#MOOC on Managing Change #KM starts next week

Change management is and has been a tough nut to crack in any organization. Now, with the economic crisis still weighing on knowledge workers wherever they work, managing the change that is happening all around us in our professional as well as our personal sphere is becoming quite a challenge.
The organizers of the Managing & Surviving Change MOOC will try and provide and exchange strategies on managing this change. The official start is on Monday 20th May at 2pm GMT.

I will be taking up one of the talking slots on 27 May, focusing on how MOOCs can help in keeping on top of change (more on my focus a bit further). But there is a whole variety of participants, and some of those will highlight one section that relates to change: mindfulness, leadership, how to make the most of innovative technologies in the workplace & your community and a whole host of other things. You can also access and upload resources before the course starts and also tweet about the course using  #ChChaChanges. 

To me MOOCs - in an ideal form which still needs to be found - will be able to cater to our natural sense of learning. If I look at my life I have always been lucky to be able to rely on others to enlighten me, inspire me, direct me towards my goals. So at a certain moment I felt a bit confident that I had this lifelong learning skill covered...
But a couple of years ago, this naturally acquired trait started to be questioned again, and I feel it is not only me, but all of us that feel the pressure. In addition to this the media tells us we need to enter into the ‘knowledge age’, every professional magazine whether focusing on psychology, management or research is promoting online, digital skills … and all the while the sword of Damocles is positioned above our head and is said to fall down upon us if we do not accept change, meaning technological change, meaning more administration, more quality guidelines … more indirect work and training on top of our already heavy workloads. This puts a pressure on all of us, and as such on our colleagues, families and friends.

So here is where I think MOOCs can help us to get our lifelong learning back into pace with contemporary demands and evolution. Because we all need to (re)think where we want to go with our professional and personal life, we need to explore ways that can help us to achieve this. MOOCs can be an option in getting many of us closer to our goals, for MOOCs can be set up rapidly, cater to very broad or very detailed knowledge needs and they can be build with as much or as little technological tools as an organizer wishes.