A Senior Curation Specialist specializing in Safety and Compliance, Amanda Sessions assists publishers and customers in complying with regulations and mandates and taking new courses to the next level for learners. Amanda relies on OpenSesame’s exhaustive data and her deep knowledge of the 25,000 courses available. Her curated course lists are custom-created for the exact moment in an organization’s Safety and Compliance initiatives. She’s a futurist in many ways — always staying one step ahead of her customers’ needs and regulatory changes. 

Describe your role.

As a Senior Curation Specialist, I work with publishers to help them succeed and ensure we have the latest and greatest safety and compliance content. When I’m not working with publishers, I’m helping recommend the course lists for customers to meet their very specific requirements and preferences.

What makes your role unique at OpenSesame?

Custom curation feels like power when there are 25,000 opportunities to help improve and inspire learning in a workforce

How did the move to a work-from-home economy affect your work? 

As workforces have been transitioning from live training to online training, the first thing they needed was Safety and Compliance training. In the peak of 2020, customers were turning to us as the experts of what they should be ready for next. The essential topics needed to be deployed right away, and that included COVID safety and workplace guidelines. It felt good to be a trusted guide and have a solid roadmap for our customers and our publishers in such a historic time. The publishers wanted to know what they ought to create, and the customers wanted to know what they needed to be trained on. It was all easily prescribed by OpenSesame. And, while being compliant with COVID safety became a priority, something that has not gone away has been sexual harassment training. The #MeToo movement began right before I started, and the demand for this important content has not slowed down. 

How do you curate the best possible course lists for your customers? 

By leveraging all our data—and we have so much. I use our CAP and our comprehensive data to compare it to the personal data and the customer’s requirements. Then I add in language and accessibility requirements and make sure we’re hitting all those. I put all of it together and make the perfect cake. I’m very comfortable as a Safety and Compliance expert. I came from a background of Safety and Compliance in healthcare, and my time at OpenSesame has only helped me establish myself as a specialist in that role. 

What does a typical day look like for you?  

Our team receives such a wide range of questions, and each one is a challenge and an opportunity to learn. I’ll have a call or two a day with publishers. The other half of the day is spent building customized curated course lists for customers. Much of my work involves supporting customers internally. I love supporting my team in helping our customers. Turning in a curated list to a customer success manager and hearing how I could help the customer is great. Getting to review new publisher content is a delight, and I use my attention to detail to spot opportunities for improvement. I give very specific feedback on details, including terminology and audio/video quality.  Previewing a wide range of topics enriches my understanding of professional development. 

What is your favorite TED course?

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation by Celeste Headlee.

How has your role grown since starting at OpenSesame?

I have experienced relationship building and account management on a whole new level in daily work with our publishers and customers. The autonomy we have in our roles allows us to customize our customers’ experience.  Not only have I become exposed to a broader range of training content, I feel I have a greater understanding of how a highly successful customer and employee-focused company operates.

Want to know more about how Amanda can curate for you? Check out Amanda’s pre-curated list of courses on Promoting a Culture of Ethics.

To get a better idea of how OpenSesame’s curation team can work with you to help you get the most out of your budget and accelerate engagement, connect with one of our experts for a personalized, guided demo.

Get a Personalized Demo →

Access The Pre-Curated List →

Avoid Overpaying on Employee Training – webinar →

The post Employee Spotlight: Curation appeared first on OpenSesame.

In her role as Business Development Manager Team Lead on OpenSesame’s Curation team, Abbie Paul follows a demanding 39-point quality checklist to assess every single new publisher that crosses her desk.

Stringent content standards at OpenSesame maximize learner engagement and drive the best possible customer results. With these standards in mind, Abbie seeks out the globe’s top publishers in each of OpenSesame’s core categories. And, finding the exact content her customers need – as it is needed – has become a priority over the past few unprecedented years.

New workplace topics such as “wellness” and “fully remote workforces” peaked in demand during the pandemic. If a course doesn’t exist, Abbie works directly with trusted publishers to build new content and vet it against OpenSesame’s unrelenting standards.

Describe your role.

My role is to find ideal new publishing partners and bring them into the OpenSesame marketplace. I evaluate training courses, determine if they will be a good fit, and consult with our existing publishing partners to help them improve and expand their offerings to our customers. Every week, we have several publishing organizations reach out to work with us. They range from small independent shops to well-known publishers like TED. All are vetted against the same strict standards and demanding OpenSesame quality checklist. My job is to oversee the quality control of every course we make available to our customers.

What makes your role unique at OpenSesame?

I have to keep pushing the envelope to find unique and engaging courses for our customers. Sometimes it feels like mining for a diamond in the rough.  We’ve built a stringent checklist of Course Quality Standards in the form of an assessment for evaluating each new publisher, and we’re constantly taking in feedback. This allows us to review content in a nonsubjective manner. The OpenSesame checklist tells us what works and what doesn’t work for our customers. Every publisher must meet the same guiding principles: be reputable, innovative, flexible, diverse and inclusive, global, and provide unparalleled support. Our goal is to ensure every learner has a smooth and engaging learning experience.

If a customer needs training on a topic we don’t have courses for; I first reach out to our existing publishing partners. We’ve built a network of strong relationships, and if we don’t have a publisher with expertise in a particular subject, we look to either expand that network, or partner with subject matter experts to create the content in-house. We are fortunate to work with high-quality publishing partners ready to work with us and ultimately help our customers see engagement and results. 

How did hybrid work-from-home workforce models change your offerings and your role?

We strengthened our relationships with our publishers and asked for timely courses — like “virtual onboarding,” “remote employees,” and “mask conflict de-escalation.” Those courses simply didn’t exist before. Believe it or not, a course called “Proper Handwashing” became one of the most popular COVID mitigation courses we offer. As we saw demand change, we reached out to all our publishers, and they were able to jump right in. Wellness continues to be a valuable and critical topic and is produced by many publishers — but finding the most effective wellness content is what we strive for. Within other topics, business skills are forever popular, compliance is critical, and sexual harassment courses are in constant demand. We have all of those courses, and now we also have specialists focused on securing the best courses in DEI, Business Skills, Technology, Wellness, Safety, Compliance. 

What is your favorite TED course?

The Power of Believing You Can Improve by Carol Dweck and The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown.

What is your favorite course in the OS catalog?

Choosing one course would be like picking a favorite child. It’s impossible. I prefer scenario-based courses where videos show the right and wrong way to address a situation. I enjoy humor, so when a course plays like a television show, I stay engaged. 

How has your role grown since starting at the company?

My first role at OpenSesame was as a Senior Curation Specialist. At the time, our team was small, and we wore a lot of hats. Since then, the hats have become roles and teams. In 2019, I started the Business Development team, where the focus was to build-out a process for evaluating prospective publishers in a nonsubjective manner; to ensure a strong partnership with successful onboarding. Since then, we have put several processes into place and expanded the team. Our ratings have improved, and our relationships are stronger than ever. 

To get a better idea of how OpenSesame’s curation team can work with you to help you get the most out of your budget and accelerate engagement, connect with one of our experts for a personalized, guided demo. 

Get a Personalized Demo →

Access The 39 point Quality checklist →

Avoid Overpaying on Employee Training – webinar →

The post Employee Spotlight: Curation appeared first on OpenSesame.

Voices of OpenSesame Juntos Employee Resource Group (ERG): 

I spent most of my childhood summers visiting my abuela who lived in the foothills of a mountain in the southwestern part of the United States. I loved to run through the arroyos, eat from her apricot trees, and catch lizards who became my summer companions. Whenever I went inside her house, I was met with love from her big, warm hugs, her large plates of food with her homemade tortillas, and her affectionate “mijita.” Outside of her affectionate address, I was rarely met with one thing: Spanish. 

Even though my abuela was bilingual in Spanish and English, she never spoke Spanish with me. This was the same at home; my mom never spoke Spanish with me either. There are many contributing factors, with one being that I lived in a multicultural home, and my dad didn’t speak the language, nor was he Hispanic. Thus, our language at home was only English with a sprinkle of Spanish words and phrases. However, the main reason I never grew up speaking Spanish was because of the generation I was born into. 

My mom’s family is part of the Hispanic community in the U.S. who predates the United States itself. They lived on the land in the southwest that eventually became a state. My family never immigrated to the U.S., but were instead living in areas where “the border crossed us.” For my mom, she faced discrimination for speaking Spanish, especially in school, and was faced with all aspects of assimilation. My mom’s perspectives on Spanish grew from this experience and impacted how my sister and I would grow up without it. 

I went through my childhood never questioning my lack of Spanish and thought of it as something fun to listen to when overhearing my mom on the phone, for example. I even took high school Spanish because I thought, “Mom speaks it. It should be an easy class.” It wasn’t until I was older and when my abuela passed away that I began to truly contemplate the important relationship between language and cultural identity. Whenever I asked my mom why my sister and I never learned Spanish, she would always respond by saying, “I felt English was more important because I wanted you to have opportunities.”

Into my adulthood, I began to feel like something was missing, like I wasn’t a “real” Hispanic because I couldn’t speak the language. And from interactions with some Spanish-speaking Hispanics, that became more obvious as they would usually shame my mom for not teaching me our cultural language. But they didn’t understand what contributed to my mom’s decision. My generation didn’t grow up speaking Spanish. My sister didn’t. My first cousins didn’t. We were the result of the effects of discrimination and assimilation that our parents grew up with, where English trumped Spanish at every turn. 

Now, as an adult, I’ve been trying to learn my cultural language with the disheartening fact that I’ll never be a fluent Spanish speaker like my abuela’s generation or even my mom’s — as she jokingly calls it — “Spanglish” generation. I still question if I’m Hispanic enough. But with that comes an additional question: How do I self-identify now?

Latinx is one option.

The term Latinx is something I see and hear all the time. It’s in the news, in textbooks, on social media, and even in our company’s courses. However, I don’t use the term. Honestly, I don’t even like it. If there is one way I would not self-identify, it’s as Latinx. 

According to Pew Research, most Latinos don’t use the term. And for someone like my mom, along with 76% of the adult Latino population, they haven’t even heard of it. The term is more commonly known among young adults and college graduates. 

I can understand how adding an “x” is trying to make the term gender-inclusive. However, the “x” represents another form of erasure to me. My cultural language was taken from me because of the assimilation that tried to erase the language from my mom and her generation, and that assimilation met its goal with many in my generation. The addition of the “x” is just another reminder of that. 

The “x” doesn’t follow the grammatical conventions of the Spanish language, and that is the very reason for its use. The “x” attempts to erase the gendered conventions of a language spoken by over 550 million people — in the name of inclusion. However, there are other inclusive equivalents that I believe are more respectful to the Spanish language. There is a term that already exists in English: Latin, as in Latin music and Latin America. There’s even a Spanish version that fits its grammatical conventions, Latine. It uses –e instead of –o or –a. These are more favorable options that don’t try to erase the Spanish language. The “x” seems like a way to fix something that isn’t even broken. 

What’s truly broken is the continued prejudice and discrimination against Spanish speakers and the idea that if they don’t speak English in the U.S., they should go back “home.” But that ignores the reality of the U.S. having “the second largest population of Spanish speakers in the world,” and for people like my family, we are home. We’ve been home for generations. We’ve never left.

For various reasons — with some being very personal ones — not all of us may agree with or even like the term Latinx, while some do. This is because the Hispanic and Latino population is not monolithic. We all don’t identify in the same way, and that includes the terms we choose for ourselves and for being more inclusive.

So, how do I choose to self-identify? For me, it’s complicated, but I’ll always be my abuela’s mijita.

By a Member of Juntos ERG

To learn more about how you can propel your DEI initiatives, use the resources below:

Essential DEI Resources →

DEI Progress Survey →

ERG Curated Course List →

The post Why Some of Us Don’t Use the Term “Latinx” appeared first on OpenSesame.

As the world grapples with the impact of coronavirus, we believe elearning can provide a critical and efficient path to rapidly educate employees about preventing the spread of coronavirus as well as how to work and manage remotely. We curated a list of courses about coronavirus preparedness and remote working for training your employees. These courses were first made available as a public service on 14 March, free of charge through 15 June 2020. 

In response to the overwhelming response we have received from organizations all over the world, we are expanding our free offer to include additional topics. Refer to the list below for an overview of the changes and additions that have been made:

20 March 2020: We have added more content on the following topics:

• • Managing remote teams
  • Remote communications
  • Anxiety & mental health
  • Ergonomics

27 March 2020: We have added more content on the following topics:

• • Social Distancing
  • Proper Handwashing Procedure
  • Remote Working 101
  • Coronavirus Preparedness (in French)

13 April 2020: We have added courses to support employees on furlough, so that your workforce can hone their skills, complete training, and return to work more prepared and knowledgeable.

• • Courses for customer-facing service workers (sales, customer service, and more)
  • Courses for office staff
  • Courses for operations personnel (warehouse, factory, and more)

7 May 2020: We’ve curated a list of courses to help your team prepare to return to the workplace, including the following topics.

• • Disinfecting the Workplace for COVID-19
  • Workplace Hygiene
  • Coronavirus Precautions and Prevention: Travel Safely

All of our course publishers are committed to providing the most up-to-date information on the coronavirus in accordance with the CDC and the WHO. Courses are being updated frequently, and learners will receive these updates automatically, ensuring that they have access to the most current information available.

To register for the free courses offer, visit go.opensesame.com/free-offer.  

If you have any questions about this offer or how to access the courses once you have signed up, contact support@opensesame.com.

The post Coronavirus preparedness, remote working, and safely returning to work: free courses until 15 June 2020 appeared first on OpenSesame.

We know how valuable your time is and how limited your resources can be in L&D. In early 2019, we created OpenSesame Curated Lists to help you get a head start on curating courses for your training program. 

We’re excited to announce that we are adding more Curated Lists to help you save even more time curating the courses you need. Our Curation Team has been busy researching the latest training trends to create timely, relevant, and impactful course lists that you can easily add to your LMS and quickly deploy to your learners.

And the best part—we’ll be releasing 5–10 new Curated Lists per week to help you tackle new and emerging training needs in record speed. Topics may include:

• • Finding and Maintaining Top Talent
  • Interpersonal Communication
  • 21st Century Skills
  • Multigenerational Business Operations
  • Organizational Agility
  • Microsoft Office® 2019
  • CompTIA Certifications

Our goal is to make your job easier and help you set up your organization for success through effective training. So, we want to hear from you! Share your ideas for new Curated Lists with us by emailing curationrequests@opensesame.com and let us know what training topics can help your organization.

Find Curated Lists and new content in a flash.

But wait, there’s more! Along with more Curated Lists, we’re continuing to enhance our catalog search to make finding content easy and provide recommendations that engage your learners. If you haven’t already, check out our last blog article on the recent catalog search enhancements or the recording of the October Customer Conversations webinar to learn more about recent enhancements as well as what’s to come.

Available in mid-November 2019, new enhancements to the catalog search will help you find and identify Curated Lists more easily. First, the Curated Lists will have a new look to help you easily distinguish them from individual courses.

You’ll also be able to filter for Lists, courses, or see all results using a new Product Type filter. Selecting All will show you recommended Curated Lists along with popular and new course recommendations. Selecting Lists will show only Curated Lists, and selecting Courses will show only course results that match your search criteria.

We want to hear from you on these and upcoming product enhancements to help you streamline processes and work more efficiently. To submit a product enhancement requests or join the OpenSesame Customer Beta Group and be the first to see and try new enhancements, email us at featurerequests@opensesame.com.  

For more information on how OpenSesame can help you find the right elearning courses for your training program, contact your Customer Success Manager, our Customer Support team, or call (503) 808-1268. 

And don’t forget to check out the OpenSesame Community to get answers to your questions, find tips and tricks for your training program, and network with other OpenSesame customers.

The post Train on hot topics and trends more easily with OpenSesame Curated Lists appeared first on OpenSesame.

We often hear from our customers that our extensive, high-quality catalog is one of the primary reasons they choose OpenSesame for their elearning needs. While a large, comprehensive course catalog is crucial for a successful training program, finding the courses you need without the proper tools can be challenging and time consuming. 

Nevertheless, finding, curating, and deploying fresh, relevant content regularly can make the difference between a poorly-utilized program with stale content and a thriving learning ecosystem that exhibits the value of training to your stakeholders.

Find the content you need, faster.

We’ve helped hundreds of organizations like yours develop effective training programs with our world-class tools and services such as the machine learning-driven OpenSesame SmartLists, OpenSesame Curated Lists, and personalized curation assistance from our team of experts.

And now, we’ve enhanced the catalog search and added recommendations to your results to further help you find the courses you need as well as discover new content more efficiently. Check out these time-saving search enhancements today. 

An intuitive way to search.

When you click the Search courses box OpenSesame catalog you’ll now see the most popular search terms used in the catalog—a quick and convenient option to browse trending training topics. 

As you begin typing your search term, you will see new search suggestions grouped by Popular searches, Lists, and Courses—helping you eliminate misspellings while displaying relevant topics that match your entry. 

When you search by a specific term or select a popular search topic from the menu, you will see courses and now Curated Lists filtered to match your search. 

When you select a Curated List from the Lists section (if applicable to your search), you will go directly to the Curated List details where you can follow or duplicate the list, add the courses to your LMS, and more.

Meaningful, relevant content recommendations.

As you browse or search the catalog, you will now receive grouped course recommendations, including:

• • Curated Lists for you: Curated Lists relevant to your search terms that help you easily find and deploy curated training paths for popular topics and skills. 
  • Popular courses for you: course recommendations based on your search and usage history to help you find more of what your learners like.
  • New courses for you: new courses recommended specifically for your organization to help you energize your training program.

For more information on how OpenSesame can help you find the right elearning courses for your training program, contact your Customer Success Manager, our Customer Support team, or call (503) 808-1268. 

And don’t forget to check out the OpenSesame Community to get answers to your questions, find tips and tricks for your training program, and network with other OpenSesame customers.

The post Find new training content easily with new OpenSesame catalog search enhancements appeared first on OpenSesame.

To say that L&D runs lean is an understatement. With limited time, budget, and resources, L&D teams like yours are relying more on their trusted content partner for curation to save time, learn about hot training topics, and prepare the organization for the future.

This is where OpenSesame and our team of curation experts can help. We’ve worked with hundreds of organizations like yours helping them find, curate, and deploy courses to learners. Harnessing this experience we’ve created OpenSesame Curated Lists—a quick and easy way for you find expertly curated courses to help your learners hone critical business skills, prepare for a new role, achieve organizational competencies, and more.

Check out the new OpenSesame Curated Lists

With Curated Lists, you’ll save time searching for courses and get a head start with pre-curated learning paths for the most common training challenges. To see the first available Curated Lists, go to www.opensesame.com, click Courses in the page header, and then click View Lists in the new Curated Lists section. Curated Lists are organized into intuitive groupings to help you quickly find the training topics you need, including:

• • Frequently requested learning paths,

  • Introduction to new topics and skills,

  • Advancement in critical business and interpersonal skills, and

  • Preparation for new positions and responsibilities.

At a glance, you can see how many courses are in each Curated List and whether the courses in each List are included in our most popular subscription offering, OpenSesame Plus. Within each Curated List, you’ll be able to see additional information including course ratings, length, publishers, and (when logged in) you can view a course demo if one is available. Our curation experts regularly update Curated Lists to ensure you always have access to the most current and relevant content. You can easily stay up to date with changes to Curated Lists by following your favorite ones. Just click the List and then click the Follow button.Log into your OpenSesame account or, if you’re new to OpenSesame, register to create one. You’ll see the Curated Lists you’re following within My Lists in the All tab as well as the new Following tab.Need to make changes to a Curated List? No problem. Within the List, select Duplicate from the List settings menu (gear icon) to create a copy, enter a list title and description, and click Duplicate. Your new duplicated List can be found in the All and Created tabs. You can now add, remove, and organize courses as needed. Note that duplicated Lists will not reflect any course updates from OpenSesame.From here, Lists you’ve duplicated and modified work like all your other Lists. You can collaborate with stakeholders, collect feedback, view course demos, and easily add courses to your LMS for quick deployment to learners.

We’re here to make your job easier, including curating so you don’t have to. Share with us what other Curated Lists you would like to see in the future by visiting the OpenSesame Community, click the Looking for elearning recommendations topic, and then select the Request new Curated List topics post. Our curation team will review your requests for future Curated Lists.

For more information contact your Customer Success Manager or our Customer Support team.

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