by this factor. In 2015, the inequality of opportunity in terms of training is reflected in the figures: the proportion of employees who received training in 2015 increases significantly with the size of the company employing them: 25% in the 10-19 employee group, 29% in the 20-49 group and 41% in the 50-249 group. These figures then increase to 58% above 250 employees, and to 63% above 500. Employees of large companies are therefore proportionally two and a half times more likely to have been trained in 2015.

 

This is why it is crucial that all companies, regardless of the number of employees, should be able to offer – and be offered – training that is engaging, impactful and accessible from anywhere. In conclusion, to train effectively, let’s not measure the size of the company, but rather measure the commitment of learners to develop their skills and the relevance of the devices put in place.

 

Are you a company with less than 250 employees and are you looking to develop your staff rapidly and massively? Discover Team by Coorpacademy, the training offer specially designed for start-ups and SMEs! Take advantage of a 15-day free trial – only available in French: https://coorpteam.coorpacademy.com  

Clue, the educational investigation: become the hero of your training!

 

Having just arrived on Skill Island, the seven members of the Newcleus research laboratory’s party committee soon lose one of their number in tragic circumstances. What happened to poor Mr Boddy? While everything seems to point to an accident, Colonel Mustard suspects… murder! He decides to investigate on the sly… Who could have had it in for the good man? With what weapon was he killed? And in which room of the house did the murder take place? These answers are up to you to find, thanks to the clues that have been misplaced in the sumptuous house. It’s up to you to play detective, it’s up to you to play…

 

Clue !  

 

With more than 150 million copies sold worldwide since 1950 – including 4 million in France – the mythical board game developed by Hasbro® has been invited onto the Coorpacademy platforms to make your employees the heroes of their training.

 

Discover this new educational format through 3 clues on the backstage of this partnership! 

 

Clue 1 – An iconic and entertaining partnership

 

Building on the success of the Trivial Pursuit courses, our partnership with Hasbro continues to enrich our training offer through the world-famous game Clue. Making learning more fun is one of our core beliefs and engaging employees in training is one of our daily missions. Therefore, we are constantly looking for innovative and entertaining formats, so that the learner is a real actor in the course they are playing.

 

With this new learning innovation, the learners of the Coorpacademy platforms have the opportunity to develop their skills through a game that they know well, and which mobilises their full attention! Indeed, a good detective must be critical…

 

Clue n°2 – A formative and playful investigation!

In Coorpacademy’s Clue investigation, your objective is to understand who is behind the murder of Mr Boddy… To solve this crime, you will have to discover as many clues as possible by exploring the manor and questioning the five suspects. But be careful… they will mislead you, knowingly or not! Your critical thinking skills will be essential to unravel the truth.

 

This skill, identified as indispensable by 2025 by the World Economic Forum, enables people to learn how to construct rigorous reasoning in order to achieve an objective, or to analyse facts in order to formulate a judgment.

 

Clue 3 – An immersive learning experience 

You are now in the shoes of the famous Colonel Mustard! You have access to the different rooms of the manor. These are full of clues that you can manipulate to gather all the information you need to solve your investigation. Pssst… the mansion is so big, it also hides secret passages. Pay attention, they might help you to identify the real culprit…

 

Set sail for Skill Island, a windy island, and find the seven members of the Newcleus research lab’s party committee! Hurry, one of them will soon disappear under strange circumstances… Start the investigation!

The playlist: a new asset to simplify the learning experience

 

It knows you better than anyone else, adapts to your desires, and facilitates your access to choice pieces: the course playlist, a new feature of the Team offer.

 

Monday morning, you open your favourite music streaming application and on the home screen, you hesitate. Are you more in the mood to discover the new releases of the month or to listen to your classics again? You’ll opt for your favourite playlist, but you’re not sure if the transition from that little alternative rock band you’ve just discovered to Adele’s latest album will go smoothly – then you feel like starting the week on a pop note, Adele, that’s for a rainy Sunday night.

 

On any platform, from music streaming to binge-watching giants, personalisation is key. To engage users, it is crucial to simplify their experience on a platform. Because on Monday morning, while you’re wavering between two musical styles, you also get 2 WhatsApp messages, 3 LinkedIn notifications and a reminder for Friday lunchtime: finish the Excel file for accounting. Ouch, Excel is not your forte.

 

So instead of browsing your playlists on Spotify, you decide to take the subject in hand! On Team by Coorpacademy, your company’s new e-learning offering, you discover a simple interface and quickly identify the ideal playlist to fill in your gaps by Friday. Having become an ace in office automation, you excel on Friday lunchtime, and the auditory dilemma of Monday morning is transformed into a learning dilemma between the playlist “Understanding digital and e-commerce” or “Make your teams more agile”.

 

As you will have understood, organising training content in the form of playlists is an effective way of customising and simplifying the learning experience. Specially designed for start-ups and SMEs, the new Team by Coorpacademy offer aims to facilitate access to training for smaller companies. Following interviews with start-up and SME managers, their needs and constraints have been clearly identified. Their employees need to be trained on a massive scale and quickly in subjects that are strategic for the company. This is why the Team offer is adapted to their expectations and proposes our catalogue of premium content organised in the form of playlists, in order to simplify learning on the platform.

 

The Team offer – available in French only for now – includes 17 carefully selected course themes to stimulate employee productivity, including digital culture, social networks, sales performance, agile management, language learning, office automation, etc. Indeed, following interviews with start-up and SME managers, these topics were mentioned as essential for the competitiveness and strategic development of companies with less than 250 employees:

 

          1. Don’t make any more mistakes when writing!
          2. Master professional English
          3. Express yourself perfectly in writing and speaking
          4. Succeed in your team management
          5. Manage your projects with agility
          6. Develop your learning skills
          7. Optimise your time management
          8. Learn to manage your emotions at work
          9. How to combine teleworking and performance
          10. Digital security: adopt the right reflexes!
          11. Strengthen your digital culture
          12. Use and value data
          13. Initiate the sustainable transformation of your company
          14. Corporate Social Responsibility: take action!
          15. Promote diversity and inclusion in your company
          16. Succeed in all your sales
          17. Become an outstanding negotiator

Test the Team offer in French for free for 15 days by clicking here!

 

Organising skills development in the form of playlists simplifies access to knowledge and makes it more fluid. Simplifying the learners’ experience encourages the development of new habits. The aim is for them to develop a real desire to learn, a boundless curiosity, and a good capacity to retain information. And simplifying the learner experience encourages these behaviours.

 

Your music streaming application knows your tastes by heart, so it can recommend the best content for you. Within the playlists it recommends to you, it identifies the music genres and artists you like. On your e-learning platform, we also observe your behaviour within the course playlists, so that we can then offer you courses that are better suited to your profile, your level, or to guide you towards a related subject!

Get 15 days trial to test the new Team offer in French 👉 https://coorpteam.coorpacademy.com/coming-soon-in-english/ 

What skills should you develop as a Learning & Development professional?

 

To prepare employees for the world of tomorrow, the Coorpacademy team is always on the lookout for the latest skills to develop. In order to offer relevant training content, our teams are made up of diverse talents who are always highly motivated by the idea of transmitting. Because our objective is to meet the expectations of learners and make them want to learn, like all learning managers in the world, we mobilise certain skills in our teams to guarantee the best learning experience.

 

But what skills do our teams need to develop in order to best meet learners’ expectations?

 

Learning to learn

Our team of educational engineers is responsible for creating the courses in the Coorpacademy premium content catalogue. Therefore, our team has to learn continuously, to provide content adapted to each theme and to enrich the courses to be updated. By enriching their knowledge on a daily basis, our teams are also more aware of the specificities and constraints of effective learning, in order to propose the best pedagogy for the content in question. By improving our ability to learn, we also understand the mechanisms of learning. How is our brain predisposed to learn? What are the keys to successful learning? By developing this skill, our teams are ready to provide effective learning content that is tailored to the workings of the brain! Then… If we are not able to learn to learn as learning professionals, who will?

Go further by boosting your learning capacity with Sciences et Vie :

Boost Your Learning Abilities

Adaptation

Adaptation is a watchword within our teams, because learning is a challenge for every company, regardless of its size or sector of activity. Therefore, our teams cultivate their adaptability on a daily basis by working in collaboration with our clients’ business experts on the development of tailor-made courses. We make it a point of honour to adapt to each type of knowledge, each type of environment and each content objective. In addition, our courses are based on the principle of reversed pedagogy. This approach, which aims to engage our learners in their learning, requires our teams to be very adaptable, as we have to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is new to a subject. When writing course questions, our teams make every effort to adapt the discourse to each target and each level of difficulty. Adapting also means having the ability to master several subjects at the same time. By working on both courses on digital culture in business and on themes related to cultural or ecological transformation, our teams develop an extraordinary level of adaptation.

 

Test your adaptability with the Coorpacademy test!

Test Your Adaptability

User orientation

Because as a Learning & Development professional we want to offer the best learning experience, we need to think about our content, and the way we deliver it, for the user. The learning experience is crucial to engaging learners and making training effective. So all of our teams are working to continually improve the UX (user experience) of our platforms and the way courses are delivered. And because we want our learners to have fun learning, we also develop pedagogical innovations such as the interactive series Suspects or the Cybercafé podcast series. The learning experience is then fun and engaging, so that the training has a real impact and our users integrate the training into their daily lives!

 

Learn all about user experience with the Coorpacademy course:

The user experience

 

Digital culture

In order to build the best online training experience, our teams develop a continuous digital culture. As well as being useful for using different digital tools on a daily basis, this skill is essential for developing your online reputation and communicating with as many people as possible. Therefore, we develop our digital dexterity on a daily basis, by developing our courses but also by talking to you on social networks! By the way, are you already following us on Linkedin?

 

Travel in a few clicks to the world of traffic generation levers in the digital era with the Coorpacademy course:

Marketing and online advertising

 

Finally, working as a Learning & Development professional means developing one’s own skills on an ongoing basis, to enable our learners’ skills to grow. And promoting a learning culture within companies means considering each learner, their expectations, their needs and their potential to transform the company.

Finally, discover the course co-published with Numa, ideal for creating conditions that help your employees to learn continuously:

The Learning Organization

Ecological transition: what skills will be essential for reinventing ourselves?

 

Did you know that 70% of French people are pessimistic about the future of the planet, and for 93% of them, protecting the environment is an important issue, and almost half of them even consider it to be a priority issue. The barometer “The French and their carbon footprint” published by Odoxa on September 16, 2021 does not surprise us that much. The climate crisis is the fight of the century, and companies are increasingly taking up these issues – and that’s good! However, more than half of the French people questioned in this study believe that neither their companies (55%), nor the State and local authorities (60%), nor the inhabitants of their regions (61%) encourage them to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

To transform the company, turning off the lights behind you and making great speeches is no longer enough, you have to learn about the new issues and behaviors that the ecological transition implies, as well as understand the mechanisms! So, are you ready to develop the skills to last? 

Sustainable thinking

In order to last, we must be able to project ourselves into the future and therefore think sustainably. This skill, which was not defined until a few years ago, and which has just been integrated into the Coorpacademy catalog, is essential for reinventing a business model which takes into account the environmental stakes and limits which frame the activities of a company. By developing the sustainable thinking of your employees, you ensure the sustainability of your company.

To initiate the sustainable thinking of your teams, discover the course on “The circular economy: from the straight line to the virtuous circle” co-edited with MySezame.

The Circular Economy: From a Straight Line to a Virtuous Circle

 

Adaptability and resilience

According to the latest IPCC report, a rise in average global temperatures of more than 1.5°C would have disastrous consequences on ecosystems and natural earth systems. Megafires, rising waters, threatened species, droughts, destruction of ecosystems… The world of tomorrow will be nothing like the one we know today. Therefore, to exist in a world that is unknown to us, and unpredictable, the strength of adaptation and resilience are crucial skills.

Prepare yourself for tomorrow’s world by learning to evolve in a VUCA environment through our Coorpacademy course!

Operating in a VUCA environment

 

Creativity and innovation

The challenges of the ecological transition are numerous, and above all, new. From today, we are facing unprecedented ecological disasters, and the solutions are therefore in essence innovative. Therefore, in order to reinvent our ways of thinking, our behaviors and our economy, we must be capable of creativity and innovation. Thinking outside the box, being able to imagine a world totally different from ours and being able to implement new processes are essential skills to accompany the ecological transition.

Discover the Creativity and Innovation course to develop an atmosphere conducive to brainstorming and to fostering an atmosphere of innovation!

Creativity and innovation

 

Because the ecological transition is initiated through training, we recently launched a CSR focus animation on all our platforms, to ensure the development of skills in the fight against the climate crisis. Thus, all learners had access to 20 questions on sustainable transformation, to test their knowledge and get up to speed on the challenges of the ecological transition!

 

What if we were all SMEs? Training on a small scale

 

The majority (56%) of the employees who trained during the Covid are in large companies (2,000 or more), compared to about a quarter in companies with 10 to 49 employees, according to the study “Impact de la crise sanitaire sur les mobilités, les projets, les aspirations professionnelles, les compétences et le travail” (Impact of the health crisis on mobility, projects, professional aspirations, skills and work) conducted from March 2020 to May 2021 by the Céreq and coordinated by Ekaterina Melnik-Olive. Yet their needs in terms of tools and training are just as important as those of large companies, and sometimes even more impactful. So what if we were all SMEs?

 

The Swiss Federation for Continuing Education FSEA examined the influence of the coronavirus crisis on continuing education in SMEs earlier this year. According to the study, which was published on 10 May 2021, “a majority of companies attribute a high degree of importance to continuing education in coping with the effects of the pandemic.” As with large companies, “one third of SMEs surveyed indicate that employees need new or different skills”. Thus, training is an issue for all. However, SMEs are often obliged to make a quick return on the costs of training their employees, their expectations are immediate. Their employees therefore need concrete training that can be activated quickly. Increasing the skills of their teams is a race against the clock and against the constantly accelerating evolution of the markets. They are therefore looking for agile, digital solutions covering a variety of subjects, to meet the needs of their teams and their constraints.

 

Finally, what SMEs are looking for is a need that can be found in all companies, and it is a common benefit to demand that training provides a concrete and immediate benefit. To meet this legitimate demand, digital learning is an ideal solution, because training then becomes massive and accessible quickly, from anywhere, and for everyone. In addition to this increased accessibility, providing employees with a solution that can be accessed at the click of a button also saves a considerable amount of time, compared to face-to-face training systems. Employees can learn about different subjects from their workplace in just a few minutes.

 

Thus, we would all benefit from demanding training as much as SMEs do in terms of cost effectiveness and usefulness. Training on a “small scale” is just as necessary and impactful for business transformation, especially in the long term. If SMEs need solutions that can be activated quickly to meet their immediate needs, then digital learning solutions will be able to make training an automatic and a tool to prepare SMEs to become… large companies.

5 essential courses to sustainably transform the company through training

 

The ecological transition is an important axis of transformation for us, but also for the rest of the world. On the occasion of the Sustainability Week, which took place from 20 to 24 September 2021, discover the 5 essential courses to initiate the ecological transition of your company.

 

  • To learn is to understand

The causes of the ecological crisis are the first basics to acquire in order to understand the extent of the problem. Climate, pollution, biodiversity: the world’s ecosystems are in danger, and this is largely due to our social and economic system. The sustainable transformation of a company can only be effective if we also transform our personal and professional habits. The course “Understanding the ecological crisis“, co-edited with the College of Sustainable Development Directors (C3D), aims to provide the keys to understanding the ecological crisis, to enable professionals to understand the mechanisms at the origin of the ecological crisis, their interactions and their consequences.

Understanding the environmental crisis

  • Biodiversity, an often neglected natural capital 

After understanding the extent of the ecological crisis, it is important to identify what the ecological crisis is jeopardising. Businesses need biodiversity to operate smoothly and sustainably. Yet businesses affect it as much as they depend on it. Biodiversity is essential to the proper functioning of all ecosystems, yet it is threatened by the ecological crisis.  It is therefore time to act to protect it. Thus, the Coorpacademy course “Protection of biodiversity: an asset for companies“ transmits the best practices to preserve and enhance this natural capital, and allows all employees to be initiated into the challenges of the ecological transition.

Protecting biodiversity: an asset for companies

 

  • Transform in order to last

Are you up to date on the origins of the ecological crisis and its impact on biodiversity? It is time to learn how to transform the company. Our contemporary economic system, which is based on a model of infinite growth, is no longer viable. It is therefore crucial to understand how the company can reinvent itself to become sustainable? Thanks to the course “Preparing the company for the environmental transition“ co-edited with the College of Sustainable Development Directors (C3D), you will be able to guide the transformation through essential tools for the transition and by adopting the right reflexes in the face of change. 

Preparing the company for the environmental transition

 

  • From a straight line to a virtuous circle

To go further and really revolutionise the current economic model, we recommend the course “The circular economy: from a straight line to a virtuous circle” co-edited with MySezame. Indeed, if we evolve in a world of finite resources, it has its limits and we are beginning to see these limits. It is therefore time to rethink our linear economy in order to transform it into a virtuous and above all, sustainable circle. 

The Circular Economy: From a Straight Line to a Virtuous Circle

 

  • What does this mean in practice?

Once you have developed and tested your theoretical knowledge of sustainable transformation, it is time to look at CSR approaches. Starting a CSR approach depends on each company. Each company can act on its own scale and have a greater or lesser impact on its sector, but how do you start or transform your own CSR approach? To guide you, discover through the Coorpacademy course “Sustainable transformation: success stories and business cases“ 3 very different companies that have integrated CSR into their strategy based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A course to give you the keys to action to positively impact society.

Sustainable Change: Success Stories and Business Cases

 

Large-scale training is essential to transform the company. By massively training employees on crucial sustainable development issues, and by raising awareness of the consequences that our human activities can have on ecosystems, we are gradually changing the rules of the game; and it is by sustainably transforming the company that we will be able to play longer. To go further, discover Coorpecology, the online training platform dedicated to sustainable transformation!

It is better to have 1 engaging course than 1000 boring courses

Most Digital Learning providers rely on a platform that provides a large library of content from various experts to cover as many topics as possible. While this may be a useful argument for HR decision-makers looking to provide employees with as much training content as possible, is it really the best approach to effective learning?

Wanting to learn

Do you remember, in high school, when looking at the clock slowed down time? Strangely enough, as soon as you participated, time returned to its normal course… Today, thanks to cognitive science, we can explain this phenomenon in a rational way. During our schooling, we get used to learning in a passive way, sitting on our chair, raising our hand and waiting for someone to give us the right – or wrong – answer. This pedagogical approach is based on the transmission of knowledge, and is centered on the teacher, who comes to deliver his knowledge in a unilateral way. The exchange is restricted, participation is a privilege. Beyond the inequalities that passive learning creates – and reinforces – within a class, we want to address the reasons why this method of learning is ineffective in terms of deep learning and retention of information.

 

At Coorpacademy, our pedagogical team, at the origin of the creation and co-edition of all the courses of our premium content catalog, relies on active learning. As you will have understood, this pedagogical approach is centered on the learner, and not on the teacher. Our quiz-based courses are based on the flipped learning method: we ask the questions, and it’s up to the learner to draw on their knowledge to test their skills! Because the learner is also involved in the learning process, his or her cognitive biases are more stimulated, which will encourage attention and retention of information. From then on, the learner is committed to his training, which he sees as a real opportunity to progress, for his own benefit. 

Engaging and quality content

What differentiates Coorpacademy courses from all the other courses that you may play in your life, is the quality and relevance of the content to your training needs. Indeed, if our unique pedagogy and our functionalities borrowed from gaming are key assets to engage learners, the quality and the relevance of the content of our courses are essential for a real rise in competence.

To ensure that our courses deliver truly effective content, our educational team is still on the job. Thus, all the courses in our catalog are created by our pedagogical team or co-created with partner publishers, experts on certain subjects. Moreover, if you wish to know more about the recipe of Coorpacademy courses, we advise you to read the interview of Solène Rascle, educational engineer. Everything that is given to learn: the reading of documents, the viewing of our short course videos, and the course questions are read and reread by our pedagogical engineers, who carry out an important work of verification of sources, to ensure the relevance of the information contained in the course.

Stimulate curiosity

Continuous learning is about being curious throughout your life. Curiosity is an essential quality to progress, because if we focus on what we already know, we don’t have the opportunity to evolve. So our courses are also designed to stimulate the learners’ curiosity. As soon as they answer a question, a screen to explain the answer appears. Whether the answer is right or wrong, one element always appears: a “Did you know? This insert is an opportunity to complete the answer while amusing the learner with general or unusual information.

This little insert is also a way of saying to our learners: keep learning! Sure, you got the right answer, but learning never stops, there is always information that can add to your knowledge, and that’s why continuous learning is essential to progress.

 

 

In conclusion, for effective learning, interaction with course content is far more impactful than interaction with a large number of courses. The more learners are stimulated in their learning, the more effective the courses will be. With the active learning mode, the cognitive engagement of learners is reinforced by the manipulation of information, or by an action on their part. Thus, their attention is required, not to say solicited. In short, it is better to have 1 very engaging course, which makes the learner interact with the learning material, than to follow 1000 courses where the only interaction is that of your mouse clicking on pause, because you stopped following what was said 10 minutes ago.

The Coorpacademy course recipe: interview with Solène Rascle, educational engineer at Coorpacademy

 

Engaging learners in their learning is one of the main missions of Coorpacademy. The objective is to enable employees to continuously learn, in order to guarantee their employability in an uncertain world and a changing job market. But how to create innovative, qualitative and engaging content? What methodology should be applied? These are some of the questions we wanted to ask Solène Rascle, educational engineer in our content team and who co-constructs the courses in the premium content catalog with partner publishers.

Not everyone is familiar with the job of educational engineer. Straddling the line between engineering and teaching, the job title can sometimes lead to confusion. Nevertheless, training engineering is evolving rapidly as it becomes more digital and as learners show an interest in diverse and innovative formats.

 

In this interview, discover the job of educational engineer and go behind the scenes of Coorpacademy!

 

To begin this interview, introduce yourself in a few sentences…

I am Solène, educational engineer at Coorpacademy! To give you an idea of my background, I have always been quite knowledgeable about education and training. I started in teaching, I have notably taught French in London or organized cultural and academic programs for international and American students in France / Paris. I have always loved learning, discovering, sharing, and as I like to invest myself in various activities, I thought I could blossom in the field of e-learning.

 

The job of educational engineer is not yet very well known, it is a term that I discovered myself with Coorpacademy. Could you describe the main missions of this position?

So to begin with, you can imagine that I also discovered this job by applying to Coorpacademy! In fact, an educational engineer is in charge of designing a learning path, designing courses, learning experiences, all of this to train a given public on various subjects.  Hence the name of engineer, which concerns the design, creation and implementation of training devices adapted to a public of learners, and to which is added the whole pedagogical part, so that the training devices meet the fixed pedagogical objectives.

 

How does the educational engineer create a course? Is there a methodology specific to Coorpacademy?

First of all, several factors can influence the way a course is created. First, it depends on the educational engineer in question, but also and above all on the target audience, the subject of the course, the objectives and the company or the partner publisher! At Coorpacademy, we have our own method for building courses. Our unique pedagogy is based on several pillars. We start by asking questions to the learner, who can then play the short course video whenever they wants. This is the principle of inverted pedagogy: the learner is involved from the beginning of the course and everyone can progress at their own pace! So at Coorpacademy, when we work on a course, we must first keep this format in mind. Then, we must also think about the fun aspect of our courses, with quizzes, battles between learners, and stars and lives to accumulate. The gamification of training invites the instructional engineer to think of these courses in an entertaining format, which makes the course and the learning experience more fun and engaging, as opposed to the classic course format, which we already know by heart. 

 

To build a course, you must first master the subject matter, and for that, we work with partner course publishers, or experts. We have the pedagogical expertise, but not the expertise on all the subjects we will cover in the premium content catalog, which already includes more than 1,700 courses! So, when we have to think about creating a course, we talk to those who have the expertise on the subject, our role being to take ownership of it, to understand what is at stake, to define the pedagogical objectives and the skills that the learners will have developed as a result of the course.

Could you give us a recipe for creating a course at Coorpacademy?

Of course! First of all, you will need essential ingredients: curiosity, desire to learn, a zest of humour and a good dose of rigour. As far as the recipe is concerned, I invite you to follow the following steps:

 

Step 1

For a successful Coorpacademy course, start by getting to grips with the subject. Once you have a good grasp of the subject on which the course will be focused, you can define the pedagogical objectives with the client or partner. These elements are crucial to building a course architecture. With this detailed plan, we will be able to think about and define which essential ideas we want to convey, in which order we want to organize the ideas, in how many chapters and, above all, in how many levels.

 

Step 2

Once the course architecture is ready, let it rest, the better to make the dough rise! In non-cooking terms, this means leave yourself some time to analyze the course progression: is it coherent? Is there a gradation in terms of difficulty of the questions? What format would be most appropriate to best address the topic? All these questions are essential to ensure that the pedagogical objectives are achieved.

 

At Coorpacademy, it is on this basis that we will then produce all the course content, making it engaging with short and entertaining videos! To remain in the analogy of the recipe, it is a bit like the cherry on the cake.

 

Step 3

You’re almost there, but there’s still a lot of preparation to do: this is the production of the videos, which are our main course materials. To begin, write a script. This writing step may require working with an editor (external or partner). Once the script is finalized in your hands, it’s time to taste the dish: proofreading! And if it’s not to your liking, the ideas are not clearly stated or the tone is not appropriate, make the necessary changes. Finally, it’s time to cook! The videos are produced, and naturally, this step will also require you to pay attention to the final production, even if it means cooking a little longer.

 

Step 4

The oven is ringing! The course materials are ready and it is time to assemble them. On the basis of the courses, therefore the scripts, you will be able to write the inevitable quizzes, the Coorpacademy trademark. To make sure that the dish will be delicious, you have to put yourself in the shoes of those who will taste it! So, we put ourselves in the place of the learner, we try to vary the question formats (True or false, multiple choice, situation, illustrated questions, etc.) and to vary the situations. In fact, the hardest part is often finding the wrong answers! They should not be too obvious, nor too complicated.

 

Step 5

It’s time for service and tasting. Everything is ready. Put it on the plates, or rather, on the Coorpacademy client platforms! Then, after the final proofreading and uploading, it’s time to play the course of our colleagues, and to get some good practices and feedback from them.

 

What about custom courses, i.e. courses tailored to our clients’ topics?

For custom courses, the same production process and methodology is used. The steps of the recipe remain the same. The only difference will be in the subjects. Often, with custom courses, we will deal with subjects that are more specific to a sector, an industry, a customer need – and for a more precise target: learners from the same team, from a specific profession, or who already have a certain level of knowledge on the subject. The first step, which consists of taking ownership of the subject and defining the client’s training objectives, will also be defined by the theme that the client wishes to address. Then, it is the CSM team that takes over the cooking, by the way, discover the CSM job in this article!

 

What do you like most about your job today?

Beyond the fact that I really like Coorpacademy and my colleagues with whom I get along very well, what I like most in the work of an educational engineer is the multitude of subjects that I have to deal with. I learn every day and interact with a variety of people, so I never get bored! I also like the challenges that it can sometimes represent and the intellectual stimulation that it provides to think together about well thought-out course paths for learners.

 

Do you have any courses that you prefer to work on?

Overall, all subjects are interesting to work on, but if I have to name one, I would choose sustainable transformation because it is a current topic and because it is urgent to act! But in itself, all topics interest me. What will matter most to me are the courses that require different formats. It’s kind of fun to work on innovative formats, and then I like the reflection that it requires to build the course. Innovating, thinking, putting yourself in the shoes of the end user/learner to make the learning experience as pleasant as possible, always with the pedagogical objective in mind. Finally, I think that what stimulates me is to create, to do new things and especially when we invest in subjects that seem classic but are nevertheless unavoidable.

 

Could you describe a typical day for you?

I don’t have a typical day in the sense that, as we manage several projects or several partners at the same time, I am constantly developing my agility! Switching from one subject to another, from partner X to partner B, managing emergencies: my typical day is ultimately a mosaic. On the other hand, there are tasks that are constant and cannot be ignored: reading sources, books, proofreading and writing scripts and quizzes, and finally, a lot of spelling and typography work. It’s a job that requires both work and dedication upstream of the publication of the course, but also downstream because it also means following the feedback (from learners, customers, partners) to improve ourselves, perfecting our content so that it is as qualitative in content as in form!

 

Do you have any advice for those who are interested in becoming an educational engineer?

Among the ingredients of the recipe, you can’t do without the two main ones: stay curious and keep learning! Curiosity is one of the primary qualities of an educational engineer. You have to be willing to learn about all subjects, even those that don’t necessarily speak to you at first. From a more pragmatic point of view, there are more and more training courses for educational engineers, and I think that this can be a good way to discover this profession! But any experience in education, training, writing, or publishing are interesting experiences to have in this position. Finally, and not surprisingly, I would advise sleeping with a Bescherelle on your bedside table, because you need to have impeccable grammar.


And finally, a little quiz: If you had to choose between these 3 new courses in the catalog, which one would you choose and why?

  • The new Trivial Pursuit courses
  • The “Making Better Decisions with Game Theory” course
  • The “Preventing Discrimination and Encouraging Diversity” course co-published with Wolters Kluwer

I would say Trivial Pursuit because it is a perfect course for summer and vacations! Trivial Pursuit is 30 questions to learn while having fun, while developing one’s general culture and knowledge of certain subjects. Moreover, at Coorpacademy, we provide you with an explanation of the right answer and a “Did you know?” as a bonus, unlike the classic general knowledge game. Frankly, a course played on the phone at the beach with your friends or your family, it is still the best way to learn in a fun way and with others! 

Trivial Pursuit – Planet and Environment

 

Are we tired of resilience?

 

It’s perfect timing. In the wake of the crisis, the concept of resilience is talked about everywhere, especially in corporate culture. Introduced by Boris Cyrulnik, the concept of resilience states that it is possible to overcome a traumatic event, to draw strength from one’s misfortunes, and to “navigate through the torrents” (Boris C). To suffer and to heal one’s wounds, in order to heal more quickly. This could be an appropriate analogy for resilience, which also reminds us of the current recovery context, compromised by a labour shortage.

 

In a previous article, we described the labor shortage as an opportunity. An opportunity to focus on training, to overcome this issue that companies are facing. To draw strength from one’s misfortunes, to see the glass half full, there are a thousand and one ways to describe resilience. This term, which is basically about personal growth, is sometimes debated. Isn’t it too good to be true? Can we really ignore the difficulties, the trauma, to move forward? Is it an innate disposition or can resilience be initiated within a group? In this article, we decipher this phenomenon to finally answer the question: Are we tired of resilience?

 

A debatable term

Turning hardship into strength sounds like an admirable notion. It is true that, on paper, we would all like to be capable of resilience, both in our personal and professional lives. Realistic, yet optimistic, resilience is the prospect of a better future, without denying the reality and harshness of life’s hazards. However, some criticize this notion, which they consider unfounded, even futile. In “Carnet de Philo“, Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, producer of the French philosophical show and lecturer, deciphers the phenomenon and states “Everybody hates resilience” (i.e. Title of the episode of 25/02/2021). According to Mosna-Savoye, the critics are formed on the following: resilience is a poisoned but well-wrapped gift that tells us “get by, show resilience, rely on your ability to bounce back on your own and you’ll see, everything will be fine, you’ll manage to overcome all the trials of the world”. Said like that, it can seem too easy. Resilience is a fashionable notion, which “is enough to give oneself a moral, empathetic and supportive content, and so much the worse if the facts, the political or ethical acts, do not follow” according to Mosna-Savoye. So, the speaker opts for hope, which would be “joy, even inconsistent”, as opposed to “the naïve and bland certainty of always getting through”, which would be resilience. But is the dilemma between these two notions so simplistic?

 

The joy of knowing you will always get through

If hope and resilience do not go hand in hand, then obviously the notion of resilience cannot be applied in practice. To oppose these two notions is to deny the purpose of the resilience phenomenon: to strive for a better situation. Of course, when we talk about resilience, we tend to focus on the reaction to the crisis, because this is where everything is at stake. But over time, resilience allows us to work towards a better future, a goal towards which we can move, and to grow. Hope, on the other hand, is based on the expectation of a better situation than the existing one. Waiting is not acting. And this is where hope and resilience are ultimately inseparable. Resilience, which encourages action, can only be effective if we cultivate hope, which gives individuals the necessary passion to believe in a better future, and to do everything to achieve it.

 

Learn to live with uncertainty, or simply to anticipate

Being resilient, showing resistance, tenacity, being able to absorb shocks, bounce back, etc. The lexical field of resilience focuses mainly on the acceptance of trauma and endurance, rather than on the fulfillment that is supposed to come from it. What resilience tells us is that in order to deal with adversity and overcome crises, accepting the situation is the first step towards action. It means “rolling up your sleeves”; “never giving up”; “pushing yourself”. From then on, accepting uncertainty, living with the unexpected, allows one to minimize the consequences, so as not to end up paralyzed, unable to make a decision. 

For resilience to be constant and not just a response to each trauma encountered, anticipation is key. Some cities, such as London, have initiated preventive resilience programs. With its London Resilience Partnership website, the Anglo-Saxon capital is disseminating advice on how to visit the city in complete safety. For example, it offers a section that “identifies potential risks to the capital and the impact that these emergencies may have on Londoners”.

 

Positive attitude

Developing resilience may simply mean changing our perspective, opening up our interpretations, and changing our outlook on a situation. As an individual, or as an organization, we can choose to be more or less positive about a given situation. We have the choice, when faced with a traumatic event, a crisis, to interpret it as an insurmountable disaster or as an opportunity for improvement, like a difficult level that we will repeat over and over again in a video game, until we reach the next level. Positive thinking is a pillar of resilience, being able to think positively about a past crisis helps us to face a current crisis, while putting its catastrophic nature into perspective. Being resilient means seizing the opportunity to learn from every situation, the good ones, but especially the bad ones. This notion is ultimately a state of mind that can be cultivated, learned and passed on.

 

The pitfalls of resilience 

The risk of resilience would be to think that any failure is synonymous with trauma. In France, we often tend to fear failure, equating it with the person who fails. Our perception of this notion is particularly negative, and we wrongly consider that failure is synonymous with incapacity. In her LinkedIn article “The Culture of Failure is Just a Matter of Perception” Clara Kindt describes failure as “a deep disappointment in the face of unmet expectations” and suggests changing our perception of this phenomenon. “When we don’t know, we learn and only then we know. In the end, only people who don’t try don’t fail.” she summarizes. By developing resilience, one also learns to fail and to develop a “culture of failure”, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Latin American mentalities, for example, which advocate assuming mistakes and imperfections. The challenge is not to value failure, but to put it into perspective, in order to draw the right conclusions that will guide our future actions. 

Another criticism often made to resilience is that it values the suffering of others, as a kind of competition to see who can bounce back the highest, the fastest or the most skillfully. Yet we all face obstacles and difficulties, both personally and professionally. The goal of resilience is not to determine who suffers the most, nor who will be the most resistant. It is first and foremost a philosophy that translates into a corporate culture that promotes the right to make mistakes, the ability to deal with adversity and that stimulates employees’ hope. 

 

But are we all capable of bouncing?

Let’s take the example of two balls: one bounces, the other does not. One is bouncy, the other is made of a material that does not allow it to bounce. Finally, it is a bit the same for individuals. Some people are born with it, others have a harder time absorbing shocks. Nevertheless, and this is what differentiates us from the two balls mentioned above, it is possible to work on one’s ability to bounce back, because resilience can be learned and maintained. Many factors can help or hinder the development of this notion. For example, the environment that surrounds us can strengthen or diminish our resilience. The people around us play a crucial role in the way we perceive a given situation. In business, the same is true. The environment in which the teams evolve as well as the interactions between collaborators are determining factors in developing the collective resilience of the teams, which will allow the company to move forward through the difficulties. The recipe for corporate resilience is therefore composed of one main ingredient: soft skills. Listening, leaving room for emotions, putting oneself in the place of others, working autonomously, etc. The manager plays a central role in fostering the resilience of his teams.

 

In conclusion, individual resilience is an incredible strength. Without being a miracle skill, being resilient allows you to move towards a better situation, or at least, it allows you to improve enough to move forward serenely, and to find pleasure in your work. However, this soft skill is above all a state of mind, unlike a tool that can be used on an ad hoc basis, resilience is nourished by our experiences and by the way we interpret the situations we face. In “Autobiography of a Scarecrow“, Boris Cyrulnik writes: “those who take a long time to recover from trauma or never recover from it are those who have been abandoned by the group”. Resilience is also contagious. A resilient group is not just made up of individuals who are prepared for anything and are ultra-resistant. On the other hand, following a crisis, group cohesion reinforces resilience, because as trite as it may sound, there is strength in numbers. 

Individual resilience is a tool for employee development, but organizational resilience is one of the essential conditions for moving forward collectively in an uncertain world.

To move from individual resilience to organizational resilience, discover the eponymous course co-published with Management Magazine.

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