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.

How is AI and Machine Learning Affecting Business?

It’s all about data. AI is making it easier to better utilize human capabilities by automating the nitty-gritty and monotonous tasks of data collection and data pooling, therefore allowing humans to take on larger roles. For this reason, people shouldn’t buy into the idea of AI taking jobs away from humans

Success Seen With AI in Business

One example is Caterpillar and their use of Natural Language Processing (NLP). By using NLP, Caterpillar technicians are able to see maintenance records on machines from all over the world that give insights as to what processes work best in repairs and what processes don’t work or can be skipped. Just-in-time training (JIT) is also a great example of success with AI in business. IBM uses JIT with new hires to train them on first-time tasks they will run into on the job such as how to conduct a meeting at IBM. 

Best Practices for AI/Machine Learning Implementation 

Companies often throw their hands up after the first attempt at implementing an AI program. These are the keys to getting started:

• • Know your data, know your data, know your data
  • Start with a smaller, decisive problem that focuses on one of your organizations main business objectives
  • Don’t try to tackle all the problems at once; this is what will lead organizations to get analysis-paralysis and give up on AI use
  • Make sure you are using the right data, and don’t put a time constraint on how long you think it should take to solve the first time  
  • Don’t expect anything the first time running AI because your expectations will never meet the results
  • Don’t be discouraged by 50%-60% accuracy results 

What are challenges companies and people should be aware of?

Even in an era where everyone is trying to be a data scientist or engineer, it’s still not easy to find the talent you are looking for. Not all data scientists are created equal. People know more about different aspects of data than others, or sometimes it’s not even a data scientist you need, but a mathematician. In addition, making sure you have the data in the right format is key to avoiding frustration. 

What do you see coming in the future that young professionals and students should be aware of?

• • Right now in the workforce, there are two groups. An older generation who is working longer and harder hours with skills that need to be re-skilled or up-skilled. The other is a younger group who thinks they shouldn’t have to do “grunt work”. This means that going forward, training is going to have to be and is already more of a menu style, with options about how you want to learn, what you want to learn, and how much you want to learn. In other words, “optimizing learning how to learn” is something to be aware of. 
  • Embrace AI and machine learning now before you get left behind. As AI advances, it will become increasingly difficult to play catch-up when you finally decide to go with it.

Check out the full podcast below to learn more about AI and how it can help your organization. 

Also, make sure to check out our summary blog about our webinar with Brandon Hall Group, Machines as Curators to find out more about AI and machine learning and how it can become your greatest asset in content curation.

The post How AI can assist in curation appeared first on OpenSesame.

Common challenges  

Wentworth shares some interesting statistics to further the point on how content curation is impacting L&D:

• • 35% of companies from Brandon Hall Group say they have effectively defined the learning content required to satisfy each of their critical competencies (able to map the content they need in their organization for specific training).
  • 52% of companies say their catalog of elearning courses need significant or total improvements to become easy to navigate and work on multiple devices.
  • In a recent survey conducted by Brandon Hall Group, they had these findings: 50% say not enough content, 36.9% say too much old content, 35.1% say too difficult to integrate/incorporate, 31.3% say low-quality content, 29.1% say no curation, 27.6% say difficult to search, 20.1% say not enough content overall.

Remedying the situation

Haines discusses several suggestions on how to get started using data about your learners to curate. Start by organizing content libraries and look at them from different perspectives; provider, user and department. By doing this, it helps break down the process and naturally organizes the curation process. Along with that, it is critical to survey your user population to see what they think about the courses, what platform they prefer to take them on (i.e laptop, mobile, desktop) and encourage an ongoing dialogue with your learners. Open discussion allows your employees to give feedback you may not hear in surveys or other more formal channels.

AI in elearning

First off, we should probably give a brief definition of what AI is. Simply put, it’s computers taking on human behavior. Uber is a great example of this, where they use historical data to compute ETA’s, optimal pickup spots and fares. With this example it’s easy to see how AI can be leveraged for elearning. Here are a few more examples:

• Air Methods, a medivac helicopter company, uses AI to adapt employee training in real time based on employees pace and answering accuracy.
• IBM uses AI internally for new employees and Just-in-Time (JIT) training. Say a new employee at IBM is hosting their first meeting with a team after being there just a few weeks. Their JIT training will send the employee an email asking if they would like a quick course on how to run a meeting at IBM a day before the set meeting.

How OpenSesame Uses AI

OpenSesame Smart Lists leverage machine learning for content curation. It’s built specifically to help you create lists of courses on one or multiple training topics specific to your organization. Smart Lists use a powerful algorithm that takes into account your prior course selections, course completions, and learner ratings, combined with an intuitive list builder to recommend courses that fit your training needs. For more information on how OpenSesame can save you time and money by curating the right courses for your organization, contact us at info@opensesame.com today.

You can watch the full webinar “Machines as Curators” on-demand here

We hope you find this information useful and valuable to your organization.

About the author: Parker Abena, a summer marketing intern at OpenSesame, is a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He looks forward to moving out to PNW after school.

The post Machines as Curators 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.

The post Get a head start on designing your training program with OpenSesame Curated Lists appeared first on OpenSesame.

The same is true in L&D when curating elearning courses for your learners. We often hear from organizations like yours that the time it takes to find, curate, and deploy courses in your LMS can be enormous.

This is why we’re so excited about OpenSesame Smart Lists—leveraging machine learning for content curation, it’s built specifically to help you create lists of courses on one or multiple training topics specific to your organization. Smart Lists use a powerful algorithm including your prior course selections, course completions, and learner ratings, combined with an intuitive list builder to recommend courses that fit your training needs.

How to use Smart Lists

Using Smart Lists is easy—and fast. Log into your OpenSesame account and select My Lists from your account menu in the top right corner. If you’ve used OpenSesame Lists, you’ll see your existing Lists. To quickly find new course recommendations, simply click New Smart List.Next, provide your preferences for training topics, language, seat time, and if you prefer courses in the OpenSesame Plus subscription.

You can create your course list from here by clicking Create your list, or choose advanced options to select specific publishers, course features, and if you prefer new courses.

Your course recommendations will be presented in a new List with each training topic organized in a separate group with the top five courses each. For easy organization and tracking, the List title defaults to the date it was created, which you can edit, along with the description.As with other Lists you’ve created yourself, you can share them with your stakeholders to collaborate, give and receive feedback, preview course demos, and add all or selected courses to your LMS.

How to use Smart Groups

To further save you time curating courses for your learners, we’ve also added Smart Groups—a quick way to add courses to Smart Lists or lists you create yourself. To search for and add additional courses to an existing List, simply click Add Courses located next to the course group.With the Smart Groups panel, you can browse additional course recommendations for the selected group. The courses displayed are based upon the keyword (group name) and the recommendation algorithm tailored to your organization’s preferences.You can change the keyword or set a variety of filters to further refine your results, including seat time, languages, course features, publishers, new or mobile-ready courses, and those available in the OpenSesame Plus subscription. See a course you like? Add it to the List by clicking on the Add to list icon. Once you’ve created and refined your course list, you can easily add it to your LMS and deploy it to your learners.

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

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