We don’t know whether massive online open courses (MOOCs) will be more than a fad in higher education — but they’re inspiring other kinds of organizations to create MOOCs of their own, InformationWeek reports. Aquent, a staffing firm that links companies with contractors, is opening its own MOOC, the Aquent Gymnasium, in June. Aquent mainly serves marketing, creative and digital firms, which see frequent changes in staffing needs as new technologies such as mobile platforms emerge. Last year Aquent found that clients were requesting workers with HTML 5 skills and “not a ton of people had them at that point,” said Alison Farmer, Aquent’s VP of learning and development. The company decided to see whether it could meet this skills gap by training, “manufacturing a workforce qualified for these jobs we are getting,” Farmer said.
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