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.

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Designed specifically for L&D professionals and released in 2018, OpenSesame Smart Lists and Smart Groups save you valuable time in your day by providing you with instant course recommendations tailored specifically to your organization.

With Smart Lists, you can create lists of courses on one or multiple training topics using 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 and your learners’ preferences.

Read on for a helpful recap of how Smart Lists and Smart Groups work and learn about recent enhancements that help you further streamline your curation process.

Getting started with OpenSesame Smart Lists

The powerful algorithm powering Smart Lists and Smart Groups has been enhanced and refined to provide you with relevant and accurate results no matter how you search. Whether you use one word like “leadership” or multiple words like “project management,” you’ll receive the right courses for your training needs.

To get started, log into your OpenSesame account and select My Lists from your account menu in the top right corner. If you’ve previously 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.

Getting started with OpenSesame Smart Groups

Use OpenSesame Smart Groups to add courses to Smart Lists or lists you create yourself. To search for and add additional courses to an existing List, simply click the Add Courses button located next to the course group.

The Smart Groups panel has now been enhanced to help you easily browse for and add additional course recommendations to 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 (topic) or set a variety of filters to further refine your results, including seat time, languages (now including subtitles), course features, publishers, courses available in the OpenSesame Plus subscription, and more. Simply click Show/Hide filters near the top of the Smart Group panel to use the new search filters to refine your results.

See a course you like? We’ve made it easier to add one, multiple, or all displayed courses to your List using the new Select courses feature within Smart Groups. To add one course at a time, hover over the preferred course and click the Add to List button.

To add multiple or all courses to your List, click Select courses at the top of the Smart Lists panel. To select and add multiple courses, hover over the preferred courses, click the check mark on each course, then click the Add to Group button at the top of the Smart Groups panel. Similarly, to add all displayed courses to your List, click Select all at the top of the panel, then click Add to Group.

Once you’ve created and refined your course list, you can easily add it to your LMS and deploy it to your learners by clicking the actions (gear) icon, then selecting Send to LMS.

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.

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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.

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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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