EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Zovio | August 02, 2022
An education technology services company that partners with higher education institutions and employers, announced today that it has closed on an agreement to transition its online program management (OPM) business to the University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC).
Over the past six months, Zovio has taken steps to implement a process designed to unlock shareholder value by rightsizing the company, accelerating growth of subsidiaries and exploring strategic alternatives, which included the potential divestiture of all three of its businesses.
In May 2022, Zovio completed the sale of TutorMe, for $55 million and used a portion of the proceeds to repay bridge financing. This left the company debt free and allowed Zovio to satisfy obligations stemming from a decision of the Superior Court of California while the company appeals the decision.
Continuing to execute on its strategic alternatives process, Zovio and UAGC negotiated, signed and closed on an asset purchase agreement with an effective date of July 31, 2022, after receiving approval from their respective Boards of Directors. Under the asset purchase agreement, UAGC is acquiring Zovio's operations and assets that previously provided services to UAGC through a long-term Strategic Services Agreement.
"Zovio has been at the forefront of providing innovative online learning products and services for almost two decades, We are pleased to have reached this agreement with UAGC and are excited about their future,"
- Zovio Chief Executive Officer, Randy Hendricks.
Zovio will continue to support the continued growth and expansion of Fullstack Academy and simultaneously explore strategic alternatives for that business.
About Zovio
Zovio (Nasdaq: ZVO) is an education technology services company that partners with higher education institutions and employers to deliver innovative, personalized solutions to help learners and leaders achieve their aspirations. The Zovio network, including Fullstack Academy, leverages its core strengths to solve priority market needs through education technology services. Using proprietary advanced data analytics, Zovio identifies the most meaningful ways to enhance the learner experience and deliver strong outcomes for higher education institutions, employers, and learners. Zovio's purpose is to help everyone be in a class of their own. For more information, visit www.zovio.com.
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CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS
Cornerstone OnDemand | September 08, 2022
Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc., a global leader in adaptive HR solutions, announced today that BBVA, a leading financial institution, is leveraging Cornerstone’s tools to develop and enhance its employee growth strategies and manage various talent areas, including recruitment, assessment, learning and mobility. More than a decade ago, BBVA began a digital transformation process that has accelerated in recent years as a result of the pandemic. The new jobs and competencies needed to ensure a successful business transformation represent a significant challenge, requiring an agile response from a talent development perspective. BBVA understood that one of the keys to adaptation was to accelerate and modernize its learning strategy for its workforce. This led the organization to create several innovative talent projects, each with the goal of giving its employees the most accessible and personalized learning and development tools. "Employees are the backbone of every great company," says José María Monge, BBVA's global Head of Talent Solutions and Head of Talent and Culture South America. “Therefore, investing in their learning and development has become a priority. Cornerstone has allowed us to create an ecosystem of interconnected tools that help us find, retain and train the best talent in our organization in a more agile way, as well as adapt to our current needs."
Some of BBVA's most successful projects to date include:
B-token Model
This initiative uses gamification to make the online learning platform experience more rewarding, interactive and entertaining. Increased learning platform activity as a result of this innovative approach, while encouraging employees to continue to participate in training and development activities. Managed through Cornerstone's e-commerce solution, each course has an associated number of B-tokens, which are awarded to employees upon completion of the training. The more they increase their B-tokens balance, the more access they receive to additional advanced training, including a master's degree. Understanding that a company's know-how often resides with individuals, employees can also earn B-tokens by teaching specific skills to their own colleagues. The B-token model encourages more experienced employees to share their knowledge with other colleagues promoting knowledge sharing and boosting expertise at a Group-wide level. "B-token have enabled our employees to access any training content of interest to them, whether online, virtual or face-to-face. In addition, it has great advantages for the bank as it allows us to promote those actions linked to our strategy, incentivising learning and creating a culture of growth and development," says José María Monge.
“The Camp" Project
The Camp is an initiative created by BBVA and accessed through Cornerstone. It has been designed to accelerate the "reskilling and upskilling" of employees. After identifying 14 core capabilities, BBVA designed training journeys with three levels of specialization. To promote the completion of these journeys, it developed internal gamification through the creation of The Camp. The game consists of a camp where each training journey becomes an expedition and each employee is a hiker, a beginner mountaineer or an advanced mountaineer, depending on how they progress in their expedition. The Camp gamification is accessed through the Cornerstone platform, as both tools are connected. Performance feedback and assessment Evaluating ongoing performance of BBVA employees is a continuous process that culminates in an annual evaluation with a 360-degree view. It incorporates performance feedback from managers, peers, collaborators, as well as colleagues from other areas that the employee may have worked in. BBVA integrated Cornerstone’s evaluation solution with Google Cloud to maximize efficiency in data consolidation process and results analysis, also supporting calibration workflows and customized growth and development plans.
“At Cornerstone, our greatest satisfaction comes when our clients take our solutions and create innovative strategies to nurture talent,BBVA has shown great initiative and creativity, adapting our tools to the specific learning and performance needs of its employees. We look forward to continuing to expand our partnership and helping BBVA grow,"
Marc Altimiras, AVP Cornerstone South
About BBVA
BBVA is a customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857. The Group has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market, is the largest financial institution in Mexico and it has leading franchises in South America. It is also the leading shareholder in Turkey’s Garanti BBVA and has an important investment, transactional and capital markets banking business in the U.S. Its purpose is to bring the age of opportunities to everyone, based on our customers’ real needs: provide the best solutions, helping them make the best financial decisions, through an easy and convenient experience. The institution rests in solid values: Customer comes first, we think big and we are one team. Its responsible banking model aspires to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable society.
About Cornerstone
Cornerstone powers the future-ready workforce with adaptive HR solutions designed to unite technology, data and content and inspire a work environment of growth, agility and success for all. With an experimental, AI-powered, skills-based system designed for the contemporary workforce, we help organizations modernize their learning and development experience, deliver the content that matters most from anywhere, accelerate talent and career mobility, and establish skills as the universal language of growth and success across their enterprise. Cornerstone serves more than 7,000 clients and 90 million users and is available in 180 countries and 50 languages.
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CORPORATE EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Bechtel | July 18, 2022
Bechtel has donated an additional £50,000 to the Institution of Engineering and Technology for its Launch Scholarship programme in celebration of the company's 70 years in the UK. The Launch Scholarship supports engineering students, degree apprentices, and apprentices who have faced financial challenges or personal obstacles. Bechtel's donation will support at least eleven students every year for the duration of their education. The donation adds to the £680,000 (US$970,000) that Bechtel has gifted to the IET for its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics educational outreach over the past decade."Bechtel has been a valued partner of the IET for almost a decade, including our founding sponsor for the FIRST® LEGO® League, said Sir Julian Young, IET president. This year's additional donation will enable us to support even more young people on their academic or apprenticeship path into engineering. We thank Bechtel for its continued support of the next generation as they each pursue their dreams.
"Engineering is a fulfilling career that helps tackle some of the world's biggest challenges, including diversifying our energy supply and achieving net zero. We need people from varied backgrounds to help us find the best solutions,We hope that this support will remove some of the obstacles that talented people can face in earning the qualifications needed to join our industry."
-John Williams, Bechtel's UK and Ireland managing director.
Bechtel has supported the IET since 2013, including as a founding supporter of the FIRST® LEGO® League competition that enables young people between the ages of 4-16 years old to develop STEM skills through hands-on learning. Some 100,000 children have participated in the UK program with over 15,500 children participating in 2020-21 competition. Bechtel also supports FIRST® programs in Australia, Chile, and the United States. Read more about FLL in the UK here.
Bechtel's 70th year in the UK coincides with Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, and earlier this year it celebrated the opening of a new railway named in her honor, the Elizabeth Line, through central London. The company's global infrastructure business is headquartered in the UK, from which it has directly supported projects across the UK, Ireland, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, accelerating progress, creating access and opportunity, building a path to net zero, and protecting people and our planet so that future generations thrive.
About Bechtel
Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers' objectives to create a lasting positive impact. Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world's infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place.Bechtel serves the Energy; Infrastructure; Nuclear, Security & Environmental; and Mining & Metals markets. Our services span from initial planning and investment, through start-up and operations. www.bechtel.com
About the IET
We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community to engineer a better world. We are a diverse home for engineering and technology intelligence throughout the world. This breadth and depth means we are uniquely placed to help the sector progress society. We want to build the profile of engineering and technology to change outdated perceptions and tackle the skills gap. This includes encouraging more women to become engineers and growing the number of engineering apprentices. Interview opportunities are available with our spokespeople from a range of engineering and technology disciplines including cyber-security, energy, engineering skills, innovation, manufacturing, technology, transport and diversity in engineering.
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