Communications of the ACM
Can This Online Course Get Me a Job?
Credit: eBay Partner Network
As rapid developments in online learning shake up higher education, new efforts are underway to help students make sense of a dizzying array of course, degree, and certification options. For example, Apollo Education Group, best known for its University of Phoenix for-profit college, is expected to launch Balloon, an online marketplace for education that will include a catalogue of nearly 15,000 technology classes that explicitly links them to job opportunities. Users, who can access the platform for free, will be able to search for skills that are coveted by employers, what courses teach those lessons, and who is actually hiring.
Supporters see Balloon as a much-needed aggregator of online courses, akin to Amazon.com or iTunes. Other competitors are vying for the same space, so the pressure is on to provide the clearest connections between skills, instruction, and employment. Balloon aims to make a better connection in terms of content and delivery in the learning side and what those tech-sector players are saying they need. The move comes amidst a growing number of related ventures that present users with more choice in the market for online learning, such as Degreed, which aims to track and measure all types of learning, such as degrees, conferences, and magazine subscriptions, and create one score, similar to a credit score.
Traditional schools say they will continue to play an important role in preparing students for careers, even as online efforts to provide training and certify skills take off. Balloon said it is limiting itself to jobs in technology to start, but plans to expand later into subjects like energy, health care, and manufacturing. Like other ventures in the field, Balloon caters mostly to working adults. Though Balloon isn't promising employment, it makes connections between individual classes and jobs. Once the site is up and running, employers may be willing to pay for leads on successful students who could fill job openings.
From The Wall Street Journal
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