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"Managers and organizational cultures often signal to employees what types of mindsets are valued on the job - such as whether employees should be singular in focus or open to new areas. As the world continues to globalize, we need novel solutions to new and old problems, and these solutions will be driven, in large part, by people with deep interests who also draw connections across disciplines. Encouraging employees to adopt a growth mindset of interest may help spark that process."

""Our employees are already posting online anyways - we should use it," says Celinda. According to Nielsen, 84% of people will act on recommendations from people they know. Also, high quality candidates tend to know other high quality candidates. If your employees are satisfied at work and posting their recommendations on social networks, you're more likely to recruit other talented people."

"The University of Virginia expects to lay off or request retirement from as many as 38 employees at its School of Continuing and Professional Studies this spring. Lower student demand and the end of program partnerships have led to a drop in enrollment and an $8 million budget shortfall, according to Dean Alex Hernandez. His team views reorganization as its last option to address the crisis."

"the burden does not fall exclusively on businesses; it's also up to the individual to seize the opportunity to get ahead. Seven distinctive practices can help employees become lifelong learners and remain relevant in today's business environment"

"Digital literacies have a life-wide impact which is not limited to either the academic or the employment domain. Developing critical and evaluation skills results in sought-after and adaptable employees. Yet digital literacy is not simply about learning from content online this represents a deficit model of education (frequently practiced) rather than skills development."

"A growing number of Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, have grown tired of waiting for colleges and universities to produce the skilled workers they need and have started offering their own classes instead. And as an added bonus for employees: Many of these courses -- from Starbucks' Barista Basics to Jiffy Lube's finance fundamentals -- are eligible for college credit. "What companies like is just-in-time learning that gives somebody a skill they need at the time they need it," says Mark Allen, a Pepperdine University business professor and author of The Next Generation of Corporate Universities. "What traditional universities do to a large extent is just-in-case learning.""

"Third, remember that all first year employees out of college (or two year school) have more potential than productivity. Today's US education system is not developing job skills, but it is attracting ambitious, hard-working people. Hire for "potential" not only for "achievement" and remember that over the first few years young people will dramatically improve their contributions to your business if you build the right environment."

"How can companies get a better idea of which skills employees and job candidates have? While university degrees and grades have done that job for a long time, they've done it imperfectly. In today's rapidly evolving knowledge economy, badges, nanodegrees, and certificates have aimed to bridge the gap - but also leave a lot to be desired. While HR departments are eager for better "people analytics," that concept is still fuzzy. And simply collecting data is not enough - to be used, data has to be presented usefully."

"Phones are ringing off the hook for the four-man IT department at the Wichita County courthouse after hundreds of employees discovered Monday their Internet use during work hours is being monitored."

"Two professors at the University of Texas at Austin have given birth to a new term, SMOC, which stands for "synchronous massive online class." How's it different? The Wall Street Journal describes it as "somewhere between a MOOC...a late night television show and a real-time research experiment," where "students, professors and teaching assistants [are required] to be online at the same time." Running what appears to be a live MOOC doesn't come cheap: the two professors admitted they needed 125 school employees to run the show. And that may be why they're hoping to charge non-UT students for their intro to psychology SMOC"

"Social collaboration is the reason our business is able to remain connected, agile and profitable in multiple markets. It does this by acting as an unbreakable thread which connects each and every person, 24/7, 365 days a year. The prevalence and value of our social interactions has resulted in all employees regarding the intranet as their 'home base'. Company HQ. The central point from which they start and finish their days, and coordinate their individual tasks. It's also the place where they build real relationships with colleagues in other locations and gain awareness of activities occurring in and around the business."

"There is strong, if not overwhelming evidence that behaviour patterns of students, educators, employees and professionals are moving towards the use of social tools for learning, working and teaching. Collaborating seamlessly face-to-face and at a distance, bringing the human element to virtual interactions, and personalized learning will prevail in 2014; each facilitated by technology. But it's not going to be about the technology, it will be about making connections by voice and/or visual, contributing to new knowledge, and learning with and from others-all mediated through social media. It will be the behaviours of students, lifelong learners and educators-their use of technology, specifically social media applications that will influence education in the upcoming year."

"PKM is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. PKM means taking control of your professional development, and staying connected in the network era, whether you an employee, self-employed, or between jobs."

"GPAs don't predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee. "One of the things we've seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.'s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless - no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there's a slight correlation,"" "After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different," he said. "You're also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently. Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they're conditioned to succeed in that environment. 

"The unusual approach is called a "holacracy." Developed by a former software entrepreneur, the idea is to replace the traditional corporate chain of command with a series of overlapping, self-governing "circles." In theory, this gives employees more of a voice in the way the company is run."

""Having workers take small breaks on their phones throughout the day may positively influence their perceived well-being at the end of the workday," said Sooyeol Kim, one of the study's authors and a doctoral student at Kansas State University."

"In the United States, about half the people who start college don't finish, leaving 37 million Americans with some college credits but no degree. That's more than 20 percent of the working-age population. In an economy that increasingly demands workers with knowledge and skills, it is imperative that more opportunities are provided for individuals to obtain a university degree. By serving as the key link between universities and employers, InStride will facilitate partnerships that will positively impact the lives of thousands of people who will benefit from a high-quality education."

"JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU) today announced the launch of JetBlue Scholars, an innovative new program that offers crewmembers an opportunity to earn a fully accredited college degree from Thomas Edison State University, with JetBlue covering most of the cost."