As educators increasingly take advantage of networked video technology to move their traditional classrooms online, there is a growing need for both instructors capable of engaging students in these next generation online classrooms, and skilled networking professionals with the knowledge to meet the growing demand to deploy, support and maintain networked video solutions.
In 2011, Learning@Cisco introduced a Leading Virtual Classroom Instructor course that teaches participants how to prepare and manage a virtual classroom, effectively deliver material online, and use video and collaboration tools to maximize student participation and comprehension.
As the paradigm of education continues to evolve to meet new institutional and business requirements, developing instructional strategies for new virtual education environments based on networked video is becoming key to improving student results. The Virtual Classroom Instruction Specialist training and certification help ensure that instructors have the most comprehensive understanding of the latest video technologies and effective classroom collaboration strategies.
In the Fiscal Times News, the headline reads, Class of 2012, Don’t Even Think of Retiring at 60. The story congratulates this year’s college graduates and then gently lets them know that they will be working much longer than their parents. In fact, they might not ever stop.
That’s because our economy is changing.
Author Michael Hodin argues there’s no way for us to stay competitive if one third of our population is retired. This is a really interesting point. That affects tax revenue, social security and, more importantly, our greatest asset, our collective intelligence. His conclusion might surprise you:
So your challenge is this, Class of 2012: How can you help create a world where “seniors” contribute at the highest levels to social and economic life? How can you help recreate our 20th century institutions so that older generations remain vital, relevant, and productive? And how can you create new institutions for your children in the 21st century?
This is a great challenge.
At Cisco we have a bias for learning. Not only is it highly valued to keep our employees as current and developed as possible, but it’s also one of our core values around product development. We delight in looking for ways to bring information to remote learners -- regardless of age, location or ability.
WebEx helps people of all ages learn regardless of where they live or work.
Universities, like the California Baptist University in Southern California, use Cisco Webex systems to develop synchronous online learning. You no longer have to live near the source to participate in their program [watch video].
If you are done with school but want to continue to hone your skills -- or learn something new -- you can find a plethora of free online webinars and seminars delivered by our customers. We also offer online education via WebEx Channels where you can find content on management, leadership and much more.
When speaking with our customers and prospects in the K-12 community, we hear time and again that budget restrictions are a daily reality.
At the same time, these educators fully understand that in order to prepare the next generation for success in the 21st century economy, a “mixed” learning environment (where new, innovative technologies are incorporated into more traditional curriculum) helps to better engage students and improve academic performance.
From the boardroom to the barroom, American citizens, including President Obama, instinctively know that our K-12 public education system needs to be invigorated. From the President’s State of the Union address this week:
Give [schools] the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test.
In the last post I wrote about Cisco’s Global Sales Experience (GSX) I touched on how gamification tactics and the overhaul of the virtual recognition program were critical to the events success. As promised in that post I am going to dive deeper into these two areas to provide additional insight into why the tactics leveraged were so successful. Before I do I thought I would like to share this video featuring some industry experts on the importance of gamification tactics and why GSX is a great case study.
Several elements of GSX leveraged gamification principles to push the envelope on remote engagement. I am going to dive deeper into one of these areas the Architectures Mastery Program of the GSX virtual environment.
Before the event the team did a critical analysis of previous year’s results and engaged the sales force in surveys and focus groups to help us better understand what is working and what is not with the GSX program.
The Architectures Mastery Program was a result of this analysis. What we saw from metrics reporting was that the live architecture sessions attendance was low but the scores were high. What we learned from surveys and focus groups was that the sales force felt that previous architectures courses were too heavy on the ‘marketing’ message and didn’t provide enough insight into the competitive differentiation and the ROI for customers to adopt an architectures approach.
What was surprising was after we researched the training offerings enabled by the Cisco Learning Development and Solutions group it was clear that these types of trainings did exist but adoption had been low. So the opportunity we saw was to raise awareness of these existing training offerings and up-level the attendance of the live GSX architecture sessions. Hence the Architectures Mastery Program was born.
We created a set of criteria’s regarding the course publish date, target audience, global relevance, length and required attendees to pass an assessment for each course. The attendees had a choice of completing five courses from any of the architectures and attending one live architecture session of their choice. This enabled the audience to tailor the program to best meet their needs, i.e. specialists could focus on one architecture and generalists could pick and choose from amongst the architectures. The content was then packaged in a micro-site that clearly outlined the requirements and the attendee progress towards completion. A badge was created that had six individual components and as a requirement step was completed one of the components would change from black and white to full color. Once the entire program was completed the badge was full color and a “higher learning’ achievement was unlocked.
Post event the attendees who completed the program were placed in a drawing for a prize and an email was sent to them, with their manager copied, notifying them they had achieved architectures mastery with a downloadable version of the badge for their internal profiles and email signatures.
The metrics speak for themselves with over 3k learning modules completed and 2% of the audience achieving architectures mastery during the event.
Virtual recognition is tough , especially when being stacked up against a former in person experience were you got to walk across a BIG stage and shake John Chambers hand. However it is not impossible and can actually enable vehicles to recognize contributions at deeper levels since it is not as time and place constrained as in person recognition.
This year GSX was able to ‘crack the code’ on virtual recognition. Read More »
