Three quarters of the employers indicated that job applicants taking a related MOOC would be perceived positively in the hiring process. Nearly half said they could see their company or organization using MOOCs for recruitment in the future.
“These online courses have quickly grown in popularity in the past couple of years, but there hasn’t been any research showing how employers view MOOCs,” said Alexandria Walton Radford, the study’s director. “We found that there’s still a ways to go before most employers know about the availability of these classes, but once they learn of them, they see their potential, especially for professional development purposes.”
Only seven percent of the employers said they were using MOOCs for professional development and employee training.
But more than 70 percent said they would now consider doing so, a number that is likely to please executives at some MOOC platforms, such as Udacity, that have made a push away from traditional education toward vocational training in recent months.
“We need to know more about what courses appeal to companies and how they fit into existing opportunities for continuing education,” said Keith Whitfield, the study’s the principal investigator.
Follow Jake New on Twitter at @eCN_Jake.
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