Coursera, which works with high-profile colleges to provide massive open online courses, or MOOC's, announced its employee-matching service, called Coursera Career Services. Some high-profile tech companies have already signed up

We used to rely on traditional classroom-based solutions and off the shelf e-learning, which may not always be contextual to the learner or may lack the level of engagement that a learner in 2013 demands. There was also a lot of premium put on content. In today’s environment, building context is more vital. Robert McGuire What are some of the roles and responsibilities of the people who have participated so far? Sunder Ramachandran We have encouraged employees across levels to take courses based on their interests. We also recommend courses based on what could potentially appeal to a certain segment of employees. For example, operational executives were recommended the Intro To Operations Management course. Likewise, we did a classroom session on finance for non-finance managers and recommended the Intro To Finance and Intro To Financial Accounting MOOCs as follow up courses. We also have a monthly lunch & learn session for our senior managers called “Blackboard,” and often MOOCs are recommended as follow up assignments to themes that get discussed.

learning is increasingly becoming self-directed, and MOOCs offer the flexibility to employees to choose what they want to learn

Adoption of MOOCs has also helped us encourage social and informal learning within the organization.

An online review conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities reports that 95% of employers surveyed look to hire college graduates who can contribute to innovation in the workplace

Let’s say you are a recent liberal arts grad with the career goal of becoming a management consultant. Your education has prepared you well in terms of soft skills required for this type of job. A creative way to attain a competitive advantage over other aspiring junior analysts is to enroll in a MOOC that helps you learn more about the business world you’ll be working in.

According to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), most companies expect to hire only 2.1 percent more college graduates from the class of 2013 than they did from the class of 2012. With the competitive nature of the job market in general, recent college graduates may have an experience deficit that shrinks their opportunity to compete with experienced job seekers.