Learning & development Archives

Test your relationship to work!

Lockdowns, remote working, health measures and social upheaval: the COVID crisis has shaken up the needs of employees. Today, employees are questioning the way things are done, expressing new expectations and may even resign without you having been able to anticipate it. Engaging employees has therefore become a major challenge for managers in order to maintain the productivity of teams and the performance of the company.

Encouraging engagement at work is the subject of the latest course co-published by somanyWays. In this course, discover the Workoscope®: a reading grid that allows you to better understand your relationship to work – your vision, needs and expectations at work. It was developed in 2018 by somanyWays, after more than 3 years of R&D with individuals in professional questioning.

Take the test and find out what kind of relationship you have with your work!

1 ) You have just been offered a promotion. First of all, congratulations! Your first reaction is…

a ) Accept without hesitation and immediately change your job title on LinkedIn to inform your network

b ) To take time to reflect on the changes that this new position may involve before making any decisions

c ) To be enthusiastic about the idea of discovering new missions and to ask my interlocutor about the possibility of training associated with this promotion

d) To look forward to discovering new projects and getting out of my comfort zone!

e) To ensure that this promotion will enable me to make a significant contribution to the company’s development on key high-impact issues, as this is what drives me

2 ) A new project is discussed at a team meeting. You are…

a) You provide information on the stakeholders and people involved in the project

b) Take the lead in establishing a clear and well-defined plan of action to move the project forward

c) Offer your help to advance a part of the project that interests you and in which you can deploy new skills

d) Take the opportunity to organise a brainstorming meeting to innovate on this new project

e) Remind the team of the importance of including this project in a CSR and environmentally friendly approach

3) A new recruit has just joined the company! At the welcome breakfast, you will…

a) Ask them about their professional experiences and education, in search of common knowledge!

b) Welcome them and invite them for a coffee to discuss joint projects!

c) Be delighted and interested in the personality of this new talent!

d) Offer to introduce yourself in 3 fun facts, it’s a change!

e) Ask about them values and the reasons why they joined the company

4 ) Friday, 6 p.m., you leave work… On the way home, you…

a) Open LinkedIn to see the reactions to your last post!

b) Hurry so you don’t arrive late for your dance class, it’s your passion and you’re already revising the steps in your head.

c) Log on to the Coorpacademy app to do a course and develop your skills!

d) Still thinking about that current project you’re having a challenge with, on Monday you’ll have the solution for sure.

e) Have already left a little earlier, you had a volunteering assignment planned for that evening!

5 ) For you, the ideal manager…

a ) Sets ambitious goals and gives you responsibility!

b) Is attentive to what matters to you and focuses on the relationship.

c) Takes a coaching approach and pushes you to excel!

d) Gives you carte blanche and entrusts you with innovative projects.

e) Invites you to take up environmental or social issues in the company and understands your causes!

Results

You have a majority of a)

You are in Ascension mode. You are looking for career advancement and responsibility above all. Your status and title are important to you. Your Linkedin profile is always up to date, you are open to development opportunities and seek visibility with influential people. Proactive, you know what you want and dare to express it.

Your area for improvement: sometimes having a tendency to forget about others in favour of your personal goals.

You have a majority of b)

You are in Equilibrium mode. For you, there is work on the one hand and passions and interests on the other. You seek to preserve your personal life and appreciate a regular work rhythm within a precise framework, with a pleasant climate.

Your area for improvement: you bring consistency to the company, but be careful not to be reluctant to change.

You have a majority of c)

You are in Introspection mode. You are looking to develop the skills that interest you and to grow personally. You question your place and role in the company and ask for diversity. You expect your work to allow you to express your uniqueness, to exercise your passions and interests. Your taste for learning allows you to explore new paths.

Your point for improvement: be careful not to forget the collective issues.

You have a majority of d)

You are in Transformation mode. You are looking to innovate, to invent, to make things happen in your organisation. You are driven by leaving your mark. Enthusiastic about new things, you like to get out of your comfort zone and ask for autonomy.

Your point for improvement: A driving force in times of change, you may however have a tendency to reinvent the wheel!

You have a majority of e)

You are in Impact mode. You seek to have a positive impact on the environment, others and society. This can be expressed through a sensitivity to your company’s purpose and values, through an interest in CSR, employee representation bodies or transmission. Your commitment contributes to the evolution of the company on key issues.

Your point for improvement: Be careful not to neglect your daily tasks in favour of your causes.

To go further and understand what your employees expect in order to engage them in the long term, discover the course Encouraging engagement at work co-edited by somanyWays.

Encouraging Engagement at Work

About somanyWays

New aspirations, new jobs, rapid obsolescence of skills, a context of uncertainty… work is changing at the pace of the words and the evils of the times. In a world on the move, somanyWays contributes to the emergence of a new work culture, more virtuous and more in tune with the needs and uniqueness of each individual. Our mission? To accompany, train and equip individuals and companies so that everyone can (re)find meaning, pleasure and therefore commitment at work.

10 highlights of 2021 as seen by our learners

Without signing the return to “normal” for good, the year 2021 was full of twists and turns. Between the return to face-to-face meetings, the democratisation of teleworking, vaccination and the introduction of the health pass, not to mention the transformations that companies are undergoing, it is obvious that there were many issues at stake. But what we will really remember this year is 1 million hours and 10 unforgettable memories of 2021:

1 – Your desire to learn

With 29,764,048 questions answered in 2021 on all platforms combined, you have completed over 1,000,000 hours of training through the Coorpacademy premium content catalogue!

2 – Your enthusiasm for collaboration!

Indeed, the year 2021 is the year of resilience and team spirit! Thus, in first place of the most played courses is “Communicate effectively to collaborate better” co-published with Dunod Formation. In 2021, you have learned how to avoid communication errors that create tension and you now know how to correctly convey a clear and unambiguous message!

3 – Your desire to understand yourself better

This year, the most consumed soft skill on the platform is emotional intelligence! In 2020, the World Economic Forum already identified this soft skill as one of the ten most important skills in 2022 (The Future of Jobs Report 2020). So you are ready to face the next year by using your own emotions as a driving force to act effectively.

4 – Your limitless agility

In 2021, you have become real acrobats! The course “Adopting an agile culture”, co-published with Numa, has entered the Top 5 by reaching the 3rd place of the most played courses, that is to say 4 places gained compared to the 2020 ranking.

5 – Your investigative skills

Number 1 from the start, the Cluedo educational investigation was the best course launch of the year! You rightly loved getting into the shoes of Colonel Mustard to solve the Skill Island murder mystery, according to your feedback:

“Wonderful. This course is a pure joy… We work on cognitive biases while solving a Cluedo puzzle. I recommend +++ for those who are gamers :)”

“The format is really interesting and allows us to succinctly show some of the cognitive biases to which we are often subjected. It has the will to bring playfulness to a subject that is not always easy to tackle: critical thinking.”

“Very interesting: gripping story combining learning about argumentation and cognitive biases. Really good initiative. To be repeated! Thank you”

6 – Your attentive ear

For the first time this year, the audiolearning format is included in our premium content catalogue! With Cybercafé, you were able to learn by listening and develop your digital skills. In 2021, you’ve been listening to this new format, so we’re preparing for 2022 to offer you even more educational innovations!

“You think you know everything, but in fact you learn something new every day; can’t wait for the next episodes ;)”

“Very interesting! I could now discuss with my brother-in-law who buys NFT certified virtual works ;-)”

“Very nice too, the “podcast” formula. Thank you.”

7 – Your soul as a coach

This year, you learned from your peers! With the “Babel Forum” course, the discussions on the learning platforms forum helped you to improve your skills in collaboration with your colleagues. Thus, the Babel Forum became the course that generated the most discussions on the forum, congratulations to you!

8 – Your enthusiasm for your platform

“This platform is an extraordinary playground. Accessible anytime, many modules can be done very quickly. I recommend it.”
Olivier
“Platform in an entertaining and learning format; available on the computer or on the smartphone, short formats that meet my expectations” Christine
“Accessible at all times, fun and easy to use. You can easily learn yourself from the different topics”
Mallory
“I love the fun aspect, the quality of the lessons, the exercises, the aesthetic aspect of the site. Working while having fun, a very good idea” Sebastien
“The training courses are very entertaining and answer a lot of questions. They introduce employees to the challenges of today’s economy, and may even allow some to change direction during their career.
Philippe
“Fun platform, with short modules, regularly updated with new features.” Beatrice

9 – And your presence at our side

Like every year, we met in France and Switzerland during our Digital Learning Club! A moment of exchange where our clients are invited to discover the latest Coorpacademy innovations in terms of learning.

This collaborative moment was also an opportunity to receive feedback from our customers on the new features to come, to have them actively participate in the evolution of our solution and thus, to build together the Digital Learning experience that meets their needs.

10 – Even at a distance…

And because since 2020, these face-to-face meetings have become rare, we have also organised ourselves to continue to exchange ideas together through our Learn Everywhere webinar series! This year, the most successful webinar was the one on The Rise of Audiolearning, which took place in June 2021 with our partner Bookboon.

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!

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.

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.

Traveling abroad builds soft skills

August is coming to an end and with it, the taste of vacation. This month, we’ve told you about the formative virtues of travel. In this article, we would like to refer to another type of travel – perhaps one of the most formative – to which we want to refer. Whether you are a student or an employee, it is often advisable to gain international experience. In fact, you may know someone who is preparing for an Erasmus exchange year for one of their children or someone who is moving to a country with a different time zone. But even if it is only for a short period of time, travelling abroad is extremely useful to develop your soft skills!

Interacting better with colleagues

Communicating with people from different cultures can be difficult. In the world of work, corporate culture differs greatly from country to country, and if you want to successfully build relationships, work in different regions, or simply visit a subsidiary or colleague abroad, it is essential to be comfortable with cultural differences!

When you travel abroad, you are confronted with the unknown, both literally and figuratively. You discover the behaviors of a society that is different from the one you know, and you witness the customs that govern it. To interact smoothly with the inhabitants of this country, avoiding misunderstandings, you will identify the attitude, vocabulary and communication approach best suited to your interlocutor. This way, as soon as you return from your trip, you will be ready to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds.

To go further: Cross cultural communication

Training your memory

Going on a trip requires a lot of organization, and we often leave with several things in mind. Train tickets, check; hotel reservations, check; knowing how to say thank you in Italian, check; so much information that puts our memory to work, especially when we find ourselves in front of the waiter and end up stammering a timid “grazie”.

Thus, when we travel, we stimulate a specific part of our brain: the prefrontal lobe and more particularly the hippocampus, this part of the cortex which allows us to pass from a short-term memory to the long-term memory. The hippocampus receives all the information decoded in the different sensory areas of the cortex, and sends it back to where it came from. A sort of sorting center that compares new sensations with those already recorded. The hippocampus reinforces the links between the different characteristics of a thing, and by dint of repeating the links between these new elements, the cortex will have learned to link the different characteristics itself to make what we call a memory.

Thus, when you are traveling abroad, your hippocampus is strongly stimulated, which improves your ability to memorize information in the long term!

To go further: Boost your memory

Improve your English – if you’re not an native English speaker

Well, English is still the most widely spoken international language in the world, with 1.348 billion native and second language speakers. Mastering English is essential for professional success and for interacting in multicultural environments.

Going abroad means practicing your English – unless you are a language whiz and have mastered the national language of the country you are going to – and improving your speaking skills. Speaking in a foreign language is not always easy. It can be stressful and impact the way you deliver information, describe a situation or express a feeling. In fact, travel allows you to confront this challenge and get used to speaking a language that you don’t practice often enough.

To go further: Holding a meeting in English

Future of training: a review of the round table between Coorpacademy, OpenClassrooms, Simbel and Brighteye Ventures

The training sector has learned some important lessons from the pandemic. Closed training rooms, bans on meetings, lockdowns, remote working that breaks the link between employees and employee motivation, the challenges created by this crisis were numerous for HR functions. How have they met the challenge? What future for the training sector? A look back at the round table discussion between the co-founders and investors of the leading EdTech companies in France: Coorpacademy, OpenClassrooms, Simbel and Brighteye Ventures.

Training to meet the challenges of COVID19

The LearnEverywhere webinar “The Need for Training in Times of Crisis” sheds light on how some organizations have had to adapt in a very short time. At the beginning of 2020, face-to-face training experienced a real upheaval. The sudden crisis forced companies to react very quickly to manage the cancellation of planned classroom sessions. One of the first challenges was to manage the immediate emergency by cancelling and communicating about these unprecedented changes. As a result, 97% of public sector training was affected by the crisis, as well as 80% of French presential training. (1)

The second phase of crisis response is adaptation. Once the emergency has been managed in the short term, and the future of the crisis is a little better defined, organizations revisit the training plan and make choices between what to cancel for good, what to postpone and what to convert to distance learning, through digital learning. This stage requires a lot of work to redesign course materials and to support trainers in mastering the technological tools. Thus, the crisis marks a real revolution in training, which is becoming digitalized at an exponential rate. In fact, 85.2% of European training managers believe that the crisis has accelerated the digitalization of training. (1)

Paradoxically, in times of crisis, training becomes even more essential. Especially when the crisis forces us to organize ourselves differently, to use new tools and when it disrupts our lifestyles. It is then necessary to accompany the employees so that they appropriate the new tools and understand their functioning, their usefulness, and what is at stake. Thus, to ensure team training, some companies have opted for virtual classrooms (73%), for the company’s LMS platforms (54%) and for third-party digital platforms for off-the-shelf content (28%). Among the topics to be covered are: getting to grips with the tools thanks to digital acculturation, training on how to work remotely, but also how to manage remotely, and finally, training more focused on the well-being of employees, which is essential in these difficult times.

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has caused an unprecedented disruption in the entire professional training sector, shaking up our habits and giving us the opportunity to rebuild everything.

The future of learning

But while the word recovery is talked about everywhere, what future do we want to shape for training, which is crucial to the smooth running of businesses?

The crisis has had several positive impacts on the EdTech sector. By forcing companies to operate remotely, they were forced to invest in digital learning and finally adopt it. As a result of the crisis, online training was able to prove itself, and training managers were able to test and discover the tool, which they might not have done before. Due to the cancellation of face-to-face sessions, the budget that was previously earmarked for this purpose was redistributed to finance the digital transformation. So the future of training is indeed digital, or at least hybrid, to keep face-to-face sessions when the subject matter lends itself to it, or to diversify the formats. Thus, after the crisis, 73.8% of companies will increase the share of online training in their training offerings. (1)

Another conclusion from this crisis is the need to diversify formats. To engage learners in their learning, it is crucial to innovate and develop different ways of learning, through various media. For example, at Coorpacademy, we attach great importance to pedagogical innovation. Therefore, we have developed many formats such as Escape Game, audiolearning or other formats inspired by games like Trivial Pursuit. Diversifying formats is a key to making training a pillar of your company, because it allows you to engage but above all, to encourage information retention. That’s why, after the crisis, 58.5% of companies are willing to innovate in training formats. (1)

Finally, what will define the future of the training sector is also the evolution of the job market, which will require an evolution in skills. The World Economic Forum has already stated that by 2025, the job market will have undergone two major upheavals: job losses related to increased automation and the economic repercussions of the COVID19 pandemic.

These two disruptions combined could displace an estimated 85 million jobs. Thus, the World Economic Forum lists the 10 key skills to be acquired to face this profound disruption. These skills, mostly soft skills, are the future of employment, but also the future of training. Among these skills, we find resilience, agility, leadership, creativity, etc. It is therefore crucial for digital learning players, but also for HR functions in charge of training, to do everything possible to help employees develop the skills of tomorrow’s world.

In conclusion, the future of training will be digital and varied. Between the hybridization of training, offering face-to-face sessions combined with a digital training platform, and the need to diversify formats, training is at the dawn of its metamorphosis. It is up to us, EdTech players, training managers and employees, to accompany these changes, to integrate them and to define the best possible strategy to move forward serenely together, learning continuously to guarantee the employability of all!

Sources

(1) Talentsoft Study – The impact of COVID-19 on the Training Departments

Learn Everywhere #6 : The need for training in times of crisis
SNCF x Coorpacademy: The rise of digital learning

Coorpacademy’s blog – The 10 key skills to be developed by 2025

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

Why does your e-learning solution need to be integrated with your LMS?

In information and communication technologies, a learning management system (LMS) or learning support system (LSS) is a software that allows the management and centralisation of training courses for all employees.

These learning management systems allow companies to manage, deliver and evaluate their online training programme. Thus, with an LMS, it is possible to design, develop and make available to employees, courses directly accessible on the software. The courses can be remote, i.e. they are not necessarily online but can be accessed desynchronously, and learners can obtain the courses at any time they wish, by e-mail, post or other medium. Training can also take the form of e-learning, which means carrying out training, a course or learning through a digital platform, via a computer connected to the Internet.

LMSs have the advantage of being central tools in the company and are therefore often used by the whole group. They are complete, but not specialised in digital learning… unlike us.

Once an organisation invests in training and provides its employees with independent training systems around an LMS, learners have access to a variety of content, through different media. However, integrating this course content into a single platform would improve the learning experience for employees and facilitate access to training.

So what is integration with an LMS and why is it useful for engaging learners in training?

To make learning ever more fluid, accessible and continuous, it is possible to integrate e-learning platforms – also known as LXP (Learning Experience Platforms) – with a learning management system, such as LMSs. Thus, integration with an LMS consists of merging the learning management system with the e-learning applications already used in the company.

Today, the training sector is faced with new needs. Digitalization and new work organizations are shaping new uses. In order to respond to this, training must be integrated into the organisation’s existing systems.

Learning at the click of a button

In our connected environments, we have become accustomed to having our uses made easier, and user experiences increasingly tailored to user behaviour. The primary benefit of integrating a learning solution into your learning management system is ease of access. With single sign on (SSO), learners can log in and access their training programme without having to use separate credentials (usernames and passwords). Similar to using your Facebook or Google account to log into a site, single sign-on allows users to access the content of the platform or site in question with one click. For training, enabling learners to access training content more easily and quickly is a crucial issue for engaging them in their learning. Integrating your digital learning applications with an LMS allows you to have a single entry point, which is easier to understand for everyone.

An improved experience for all users!

Integration with LMSs is not only beneficial for the user experience of learners. It also greatly improves the use and follow-up of training solutions for learning managers in HR and Learning & Development (L&D) departments. By integrating an e-learning platform directly into your organisation’s LMS, learner profiles are created automatically, simplifying deployment across multiple subsidiaries or BUs. Learner activity data, such as course completions, is also automatically fed back into the LMS, which facilitates reporting (see Better performance and monitoring indicators). Integration with an LMS promises considerable time savings for training teams.

Integrate to engage

By making it easier to access your e-learning solution through its integration into your learning management system, you can increase traffic and the number of connections. In addition to improving your key performance indicators, these increases indicate that the training is being followed and appreciated by your teams! Continuous learning means learning on a daily basis and therefore learning in the flow of work. The increase in skills can only be effective if training is accessible everywhere, all the time, through integration.

Better performance and monitoring indicators

With the integration, the monitoring of the platform’s performance is greatly improved. Reports and evaluations are automatically generated and accessible directly on your LMS. This means you can quickly and easily find all the metrics you need to track the progress and engagement of your learners in their learning. This data is essential to improve your training solution and better meet your needs. The integration allows you to find all the training data you need in one click, all on the same platform.

An interface and pedagogy designed to make people want to learn

Improving the user experience is not only a question of accessibility. It is also a question of interface and therefore of design. In order to invest learners in their training, it is necessary to integrate an e-learning platform that meets their needs and expectations. This applies both to the design of the platform and to the way in which the course is delivered. Integration with an LMS means above all being able to offer learners a web user experience worthy of the name, to make training more enjoyable and to reinforce the uses of e-learning platforms.

In terms of interface, our Coorpacademy training platform is inspired by the codes of video games: quizzes, battles between learners, life quotas to validate – or not – a course module, etc. Learners benefit from a real learning experience that is fun, digital and that makes them active in their training. Because we are convinced that training must adapt to new uses, we also offer premium content, developed through a reversed pedagogy: we ask the learner questions before presenting the lesson. And the lesson – in the form of a video for the most part – does not exceed 5 minutes, so that learners remain active during the course. We also invent innovative formats such as the digital Escape Game or more recently, the Cybercafé podcast, which once again respond to the uses of the modern world.

What are you waiting for to integrate Coorpacademy into your LMS?

Training is becoming digital, not only because of previous confinements, but also because the digital transformation of companies implies maximising the use of digital tools. Today, the challenge is to make the processes around training even easier. Accessibility, user experience, performance monitoring, e-learning platforms are a formidable lever for optimising your LMS and your global training offer. By integrating Coorpacademy into your LMS, give your learners access to courses co-published with renowned publishers, and make training an entertaining, instructive and collaborative moment!

A digital Escape Game to raise awareness of recruitment and integration of people with disabilities

SQLI, a European digital services group with 2200 employees, has been using Coorpacademy as a digital learning solution for 2 years. Within the framework of the workshops of our We Love Our Clients programme, Alexis Guillotin, Group Development and Training Manager, shared with us the backstage of the most original animation of 2020, aimed at learners and rewarded a few months ago by a Coorpacademy Award.

Q.1 : Where did the idea of offering a digital Escape Game on your online training platform come from?

We had the idea of taking advantage of the European Week for the Employment of People with Disabilities (EWPD) to raise awareness of the recruitment and integration of people with disabilities. This week took place last November and so our plans were disrupted because of the lockdown imposed at that time.

We had a double challenge. The first was to create an event for the whole group, simultaneously in several countries, several languages and which could be done at a distance!

There was also the question of the content, and how to disseminate it to raise awareness of disability. With this in mind, we chose our Coorpacademy digital learning platform Onegenius to reach all our employees. We worked on the content with the agency T by Talenteo, an agency that supports us on the subject of disability, and then, with the help of Coorpacademy, we decided to adapt it to integrate it into the Onegenius platform in order to benefit from its gamification aspect.

We had noticed the great success of a playful format among our teams: the digital Escape Game! It allows you to learn without realizing it, by solving puzzles to move to the next level! We therefore reused our existing initial content, but put it into this new format in order to raise awareness among our employees while keeping the gamification aspect.

Q.2: How did you go about setting up this Escape Game?

The Escape Game: Disability Awareness was created, translated and put online in a record time of one month. The idea was to make it clear how the five disabilities we had listed (essentially non-visible disabilities) impact the daily lives and therefore the work of the people concerned.

We decided to turn the tables: each level of the Escape Game takes the learner to a world where people with attention deficit disorder, autism or visual impairment are in the majority. It is up to the learner to adapt!

The pitch was as follows: “Travel aboard a ship in other dimensions where the disabilities you know are mostly shared. Practice with our simulation module to better understand the daily consequences of each of these disorders and diseases.”

Q.3: What communication actions did you carry out to promote this game event? Are you satisfied with the results?

We set up a very fast-paced communication campaign to ensure that as many employees as possible tried to solve the Escape Game and were effectively made aware of disability during this European week.

The first step was to send out a teaser by e-mail a week beforehand.

All the members of the CODIR participated in the promotion and were active relays.

Then, each day of the week, the learners were reminded by e-mail to invite them to travel to a new dimension, with five disabilities being covered. Finally, all the employees received a summary email containing all the stages and solutions to the riddles of this unique journey, so that everyone could finish or redo the game as they wished.

We are pleased with the results, as we observed a 280% increase in connections on the platform during the week of the animation.

And all the countries played the game! Beyond the figures, in this particular year, the Escape Game helped to unite the teams and encourage exchanges between them, as well as raising awareness about diversity and disabilities.