A LEADING LEARNING EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

Content, Practice, and Credentials

Building a Virtuous Learning Cycle

Understand the Virtuous Cycle: It starts, but doesn’t end, with content.

Increase Practice Opportunities: Support retention, improvement, and advancement.

Create Valid Credentials: Provide meaningful achievement to drive the cycle.

Use the form below to download your complimentary copy.

We’re grateful to BenchPrep for sponsoring this executive briefing so that we can make it available to Leading Learning subscribers at no charge.

We encourage you to find out more about how BenchPrep can help you strategically grow your continuing education, professional development, and exam prep business.

Excerpt from the Briefing

A virtuous cycle is a recurring chain of events that reinforce themselves through a feedback loop. The result is that each part of the cycle increases the benefits of other parts. Simple but versatile, virtuous cycles have been used to visualize everything from complex macroeconomics to product-specific marketing tactics. A virtuous cycle can also help us better understand how learning happens and the value learners and other stakeholders perceive in learning.

Learning content—courses, conferences, coaching, publications, and other learning resources and experiences—becomes more durable and more likely to be retained by learners when combined with the opportunity to practice and apply skills and knowledge.

In turn, when learners practice—participating in role-plays, reflection, discussions, case- and problem-based activities, simulations, quizzes, test prep, and more—they can uncover areas where they need more content to better understand concepts and how to apply them to their specific situations.

The combination of content and practice pave the way to achievement, very often acknowledged through some form of credential. Credentials range from simple course completions to capstone research projects to assessment-driven certification to quantifiable improvements in the learners’ work. While credentials look to the past and what has been accomplished, they also point forward to new opportunities:

• More content
  A learner might unlock access to more advanced courses after completing the prerequisite introductory course in a topic.
• More practice
  An individual just awarded a certification might be allowed to undertake new on-the-job responsibilities.
• More credentials
  Someone who has earned a microcredential might be motivated to pursue three more that, when stacked, constitute a certificate.

To learn more about why and how to create a virtuous cycle with your learning offerings, download the briefing today!