Author: Rédaction Blog

The Digital Learning Club to build the future of corporate digital learning together comes back in 2020 in a new format

 

Club: an organization of people with a common purpose or interest, who meet regularly and take part in shared activities.

Digital Learning Club: an organization of people with a common purpose – building the future of corporate learning, who meet at least once a year and take part in shared activities. Lifelong learning is the topic gathering them.

The future is uncertain. Especially during this global pandemic of Covid-19, especially at times when lots of places in Europe go into lockdown again. 

A few figures to realize how complex and uncertain the world of tomorrow will be: according to the World Economic Forum, in 2022. 75 million jobs will disappear when 133 million new jobs will be created. Also, in 2020, most of 2030 jobs actually don’t exist yet! Still according to the World Economic Forum, 65% of jobs in 2030 have not been invented yet.

Facing this uncertainty, one certainty: lifelong learning is key in order to remain competitive in a fast-changing world. And that lifelong learning idea, our clients understood it very well!

This is how and why the Digital Learning Club has been conceived. This event has been created for our clients, by our clients.

Every year, the Digital Learning Club is an event that our clients hold in high regard. They can share insights with their peers and co-imagine the future of digital learning.

Because it’s 2020, we had to come up with a new format. It will be online, for 45 minutes, and we will share with our clients the latest trends in training for 2021, the best practices to adopt, the pedagogical innovation with our R&D programs supported by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, our product roadmap but also what’s new in content production and editorial partnerships.

The Digital Learning Club is also a space for discussions and gathering: our clients will meet on November 26th at 14h00 to build together their Coorpacademy! If you’re interested in becoming a client of Coorpacademy and joining the Digital Learning Club, don’t hesitate to contact us!

With the Digital Learning Club, we want to build the future of Coorpacademy’s Learning Experience – which needs to be unique for each learner.

If you want to know more, contact us!

What is the link between soft skills and police investigation? (Article 1 on 3: profiling)

 

Suspects, the first series 100% fiction and 100% learning, where you’ll play a profiler and use soft skills to find who is guilty, is soon available on all Coorpacademy platforms!

Before that, we wanted to look back on some of the most famous police works to identify links between soft skills and investigations.

Let’s start by a quick series of questions.

Which famous movie profiler hides behind each sentences? 

Quote 1 – “When we know who the criminal is, we can understand what set him off”

Question 1 Suspects ENQuote 2 – “I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it’s him.”

Question 2 Suspects EN

Quote 3- “Vous n’aimeriez pas qu’il pénètre dans votre esprit.”

If you know the answers, good on you! You can discover the rest of the article and the history of profiling… Or start a film marathon to try to find the exact sentences in Silence of the Lambs, Mindhunter or Zodiac!

Here are the answers!

Profiler A (Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs) – Quote 3: “Believe me, you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.”

Profiler B (Holden Ford in Mindhunter) – Quote 1: “When we know who the criminal is, we can understand what set him off.”

Profiler C (Robert Graysmith in Zodiac) – Quote 2 : “I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it’s him.”

Because it’s a thrilling topic, let’s go back on the history of profiling!

As profilers became unmissable in the movie and series landscapes, it demonstrates the growing use of scientific work for police investigations, and in particular the growing use of behavioral sciences. 

Doctor Thomas Bond is usually considered as the first profiler in History – he tried, in the 1880’s, to draw a psychological profile of Jack the Ripper. But the job of profiler – or behavioral analyst – really took off in the 1950’s in the US, the cradle of profiling. From 1940 to 1956, a bomber is terrorizing New York City. In 1957, James A. Brussel creates the criminal profile of the Mad Bomber George Metesky, which will help the police capture him. This investigation marks a turning point in the scientific police history.

It’s in 1972 that profiling becomes a known and theorized science, with the creation of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit as an answer to a growing number of murders and sexual assaults at the beginning of the 1970’s. This FBI unit will then be made famous the TV series Mindhunter (2017- ?) created by David Fincher (Seven, Zodiac…) which tells in a very accurate way all the classification and research work made by agents John E. Douglas and Robert Ressler by conducting live interviews with serial killers. Thanks to his methods and innovative research, Douglas remains a leading figure of profiling, and inspired the Jack Crawford character in Silence of the Lambs. As of today though, Douglas only dubs Mindhunter as the only realistic fiction about his job. 

Today, the profession of behavioral analyst is recognized. In France, the Behavioral Sciences Department has been created in 2002 within the Gendarmerie Nationale.

In the field of police interrogations, which is the key element of our new interactive series Suspects, adding behavioral analysis in interrogations techniques and using rigorous scientific methods can make the results more conclusive and more reliable in the long term. Before that, in some cases, confessions police got after interrogations turned out to be wrong, like in the Patrick Dils case. His confessions after a long, tiring and  interrogation cost him 15 years of jail – he turned out to be not guilty…

Nowadays, methods based on empathy exist, like the PROGREAI method in France (General Process of Interviews, Auditions and Interrogations Gathering – Processus Général de Recueil des Entretiens, Auditions et Interrogatoires). This is a new approach that puts more interest in the individual rather than looking for more clues or pieces of evidence. The goal is to avoid the confrontation between the suspect and the detective, and to create a link. And it works for all cases and on all profiles, witnesses or suspects.

This approach is backed by some of the soft skills you can find in the Coorpacademy catalogue, and that you will find in the interactive series Suspects!

Let’s meet in a few days for the next article on how soft skills and police work go hand in hand!

Communities are the companies’ future!

 

Coorpacademy has co-edited with makesense a new online course on the creation of communities within or for companies. Communities can bring a lot to organizations: they can stimulate innovation, create customer or employees loyalty, spread new work cultures… Lucie Chartouny, Community Builder at makesense and co-founder of the community of the paumé·e·s (lost, in French), gives us insights on her experience in building communities. It seems like the revolution of the collective in corporations will continue to surprise us!

Question: Let’s start with an easy question! What does a community represent for an organization? Do communities and companies go so well together?

Actually, there is not one single and universal definition of communities, because this word is used differently and specifically according to people, contexts and cultures. Most usually, we call a community a group of people gathering together around a common reason. More precisely, we are going to call ‘community’ a group of people united by a common vision – such as making a company’s products more sustainable, for example – or by their situation – such as a group of entrepreneurs – who work together to reach a shared goal.

I’m convinced that communities embody the future of companies.

I’m convinced that communities embody the future of companies – which means that the future of corporations will be shaped around a communitarian approach. Having a group of people who want to act together, to make projects happen allows companies – and we’ve seen this in the times of crisis we’re currently living in – to be proactive, resilient, to have a decentralized approach and in fine save time and find the most accurate solutions to problems.  

Corporate communities bring real game-changing differences. Some are used to engage and connect either coworkers or third-parties, on specific projects like sustainability or social responsibility. Others are used to share and promote good practices and/or the right tools. The last kind that we can observe is innovation and creativity communities which aim at reaching a strategic objective. What we observe on the field will then help finding a different approach than more classic ones.

Q: Could the development of communities be at the same time the development of democracy within companies?

Communities can impact governance, but it’s a long process. It can take time to transform dynamics and engagement methods of coworkers. At makesense, we’re convinced that communities are ways of engaging coworkers which complete what already exists.

Q: Have you created the paumées’ community with this vision of social engagement?

I’ve co-created the paumées’ community (la communauté des paumé·e·s) with two coworkers in 2018, Aurore Le Bihan and Simon Drouard. We started it from our personal impressions and not from an intellectual approach around engagement. The three of us were going through a phase of professional transition.

We felt lost, and personally speaking, I didn’t know with whom I could share my questioning and I didn’t know why I couldn’t find any information on how to search for meaning in your work.

We felt lost, and personally speaking, I didn’t know with whom I could share my questioning and I didn’t know why I couldn’t find any information on how to search the meaning of your work. While discussing with Simon and Aurore, and because we like to use a collective approach at makesense to do things, we wanted to help all people who, like us, were asking more questions than they were getting answers. We’ve then created the first event of the paumées’ community, just to be together, to share why we were feeling lost and to try to help each other. Aurore, who’s a big fan of podcasts, gave the microphone to some ‘lost’ (paumés) people who were going further in their thinking processes and who were starting interesting projects. Today, we’re more than 15,000 members everywhere in France and there have been hundreds of events, usually initiated and organized by “super lost” members, 200 very engaged members of the community in Nantes, Montpellier, Lyon and who share the values of the community.

Q: Must the rationale of the community be very clear and asserted, like in a manifest, for a community to be successful?

It is true that all paumé·e·s members share the conviction that a period of “being lost” is a very healthy period, that can be lived with optimism. Maybe it will make us drift apart from people who are suffering in those times, but we need to be clear on our rationale. 

The goal and the rationale of “les paumé·e·s” is finding meaning at work. This was already a very current topic, but there were not a lot of answers, except when having a very individual coaching or personal development coach. Not a lot was done to answer those questions collectively. I think that a lot of “paumés” recognized themselves in this community because we have created it while having fun, not being too serious. But the rationale of it is very clear, and there are tools, a manifest, that are available to all. The fact that we launched it in other parts of France also, and not only in Paris, can explain part of the success.

Q: When can we call a community successful?

It can sound a bit cheesy, but I feel like our community has been successful when, during an event with the most engaged members, they tell how their engagement in the community changed their lives and how the community was helping them in their personal development. For example, one member told the story of how organizing events for the community helped rebuild his confidence after a burn-out. Actually, members of the community showed us how the community helped them and how individual change can make a difference collectively.

Q: If you had one advice to give to anyone wanting to build a community – other than to follow the course co-edited with Coorpacademy, what would it be?

Building a community can sound a bit scary at first. But you can tell yourself: “I will organize an event and I think this topic is important” and then take the leap, especially in the professional context where a lot is at stake (what will your manager think? Your coworkers? Is it in adequation with your own professional career path?) It’s a real risk taking. But you need to start step by step, start achieving little things, like organizing coffee breaks with the most benevolent coworkers before booking the company’s amphitheatrum!

Start little! And also, start fast, without overthinking, and learn by doing!

If I had one advice to give, it would be Gaëtan Maillet’s one, from Décathlon, that he gave during a conference on how difficult it is to animate a community within a company: Dare to dream small and start little! And also, start fast, without overthinking, and learn by doing! That’s what we’ve done with “les paumé·e·s” and it was very interesting to start a community from scratch and to see the build-up to more than 10,000 autonoumous members, where ‘super paumés’ people are acting their parts and animate parts of France autonomously.

Q: The search for meaning at work is at the heart of your community. Is it for you a major stake within companies? According to your experience within different organizations you have advised, what are the other HR stakes linked to the creation of communities?

When I joined makesense 4 years ago, the search for meaning at work was not as fashionable as today, less urgent, and I felt like that nobody really wanted to talk about it within companies. 

To say the word “community” was making us look like aliens but talking about a community centered on the search for meaning in your work was a complete red flag.

To say the word “community” was making us look like aliens but talking about a community centered on the search for meaning in your work was a complete red flag.

 People feared that coworkers would end up quitting the company. Since the end of 2019, I feel like it evolved a lot. The word “community” is less feared, and becomes interesting. For example, we realized that in some communities, people were staying in their companies thanks to the communities within the company. Because they meet people that they wouldn’t meet otherwise, they learn new things and don’t get bored. Communities are a real tool to retain people and talents, to fidelize them. We also accompany a lot of communities around digital culture, with a lot of data scientists, a profile sought-after in the work market. Rapidly, they can get bored because their jobs are very technical, not always understood, and being part of a community around digital culture can help them stimulate each other, share insights and learn from each other every day. What is very interesting in how communities retain coworkers is that people usually gather around a sustainable goal or objective, linked to the social responsibility of their companies or missions. 

Nowadays, companies have realized that the search for meaning at work is unavoidable. Either they make their communities evolve, or they create new ones around collaboration, around continuous learning of their coworkers, to retain them.

Nowadays, companies have realized that the search for meaning at work is unavoidable.

Q: What is the most memorable corporate community project you’ve accompanied?

I work with Ecowork, a community around the sustainable city at Vinci. It’s a very complete project. At the beginning, we were organizing most of the events at makesense, but step by step, members became autonomous. Today, they create their own methods to transform their answers to call for tenders and add sustainable aspects to them. They now organize their own afterworks events around the circular economy, for example. They have complete ambassadors programs, training programs around sustainable topics and it makes the views around environmental protection evolve at Vinci.  

All employees we are working with are asking for this.

All employees we are working with are asking for this. They usually are very engaged people, with a real desire to understand environmental stakes, transform their jobs to be as engaged in their companies as they are in real life, personally. The community helps them in making their daily professional lives more engaged, by being connected to the right people and by getting the right tools and methods. New communities are really linked to new work methods. At Vinci, Ecowork increased collaboration between their numerous branches and between all employees with this goal of making the world a better place. 

Thanks Lucie, this topic is very interesting and infinite!

If you want to go further, discover the course “How to build a community” by makesense on all Coorpacademy platforms.

 

Lucie Chartouny, Community builder at makesense, is the co-founder of the paumé.e.s (lost) community, gathering thousands of millennials searching for meaning, especially in their professional lives. She helps organizations to give meaning to their collective projects and helps them building and developing communities within them.
makesense
In 2010, a bunch of young people wanted to put their skills to work wherever they could help social entrepreneurs make a difference. Very quickly these citizens of the world started to connect to other citizens. They all shared the same desire to help innovative entrepreneurs solve social and environmental issues by sharing their knowledge and continuing to learn along the way. makesense was born! And with thousands of citizens and social entrepreneurs engaged across the world to build local solutions for the most pressing issues of our times, a community was born! The collaboration with governments, local authorities and companies was an important ingredient of the recipe. It allowed us to scale up the best solutions to have a true and significative positive impact.

Coorpacademy gives their learners access to the most complete and qualitative online training catalogue in Europe by partnering with OpenSesame, the global leader in learning content

 

OpenSesame, global leader of digital learning content, and Coorpacademy, EdTech startup offering a Learning Experience Platform adapted to the new learners’ usages, are now partnering. As almost 100% of face-to-face training has been cancelled or postponed this year, investing in online training has became a major stake in these uncertain times. This new offering of exhaustive and premium learning content will allow each employee to upskill and allow each company to better face the crisis. 

Thanks to this partnership, Coorpacademy customers can access the OpenSesame catalogue, the world’s most comprehensive e-learning content marketplace offering over 20,000 different courses. The purpose of this partnership is to be able to offer learners the right content that meets all their training needs. In addition to the Coorpacademy soft skills catalogue, they will have access to master classes, exclusive TED@Work talks, courses on hard skills, Excel tutorials, videos for learning how to code, cybersecurity courses, and much more.

Arnauld Mitre, co-founder of Coorpacademy, explains:

“Since the very beginning, our vision of learning has been based on high-quality premium content, and our ambition has always been to offer our students the best possible learning experience. Today, we are continuing to expand our offer to propose one of the richest content hubs in the world, which our learners can already enjoy! We are therefore extremely proud to announce our partnership with OpenSesame, the world leader in e-learning content. They offer over 20,000 modules, the quality and diversity of which have been recognised and lauded many times.”

“OpenSesame’s full catalogue of e-learning courses is available in more than 18 languages, so that companies can train and upskill anytime and anywhere,”, said Tom Turnbull, Vice-President of Partnerships at OpenSesame. “We are excited to be working with Coorpacademy to deliver high-quality learning experiences – whether at home or at work – to businesses across the EMEA region.”

About Coorpacademy

Founded in 2013, Coorpacademy is a European start-up and member of the EdTech France association, specialising in innovative and scalable digital learning solutions. Coorpacademy operates out of Paris, London and Lausanne (via the Swiss EdTech Collider association of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL), and is at the heart of research into new ways of learning. Through its platform, Coorpacademy supports the transformation of businesses by engaging their employees, partners and customers in skills development. To unlock the desire and will to learn, Coorpacademy has developed a proprietary SaaS platform based on innovative educational engineering supported by the EPFL innovation laboratories, and exclusive content focused on soft skills. The result is more fun, flexible and collaborative user-centered learning.

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame helps companies to develop the world’s most productive and admired workforces. Offering the most comprehensive catalogue of online courses from the world’s leading publishers, we’re here to help you every step of the way, from searching for courses to matching them with your core skills, syncing them with your LMS, and improving and increasing the use of your existing training and development programmes. Not only will you benefit from the flexibility of multiple OpenSesame purchase options, but you will find it easy to use and to manage your e-learning courses.

And the Battle became Massive!

 

The Massive Battle is a new feature we have developed with one of our clients, because we believe in open innovation and we put our clients’ and our learners’ needs at the center of what we are doing everyday.

Before jumping into the massive Battle, let’s refresh our memories: What’s a Battle?

The Battle is a gaming element on the Coorpacademy platforms. It consists in a challenge with questions to be answered – rightly and rapidly.

When sending a Battle invitation, you can challenge anyone you want on any course you want. The person answering the most questions correctly – or the fastest if there is a tie – will “win the Battle”, and 5 bonus stars, with, obviously, a better knowledge of the topic.

Generally, there are 6 to 8 questions to be answered, which represents 2 questions per chapters, from the chosen course.

From simple to massive Battles

As the name would suggest, there are more than 2 players in a Massive Battle. Actually, all learners – or a chosen group of learners – can compete in a Massive Battle. They are challenged by one single learner.

For what need? To engage all learners in a playful way on a particular course.
Massive Battle, a manual in 4 steps!

1- Choose the learner who will send the Battle invitation.

You need to choose the learner that will send the invitation and challenge others. It’s important to note that the learner who sends the Battle invitation will never earn any points, whatever the issue of Battle is. The “Battle launcher” you will select will “lend” his/her name the time of the challenge and will become a “Battle automaton”.

👉  Trick number 1: Choose preferably a learner known by all in your organization, a C-level executive for example!

👉  Trick number 2: This “Battle automaton” can also be a “fictive learner”, a profile specifically created for this use case. It could be a Battle Master or an Innovation Master if you launch a Battle on a course on innovation.

2- Choose the population (or group of learners) that will receive the invitation

You have a choice: either you send the Battle invitation to all learners registered on your platform, or only to one or several selected populations.

3- Choose the topic and the course

Choose the course but also the level (Basic, Advanced or Coach) on which you want to challenge learners.

👉  Trick: You can choose a course which is part of a dedicated learning path you’ve set up for your organization or part of a certified path.

4- Choose the level of difficulty

Before accepting a Battle invitation, the learner can revise the chosen course. But you can choose the Battle’s level of difficulty.

👉  Easy: Your Battle launcher answers correctly and “automatically” to 20% of all questions. Which means that all players that have accepted the Battle request will “win the Battle” if they answer correctly to more than 20% of the questions.

👉  Medium: You Battle launcher has answered correctly to half of the questions. The player must answer to more than 50% of the questions in order to win the challenge.

👉 Hard: 80% of questions are automatically correct! A player must answer almost all answers correctly in order to win!

Are you convinced, are you ready? Contact your favorite Customer Success Manager who will set up everything and push the button for you!

 

Finally, I got it! I’ve tried all online learning formats!

 

I was deep diving into Coorpacademy’s learning statistics used by our R&D Team, looking for figures that would best illustrate how essential it is to offer different formats of courses. When suddenly, an epiphany!

Everyone can remember a sudden flash, this brief moment when you finally understand something, thanks to some trigger coming from various places.

It can be a simple rewording, an observation in real life, a concrete manipulation (yes to Kapla in order to understand subtractions), a re-reading with a clear hear or looking at a diagram or a drawing. It can also come when feeling cornered with relevant questions (How did you make it? Do you remember…?)

The mind paths are still a mystery 

Impossible to know the detailed brain maps of each of us in order to offer the shortest way towards understanding and memorizing a notion! The best solution is then to offer, as a digital learning platform, as many vehicles as possible to reach the learner’s understanding. Here’s a challenge! Which vehicle to offer?

Online courses can be based on images, videos (embodied or in motion design), text, click and rewards! So, is it about putting everything in a shaker and happily agitating it? Actually, no: online courses result from a subtle and high-precision mixture, as in pastry recipes or cocktail recipes (to keep on the extended metaphor). They should absolutely not be indigestible (I’d rather stop the metaphor right here).

However and before anything else, it is really important to understand the basic principles. Courses’ videos have to be short, 3-minute videos to make sure they are watched and impactful. The idea is to portion and smartly sequence what is to be learnt using all ingredients available.

I would like to share with you the learning recipes and their test results!

1- 5’learning

1 video + 4 to 6 questions

What makes it unique? 😋

* A very specific notion is handled in a 5-minute learning nugget, or microlearning.
* Questions can be answered before or after the course, according to your need or level.
* Perfect before a meeting, a flight or during commute!

2-  CLASSIC format

9 vidéos (+ PDF) et questions associées.

This is the most common format we use. It is built in 3 levels (Basic, Advanced, Coach) with a coherent succession of dozens of 5’Learnings.

What makes it unique? 😋

* Progression: if you answer all questions very fast, it probably means you already reached this level of expertise. You then spend less time in what you already know (you don’t have to follow a course beforehand, or to watch a video), and you can spend time on what you don’t already know and what your really want to learn.
* Curiosity: you can learn with the course video, but with the questions too! Each answered question will provide a Key Learning Factor and a “Did you know that?” in order to spark your curiosity and make you learn other things on the topic!

3- THe assessment

From 5 to 40 questions, without video

Series of questions, without videos, to assess your level. The platform will them take you to different learning paths according to what you master and what needs to be improved!

What makes it unique? 😋

* Qualitative and personalized feedback at the end of the assessment are so much more valuable than a simple grade.
* The assessment improves the knowledge stickiness.

4- The Immersive format

Number of videos and questions can vary (but is not arbitrary!)

The principle is to simulate a real situation so the learner can play “as if”. Learners can train and apply their newly-learnt knowledge. They can draw their own learning pathways and be oriented by the platform according to their knowledge.

What makes it unique? 😋

* Nothing’s more valuable than learning by doing – even virtually – and learning from your mistakes.
* You can start and restart as much as you want, and take advantage of the recommendations at the end of the course to keep improving.

4-1- Mini-series

12 to 15 videos and 1 question after each video

Last-born in the immersive format family 👶: the mini-series co-edited with our partner Video Arts.

This course will teach you how to be assertive in the workplace. Through series of funny, played by actors short scenes, you will see what needs to be done to be assertive, but also what needs to be avoided.  Like in the video example below…


After this, it’ll be difficult to mix up aggressiveness and assertiveness…

To memorize even better, a question will be asked at the end of each videos. An efficient – and addictive – format!

4-2- Courses where you are the hero

Like in a video game, you decide what to do next! By following your path, you’ll end up on your own personalized result. This format is adding learning in a Bandersnatch-like course!

What makes it unique 😋

* Scenarios! Different learning pathways, multiple endings… This playful format makes sure the learner is engaged and is enjoying learning (the content is validated by our team of instructional designers).
* Several variations exist on the Coorpacademy platforms, and they depend on the pedagogical goal we want to reach.

Drama will unleash your inner creativity!

One of our latest role play course focuses on creativity, a skill very adapted to the multiplicity of scenarii. Guillaume Lafon, instructional designer at  Coorpacademy worked with the authors Luc de Brabandere and Anne Mikolajczak, both specialists of corporate creativity. Luc is an engineer and a Fellow at the Boston Consulting Group, Anne is a philologist.

But he also worked with Mathilde Gentil, professional script-writer and founder of  the Gosh Theater Company, who produces “role play theater”, where the audience is active and makes decision about what will happen on stage! In this course, you’ll discover that anyone can learn to solve problems creatively: you just need to apply the right method! And if you also thought that there are not that many solutions to the same problem, you will be surprised to discover that in this course… there are 32! It is up to you to play and replay this course to learn how to organize and facilitate a creativity session, share the pleasure of ideas and, who knows, reveal the creative soul lying dormant in you!

We promise you plenty more innovations to come, that will be as exciting as our latest online Escape Game. By the way, the record time to solve the Black Hole Escape Game is 15 minutes…  If you think you can do better or if you simply want to try it out, click here.

To sum up, all our existing courses’ formats use available online resources (video, image, text, sound, animation …).  Each course type takes advantage of a unique combination of online resources, that will activate the triggers  enabling us to understand a new skill or notion.

By referring to the initial and empirical list of these triggers, I finally and fortunately find them all, at different levels, depending on the format. The triggers attached to role-playing situations or manipulations are very strong in immersive formats; those linked to reading or visualization are almost everywhere, in videos, subtitles, lessons’ PDF; those about rewording or questioning are also very present thanks to the special design of questions and answers strengthening their impact and allowing a great freedom in learning where you can answer question first before viewing the course (i.e. flipped pedagogy).

Each mind can use the format that best fits it, everyone can use the vehicle that best suits them!

Bérangère Chauvenet

Elo, who’s the best?

 

Do you know who this is and how this person succeeded?

Mark Zuckerberg

This is Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook. The David Fincher movie The Social Network depicts his rise to fame, from being a Harvard student to becoming the CEO of the most-used social network in the world. Zuckerberg is described as someone showing a lack of empathy for people and girls particularly. Before Facebook, one of his first ideas was to code Facemash, a ranking system of Harvard girls, of whom he managed to get all pictures.

Facemash©The Social Network

In the movie, he asked about the algorithm in order to create the “ranking”. His business partner Eduardo Saverin writes a formula, on a window, in order to successfully “rank” Harvard girls. This is the formula that will be used behind Facemash.

The Social Network

©The Social Network

Do you know what it means? This is the Elo rating system, a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. We will see in this article how this system is used, how the formula works and how it could be used in what we’re doing here at Coorpacademy. 

TL;DR

ELO is a classification system which tends to order a group over time. The more time passes, the more the group is correctly ordered. The principle is to predict the result of an encounter between two players and to carry out this encounter. If the prediction does not correspond to reality, we adjust the ranks of the two parties. And we repeat the operation.

How does it work?

Let’s take the existing ranking of a chess game. All players already have a score which represents an estimate of their ability, of their level. This is the rating floor. In chess, it’s 1200. 

Formule Classement Elo

©The Social Network

On the following image, we display two people, who have never played against each other. One has a score of 1,200, the other of 1,600. By using the formula we can see in The Social Network movie, we can calculate the probability of someone winning against someone else.  

By applying the above formula, we calculated a probability of winning.

In this example, we calculated that the person with 1,200 points has a 10% chance of winning, while the other person (with 1,600 points) has a 90% chance of winning.

Next, we compare what was predicted and what really happened during the clash between the two players. For example, in the first scheme, the purple player won when there was actually 10% chance of winning. He then gains 27 points, while the other loses 27. The score of the two players adjusts.

In the end, when two people compete several times, if each person wins half of the games, they will have exactly the same score, it will even out. If one player is way stronger, the score will grow but will stagnate after a while (we will see why later in the article).

In this case, the one who had little chance of winning wins, so wins a lot of points (27).

27 points

In this second case, if that purple person loses, it complies with something that was planned (with 90% chances). The purple person will then only lose 3 points. The chances of winning influence the final outcome and the number of points won.

3 points

In the case of Facemash, Zuckerberg’s idea, in the movie, was to rank Harvard girls in terms of “hotness”. If a girl considered as “hot” battles against someone considered way less “hot”, and wins, it was already “predicted” by the formula and her score won’t change much. She won’t evolve much in the ranking. On the other hand, if a girl considered as “very pretty” competes and loses against a girl considered as “way less pretty”, the rankings will evolve a lot. This would have been considered, by the ranking technique, as an anomaly – the algorithm will then try to rebalance forces and try to “fix the anomaly.”

The formula written on the window in the movie tells us how to calculate the Expected, the chances of winning or losing.

In a chess game, this is used as such. R being the actual score, and E the Expected. 

Classement Elo aux échecs

This method shows that by competing with people on the same level as yours, or a bit better – so there’s less “probability” for you to win – you will evolve way more in the ranking than if you only compete against weaker opponents. This is showed by the number of points you earn – or lose – after each games.

There is also the K in the scheme, which is the maximum you can earn or lose in terms of points, or score. In the example above and the competition between the purple and green people, K is 30. 27 points earned or lost after a game is almost the maximum, and this reflects the chance of winning pre-calculated (10 % for the purple person, who eventually wins).  In chess, and in a lot of other various systems, K varies. A player first games will use a high K of 40 to rapidly position the person in the ranking. Then, K goes down to 20 to limit fluctuations.

This is the theory. When you apply this Elo rating technique on a large population, and you make them compete for a long time (they all start at the same level, with the same number of points), you will end up with a natural repartition of the population in a bell-shaped curve (or the curve of a normal function). People that have the same level will naturally regroup. People that have a very strong level can’t evolve infinitely, will have less potential opponents, and it becomes hard to go away from the bell in the middle.

Cloche du milieu

Everyone will be drawn by the middle bell. Even the people extremely strong or weak won’t go too far from it. It allows us to divide the population by level, like in the schema below:

Clusters de population par niveaux

In chess for example, only 13 players have been above 2800. Today, the highest Elo rating of chess History belongs to the World Champion from Norway Magnus Carlsen with 2889 points, only 2 points above the legendary Garry Kasparov.

It’s not possible to win an infinite number of points, also because, when you’re the best chess player in the world, the chance of winning are very close to 100%. Players are drawn by the middle of the curve, which creates clusters of level in the population.

By cutting the curve, you can regroup people with approximately the same level and make them compete.

A lot of games are using this technique, because it is simple and automatically creates leagues of players with similar levels. We find the Elo rating technique in a lot of video games, such as Counter Strike, Age of Empires or League of Legends, such as in the example below:

Ligues FPSPossible use cases at Coorpacademy?

We could possibly use this rating technique in our “Battle” system, when two players compete on a particular course and must answer correctly and rapidly a series of questions in order to win. We had a few learners feedback saying that they’re afraid the other players are way too strong. It’s a common reaction in multiplayers games, where the question “Will I be crushed?” can induce frustration.

At Coorpacademy, a Elo-type system could reduce this frustration and reassure learners.

Putting a matchmaking system with this method would allow learners with skills in management, or digital, to compete with similar-level learners in the same skill area. This being said, we just launched a Massive Battle feature, which allows learners to challenge a large population of learners simultaneously… We will tell you more about it very soon!

To go further.

Cantor’s Paradise

Microsoft’s TrueSkill (an improved Elo rating technique developed by Microsoft for Halo and team multiplayers game, not only in one-to-one).

GDC: Ranking Systems 

Arthur has been Software Architect at Coorpacademy for 5 years. Every month, he presents on Monday mornings the Tekacademy, gathering Coorpacademy’s tech team around digital and technical innovations. This article had been presented to the team in February 2020.

International partnership: Coorpacademy will distribute Cegos e-learning solutions in Europe [Press Release]

 

Cegos, a worldwide leader in learning & development, and Coorpacademy, a EdTech startup which deploys a digital learning platform adapted to the learners’ new uses, sign a distribution partnership agreement.

Through this new partnership, Coorpacademy customers will now have access to Cegos’ e-learning catalog on Soft Skills (in three different Html5 formats). This premium content will be available to Coorpacademy customers in France, Germany, Switzerland and in the UK.

Founded in 2013, Coorpacademy is a European EdTech startup specialized in innovative, scalable corporate digital learning solutions. Based in Paris and Lausanne, at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)’s campus, the company is at the heart of Learning Sciences and Educational Technology Research, partnering with EPFL’s Research Centers. Thanks to its digital Learning Experience Platform, Coorpacademy supports companies’ transformation and efficiency by engaging their employees, partners and clients in upskilling on any topic central to their competitiveness, thus reaching top quartile engagement rates. To unleash the desire to learn, Coorpacademy has developed a proprietary Saas platform delivering latest generation instructional design backed by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Innovation labs, making corporate learning more fun, flexible and collaborative, truly centered on the end-user: the learner. Coorpacademy is part of the EdTech France association.

With its international culture and French origins, the Cegos Group is both a keen observer and a dedicated player in the world of work and business. The Cegos Group deploys a global offering, including turnkey and tailored training and development, operational consultancy, Digital Learning, Managed Training Services, international training projects, and certificate or diploma courses.

Running its own operations in 11 European, Asian and Latin American countries, Cegos is also active in over 50 countries through its network of partners and distributors, which are all leading e-learning solutions providers. Thanks to this network, its Catalogue on Soft Skills has 2.5 million learners per year.

Arnauld Mitre, co-founder of Coorpacademy, explains: “Since our creation in 2013, our vision of learning has been supported by outstanding, premium, unrivaled learning content and our ambition has been to offer the best possible learning experience to our learners. We have observed that our methods, from flipped learning to courses co-edited with top industry experts, showed high engagement rates amongst learners. We also thought that it was time for us to give our learners a pluralistic content offering in order to become a learning hub for top qualitative content. This is why we’re very proud to unveil this first partnership with Cegos, whose content catalog quality has been acknowledged worldwide and has won multiple awards. We’re thrilled to celebrate this major milestone in becoming a hub, allowing learners to find the best available content, with Cegos’ offer plus our existing catalog on learning soft skills.”

Pascal Debordes, Head of Channels and Alliances at Cegos Group, adds: “We are particularly proud to start this partnership with Coorpacademy. This fast-growing company and Cegos share the same learning & development conviction. Digital transformation and technological breakthroughs are revolutionising jobs and skills. The challenge is even more significant with the global health crisis we are facing, and which will have huge consequences on employment and organizations: millions of employees around the world will have to upgrade or refresh their skills through learning. More than ever, L&D has a crucial role to play. The power and the services provided by the Coorpacademy Learning Experience Platform (LXP) coupled with the innovation and the 18 languages of our Soft Skills catalogue is a premium answer to skills development challenges that companies need to address.”

If you want to discover more about the partnership, it’s here.

End of lockdown: get back on track safely with 3 new course playlists on Coorpacademy

 

The end of lockdown. Getting back to work. These termes raise as much hope as they raise questions.

How to get back to work with the best possible sanitary conditions? How to get prepared for it, individually and collectively? How to understand and analyze the upcoming challenges?

This crisis teaches us that we don’t know everything. But it also teaches us that together we stand. We are able to bounce back. We don’t know everything but we learn. Facing these uncertainties, we test, we analyze, we learn.

At Coorpacademy, we have listened to your feedback and have used our experience acquired during lockdown to create specific learning paths to ensure going back to work is both seamless and serene.

Being kind, listening actively, stepping back, being resilient will be among the topics we cover in these learning paths, grouping courses into 3 playlists: “Listening and guiding”, “Anticipating” and “Protect each other”.

After having completed these courses, you will obtain the “Back on Track” certificate, and you will be ready to get back to work safely.

Listening and guiding: 45 chapters

A learning path dedicated to solidarity, to team spirit or to being kind at work.

Listening and Guiding Learning Path

 

You can find in this learning path:

Managing stress and emotions from Institut François Bocquet

Stress is an emotion that affects us all on a daily basis with differing degrees of severity. In our professional lives, stress is something that we must manage in order to keep our emotions in check and work effectively. This course will enable you to identify stress mechanisms in order to better prevent them and understand how to deal with them.

Conflict management from Institut François Bocquet

The workplace can be fertile ground for confrontational relationships. Mind games sometimes feature alongside verbal attacks and ill-advised criticism. How should we deal with rumours? What are the principles of mediation? This subject looks at how conflicts arise so that you can deal with and resolve them calmly.

Emotional intelligence from Video Arts

Emotional intelligence has grown to be more and more recognised as one of the keys of good and successful leadership. Far from being a mushy, sappy concept, it is at the heart of every personal and professional relationship: it is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. This course will help people in leadership positions become more emotionally intelligent.

Counselling from Video Arts

Almost all managers will face the issue of dealing with staff whose personal problems are affecting their work and they need the know-how and sensitivity to address such situations. This course introduces counselling techniques and active listening for managers.

Ensuring team cohesion and well-being from Éditions Eyrolles

Managing a team means knowing how to take care of its members. How? In this course, you will learn to recognise the different factors affecting your employees’ levels of motivation and how to address them. You will also be introduced to different management styles to use based on your team members and their levels of autonomy. It is up to you!

Communicate Effectively to Improve Collaboration from Dunod

Everything is communication: even when we are not actually speaking in a meeting, the way we behave has a meaning that will be interpreted by our interlocutor. Because communication errors create tension and are a waste of energy, the ability to communicate well is an essential skill that everyone must cultivate carefully. It is important for the person transmitting information to convey a clear, unambiguous message correctly, and for the receiver to facilitate the transmission, providing feedback on the way the message is perceived, and making sure that the information is complete. Take this course to learn how to improve your understanding and make yourself clearly understood.

Dealing with absenteeism from Video Arts

And here it comes again… Today is Monday and it seems that this time, John broke his right leg. Same thing for Katie. As for Sam, his dog must have had another food poisoning. Enough! Are you tired of seeing your office look like a ghost town? This course will give you all the insights you need to tackle absenteeism, as well as comprehensive solutions. From understanding the reasons for absenteeism to organising the return to work interview, every aspect of managing absent employees is covered. Just follow three simple steps and you will know how to deal with this sensitive subject area which costs organisations billions in revenue every year. And remember: when someone calls in sick, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are unwell…

Anticipating: 40 chapters

A learning path to anticipate the future, to shape up what will come next but also to take a step back and to find (again) purpose in your job.

Anticipating Learning Path

You can find in this learning path:

Anticipating and managing tensions in a team from Éditions Eyrolles

Tensions and conflicts seem inevitable regardless of a team’s characteristics. But are they really? Group conflicts, scapegoats, sources of tension… In this course, you will learn everything you need to know to handle delicate situations and sustain or guide your team toward harmonious relationships. You will also learn about the mechanisms at work during periods of change and how best to support your team. It is up to you!

Managing cognitive biases from Olivier Sibony

At work, you have to make decisions of varying importance on a daily basis. It probably seems so natural to you that you do not feel any need to adopt a particular method to do it. Like everyone else, though, you are subject to cognitive biases that lead you astray even when you are not aware of the fact. And like everyone else, you regularly make predictable mistakes … Fortunately, it is possible to learn how to decide better! In this course designed with Professor Olivier Sibony, you will learn more about the most common mistakes of this type, and you will discover a method to improve the quality of your decisions.

Change Management from Éditions Eyrolles

Over its lifetime, a company is bound to evolve and transform itself, to adjust to its wider environment. The discipline that allows these transformations to be carried out seamlessly, placing the employees at the heart of the process, is known as “change management”. This course details the key stages and sine qua non conditions for conducting successful change, and sets out all the reasons why it is essential to consider the human factor no longer as an obstacle, but as the major asset and driving force of any transformation.

Tomorrow’s working methods from Ouishare

Employment is changing in a world undergoing profound change, and where a generation with new expectations is entering the market. And with it, the business world changing too. In this course, you will discover what lies behind these changes and the impact on workers and businesses. Self-employed workers, distributed leadership, sociocracy: these and other new words in the employment-related vocabulary will be explained to you in this training course on the future of employment.

The Learning Organization from Numa

Today’s organization must know how to create the conditions that allow its employees to interact effectively with their environment, to mobilize their skills, to update and develop them. It is this ability of the individual and the collective to learn and adapt to the changes of a world in profound transformation that allows the organization to be part of a sustainable performance. In this context, the manager is led to play a central role. It supports the transformation of individuals and the organization, by creating a framework conducive to learning. Take this course to discover how to create conditions that help your employees learn continuously.

Change from Video Arts

A change is as good as a rest. But not as easily managed! This course will help you, leaders and managers, to successfully implement change by getting your teams fully on board. Champions, resisters, gatekeepers… With perseverance, you will bring them atop, as long as you first own the change. Here are the keys to a peaceful rest…

Protect each other: 43 chapters

A positive learning path with wellbeing and resilience notions. Let’s get back on track!

Protect Each Other Learning Path

You can find in this learning path:

Feel Well at Work in 5min with Yogist® from Yogist

Have you ever wondered why you have backache, why your eyes are so sore, or why you have pain in your wrists after working all day at a computer? Bad posture at work is most likely the cause. In fact, these days our way of life means we’re often sedentary for long periods of time. Coupled with stress and a lack of regular exercise, bad posture wreaks havoc at work. During this course, you’ll find out how to do simple exercises using the Yogist® method. The exercises are easy and everyone can do them. Consider the exercises as a toolkit you can use to prevent and ease pain caused by work-related stress and working at a computer. Yogist – Well at Work is an innovative way of raising awareness of health issues and teaching people how to prevent and manage them.

1 hour to stop stressing and stay zen from Dunod

Would you like to be more relaxed at work or in your personal life? Do you dream of better managing the pressure? Imagine that being more Zen is within everyone’s reach! You do not need to do hours of meditation every day: a few simple tools can help restore calm when nothing goes well. In this course designed with Diana Barthélemy-Clouwaert, author of the book 2H chrono to stop stress and stay zen, you will discover information, tips and practical exercises to learn how to decompress better.

Practical wellbeing from Video Arts

Do you feel like you don’t have enough time to take care of your own wellbeing? The pressures of work and the hectic pace of modern living can mean that we sometimes neglect ourselves and overlook our basic needs to eat, sleep, and have downtime. This course will show you how to take care of yourself, and how showing kindness to others and focusing on one task at a time can reduce stress and improve working relationships.

Protecting yourself and others from the spread of Covid-19 from Coorpacademy

Not all regions of the world are affected by Covid-19 in the same way. And each country applies specific protective measures to protect its population. Whether for economic, social or public health reasons, most governments have started to draft their back-to-work plans depending on the sector or the nature of the activity concerned. But be careful, going back to the office does not mean “getting back to normal”. The protective measures, the wearing of a mask and the basics of maintaining a healthy environment must be known and applied to guarantee everyone’s safety.

9 exercises to gain serenity and efficiency from Dunod

“In this day and age, the workplace environment is constantly changing, so staff need to know the best ways to adapt and respond to the needs of a business in terms of innovation and competition. However, being agile or adaptable can also be a source of stress and pressure. This course will introduce you to the practice of mindfulness, a meditative exercise that works well in a professional environment. Mindfulness encourages you to listen to your body and your feelings. It helps you relax, increases your energy levels and improves your attention span at work. The “Mindfulness at Work” course was designed with Nathalie Van Laethem, an Atlans consultant who is also author of Boîte à outils de la Pleine conscience (The Mindfulness Toolkit) , and creator of the Un potentiel de plus (A little more potential) blog.”

Inside your head from Video Arts

How can you manage what’s inside your head? Whether it’s your to-do list, your insecurities, your thoughts, or your emotions, don’t forget that only you know what comes and goes in your own mind. In this course, you will see how thinking and not thinking can lead us into trouble, how to weather the storm when our moods are against us, and how to give our minds a break with the power of lists.

Resilience from Management Magazine

Who has never had to cope with a failure, minor or major, on one or several occasions? While failure is something brutal, it can nevertheless not only be overcome, but also be turned into something positive in the long run. To achieve this, the keyword is: resilience. This course will help you to understand the scope of this concept in the world of work and will provide you with the keys to succeed in overcoming professional failures, whether individual or collective.

The “Back on Track” certificate

At the end of these courses, you will obtain the “Back on Track certificate, in order to:

  • Train on essential topics to get back to work safely
  • Obtain 500 stars
  • Get the “Back On Track” certificate

Cetification Back on Track

To go further

Europe needs to prepare now to get back to work—safely – McKinsey

The future is not what it used to be: thoughts on the shape of the next normal – McKinsey

19 businesses pivoting in response to COVID-19 – Maddyness

There is no returning to normal after COVID-19. But there is a path forward. – World Economic Forum (WEF)

The essence of resilient leadership: business recovery from covid-19 – Deloitte

Will we return to the office after covid-19? – Forbes

Coronavirus disease (covid-19) advice for the public: myth busters – World Health Organization (WHO)

How the biggest companies in the world are preparing to bring back their workforce – CNBC

Coronavirus: seven ways collective intelligence is tackling the pandemic – World Economic Forum (WEF).

Let’s get back on track!

 

Let's Get Back On Track

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