Guest: Sheila Jagannathan, Head of the Open Learning Campus at the World Bank Group in Washington, DC, USA

Technology disruptions and other factors have caused unprecedented change in workplace arrangements, necessitating individuals and institutions to invest in continuous learning for increased economic value. The World Bank Group (WBG) has invested significantly in digital and blended development learning through an open, interactive, and virtual ecosystem called the Open Learning Campus (OLC). The OLC’s potential to support continuous learning and to build skills to prepare for future job opportunities and workplace settings in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are considerable. AI, learning analytics, immersive worlds, social learning, and online learning all play a role in moving the World Bank into this Fourth Industrial Age with a heavy footprint.

In addition, massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of open and online learning are a major catalyst of such societal changes due to their broad global reach and democratization of knowledge. Lessons from delivering MOOCs for global audiences on development topics will be highlighted in this episode of Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) as they have wider applicability for learning providers. In the past, MOOC topics from the World Bank have included climate science to action, digital technologies, managing risk for development, citizen engagement, financing for development, public-private partnerships, and the future of work. Next up are MOOCs on maternal health and learning to realize education’s promise.

As such, Sheila Jagannathan will detail a range of recent initiatives from the World Bank and discuss their sustainability. She will also provide decades of historical knowledge leading to the learning transformations taking place at the World Bank today. More about Shelial Jagannathan below the video

Sheila Jagannathan is the Head of the Open Learning Campus at the World Bank in Washington DC. She serves as the organization’s focal point on digital learning and issues at the intersection of technology use and education in emerging countries. She is a forward-thinking senior education leader with over 35 years of experience in leading capacity building, knowledge management, data, social learning and transformation change across public and private organizations. She has been responsible for designing and implementing world-class solutions in challenging global environments, resulting in performance and productivity improvements. Sheila also provides policy advice and technical assistance to World Bank country-level capacity building programs (both government and training institutes seeking to introduce technologies in their educational systems) in, East Asia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, Africa and South Asia. Her current areas of interest and activity include: corporate talent management, diversity, and inclusion, organizational development, enterprise learning functions, MOOCs, experiential pedagogy, online/hybrid strategies, development of rich multimodal and social learning environments, virtual and mixed reality, immersive learning, use of artificial education in education, big data and learning analytics, LMS and learning ecosystems. She is on the advisory board and planning committees of major professional associations of learning such as the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, Global Distance Learning Network, E-learning Africa, (Annual International Conference for developing E-learning capacities in Africa), International Conference on e-learning (ICEL), Skills Development Councils.