"Digital learning for everyone has started a successful career from the university sector into the economy", summarized Prof. Meinel the development of the past five years. In compnays, the transfer of knowledge is a crucial prerequisite for the digital transformation of development and manufacturing processes on the one hand and corporate cultures on the other. The rapid pace of digitization leads more and more companies to train their employees with online courses.
According to Meinel, openHPI and openSAP come together to 800,000 users in 200 countries and to three million course enrollments. The scientist pointed out the benefit of beeing able to motivate many employees to join in: "Businesses often associate achievements of specific HR developments and career goals with employees completing their online courses. Company leaders encourage such engagement by freeing participants from part of their working time," said Meinel. In addition, at openSAP the customers and external IT professionals get exclusive product knowledge that would otherwise either be unavailable or expensive to pay.
"Free online university courses, however, usually take broader, more general topics. It is more about digital literacy. Participants want to develope themselves in their free time and on their own initiative", emphasized the HPI director. He sees the education platform openHPI in international competition with other providers of university MOOCs, such as Udacity, Coursera or edX.