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Interesting explanation of business model for how nonprofit and forprofit MOOC partners--edX, Coursera, and Udacity--will make money along with the universities. Implications for other, smaller online learning partnerships? Excerpt on two models (large-scale efforts) According to Mr. Agarwal, edX offers its university affiliates a choice of two partnership models. Both models give universities the opportunity to make money from their edX MOOCs-but only after edX gets paid. Related Content What You Need to Know About MOOCs Document: The Revenue-Sharing Models Between edX and University Partners The first, called the "university self-service model," essentially allows a participating university to use edX's platform as a free learning-management system for a course on the condition that part of any revenue generated by the course flow to edX. The courses developed under that model will be created by "individual faculty members without course-production assistance from edX," and will be branded separately in the edX catalog as "edge" courses until they pass a quality-review process, according to a standard agreement provided to The Chronicle by edX. Once a self-service course goes live on the edX Web site, edX will collect the first $50,000 generated by the course, or $10,000 for each recurring course. The organization and the university partner will each get 50 percent of all revenue beyond that threshold. The second model, called the "edX-supported model," casts the organization in the role of consultant and design partner, offering "production assistance" to universities for their MOOCs. The organization charges a base rate of $250,000 for each new course, plus $50,000 for each time a course is offered for an additional term, according to the standard agreement. Although the edX-supported model requires cash upfront, the potential returns for the university are high if a course ends up making money. The university gets 70 percent of any revenue gen

Fascinating interview with Vivek Wadhwa on "Innovating Women", August 20, 2014, published by Wharton School of Business. He has written a book. Believe this could be a Lean-In topic or book that we read and discuss? Also a great example of crowd sourcing to get the support he needed to do the research from women--research and $. "I decided to do more research and interview hundreds of women, and I have a research paper, which will be released soon, on women and innovation. At the same time, I wanted to express opinion, and in academic papers, you can't do that. What I decided to do was to write a book. The first thing that occurred to me was, who is a guy to tell women how to solve their problems? So, that was the dilemma. Also, I had to spend a lot of money on research. I wanted to fund it, and I spoke to my wife about it. She said, "Vivek, get women to help you." It was such an obvious answer. So, I decided to crowd-fund the book and then crowd-create it; I essentially did an Indiegogo campaign in which I raised money. Instead of the $40,000 I needed, I raised $96,000. All the money from this is going to a fund to educate and empower women, so it was great to get that kind of support. I wanted 30 or 40 women to help me with the research and writing. I ended up getting more than 500 women. It was an outpouring of support from women who were thrilled that I was stepping into this debate and that I would be researching and writing more about it."

article on business owner-peer support groups, NYT, May 24, 2012. Ken Prest sent me this article. Interesting set-up. What is/should be transferrable to Studio idea?

article by Steve Daigneault, 2.15.2013 on what the Obama campaign staff learned from their fundraising and advocacy program in 2012. Excerpt: "Facebook app made a huge difference for their mobilization efforts. The app allowed the campaign to ask supporters to contact specific people on their friend list based on geography via Facebook. Toby and Marie estimated that millions of additional people were reached this way that weren't reachable via any other channel. Best performing appeals often had the highest unsubscribe rates. Turns out, evoking passion in supporters worked both ways, but ultimately the campaign decided the positive fundraising results were worth the increased unsubscribes. Even when considering retention, the conversion stats outweighed the downside of losing people."

Post in WP discussion forum on how unhelpful so-called help discussion forums really are. Excerpt: "I signed up for WP AT Godaddy,com and have the same question, so I have to come here and do whatever I can understand of what i'm told. my universal experience with forums like this - here at WP and at the forums which serve as the ONLY assistance for non-paying users of third party design businesses -is that genuinely inexperienced people are not-so-subtly encourage to self-select out. people who need help make it very clear that they are really inexperienced, beg for step-by-step directions and get responses they cannot decipher or use. And if they have the temerity to say so, well, here's the first forum i clicked under this topic: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/email-set-up-on-wordpress-site?replies=3 the forum was simply shut down. lol? I don't understand why experienced users who know how to do things bother to make such replies. Is there some club somewhere where such things are on display for the amusement of our betters? Because unintentionally or not, it seems gratuitously mean. "

Blog by Harold Jarche, April 30, 2012. This excerpt IMO justifies why women (and everyone else!) needs to know how to work in social networks to learn and to help others learn and apply their "capacity for action" in their workplaces and elsewhere. They can transform their workplaces through enriched learning practices. They may not have the HR title but they can still role model organizational learning on a small scale at least. Excerpt: "Individual learning in organizations is irrelevant, as work is almost never done by one person alone. Knowledge, Senge said, is the capacity for effective action (know how) and it is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in business and life. Value is created by teams and mostly by networks of people. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks." Excerpt: It shows that the company never gave any thought to organizational learning. ■Are employees narrating their work in a transparent environment? ■Does the daily routine support social learning? ■Is time made available for reflection and sharing stories? "Narrating their work in a transparent environment," "support social learning," and "reflection" are all linked to other resources.

Very good presentation of social performance support.

Interesting blog post by Jane Hart on building an enterprise learning network within an enterprise social network. Is the WLS going to be an enterprise learning network? Perhaps not in the usual sense of an organization with employees comprising a workforce. But perhaps it can use some of the same techniques advocated by Hart below: Under Part Two 1. new social approaches to training and online learning--backchannel learning, online social workshops ("participants with a lot of autonomy, so that they participate in the ways that they feel more comfortable and best suits them..." ); tiny training aka microlearning--short bursts of learning ten minutes long... 2. Innovative Learning Initiatives--social onboarding, social mentoring 3. Continuous series of learning activities and events 10 minutes a day - provide a daily link to a place where individuals can spend just 10 minutes learning something new. Note: 10 minutes a day, each weekday adds up to around 6 days of training in a year! Live chats - run regular live Twitter-like live chat sessions on different topics. They might just take place over 1 hour or be a longer all-day event that people can join in at any time. Hot seats - put one of your people (e.g. CEO or a leading expert) in the hot seat for a period of time, and encourage employees to ask them questions. Book club - organise a monthly time for conversation around a book of interest. Lunch'n'Learns - ask someone to lead a short informal session on a topic of interest to them. This might be purely conversational or involve a web meeting or face-to-face meeting, with the ELN used as a backchannel. 4 - SUPPORT OTHER PEOPLE-BASED LEARNING SERVICES Your ESN provides the opportunity to set up and support other learning activities in private group spaces. A Learning Help Desk service (aka Learning Concierge service) which provides an advice centre for ad hoc learning and performance problems. - See more at:

This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations. "Social Media - what do you need to know? In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working." Another excerpt: So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection? A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge. Excerpt: Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs. 1. social media providing to time to collaborate 2. social media providing leadership support 3. social media providing information 4. social media providing access to colleagues

Great article by Joe Rominiecki, June 24, 2015 in AssociationsNow on the online community manager role; quotes the latest Community Roundtable report on how the online community management skillset is needed by many staff, not just one person. There is a big difference between lurking or contributing as an individual in Facebook or LinkedIn groups and mentoring/leading/supporting an online community. Supports our inclusion of "convening" as a vital digital literacy skill.

Make learning more of a process and less of an event. Learning Solutions, Jane Bozarth, September 1, 2015

Interesting assessment of the value of volunteer moderators, July 7, 2015, by Ernie Smith on Reddit

Education Week published online 6.10.15 on why districts put OERs to work in their schools. Commercial publishers fighting back saying that curriculum is more than content; C.P.s offer "wraparound support" for their resources to educators.

Quote that Jane Hart found from Jane Bozarth, 12/6/14, rest of Jane Hart's post is just as interesting. well worth reading. "The thing that is going to change the game is - the learners …. They are changing the concept of training, and we are increasingly moving toward an age in which the adult worker will not sit still for training that just looks like more "school". They're becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of how learning looks and how it happens. We're going to have to figure out how to provide better performance support, in smaller bites, in places easy for them to access. And we'll need to offer time and space and support so they can create the user-generated help that others need. And if we don't? They won't wait for us. They'll find the means to do it anyway.""

I like the requirements on the freelance gig Modern Tribe advertises for on this page. I clicked on this heading on our WordPress dashboard wondering if they might offer the technical support that we need.

Really wonderful article on nonprofit leadership development and how the lack of it leads to much external executive hiring and high turnover in these roles

excellent explanation by Tom Vander Ark on why parent-managed learner profiles are becoming more important all the time for young people.  Is the corollary true for adults owning their learning in portable, digital carry-alongs for sharing with potential employers, etc.  

by Rahul Bhargava in the summer issue. Nice article on effective use of data for organizations. He stresses that "to use data effectively, orgs need architecture - people, process, and technology-driven structures that support the effective and intentional use of data to further their mission - for data management, data security, data culture, and data use." Nice use of graphic icons to simplify most sections.

by Rahul Bhargava in the summer issue. Nice article on effective use of data for organizations. He stresses that "to use data effectively, orgs need architecture - people, process, and technology-driven structures that support the effective and intentional use of data to further their mission - for data management, data security, data culture, and data use." Nice use of graphic icons to simplify most sections.

Although written in 2011, it forecasts nicely how LMSs are being revamped/enhanced/integrated with business performance & business transformation. Really it's about boundary management, too, in terms of formal employer led/sponsored training/learning and what employees may learn and apply on their own.

interesting post by Louise Pasterfield on supporting, not implementing, social learning, with Slack tool assist at Sponge UK