How Coursera Achieved an Active Learning Rate of 94%

Disjointed Tech Stack Hinders Enablement Success

Initially, Coursera approached Highspot to help solve its content management struggles. “We are a content company,” explained Dustin Day, senior global manager of sales enablement at Coursera. “Anytime we work with a customer, there are a lot of moving pieces in our product.” Despite the content-heavy nature of Coursera’s sales environment, it lacked the tools to adequately organize and surface assets in the moments that matter. To solve gaps in its content management and governance strategy, Coursera chose Highspot. 

But the story doesn’t end there: As Coursera’ enablement team reimagined their content strategy with Highspot, they took an equally critical look at their onboarding and training programs. Operating from within a disjointed, grandfathered-in learning management system that struggled to connect content and guidance to learning experiences, the enablement team found it difficult to achieve the engagement and adoption they sought. “Originally we were using Lessonly,” shared Day. “We were having new hires go into Lessonly and then be pushed to content and support materials on Highspot. It felt like a weird user experience.” For an organization founded on meaningful learning experiences, it was a painful gap. To streamline its enablement efforts and provide a seamless experience for its learners, Coursera knew it was time to switch to Highspot’s unified, natively built platform. “We made a decision to have a consolidated platform,” noted Day. “At the end of the day, it is one place versus many places.”

Unified Platform Paves the Way for End-to-End Enablement Support

As Coursera transitioned away from Lessonly, its enablement team knew it could achieve greater returns with Highspot. After all, they had already done so once before. To continue that evolution, the team leaned on Highspot’s natively built training platform to weave content and contextual guidance into their training and onboarding experiences. With Sales Plays and content reinforcing knowledge gained in Lessons and Courses, the team ensured reps have not only a standardized foundation of essential knowledge but also a self-serve roadmap to implement it in the field. “From a product go-to-market motion, we bring up the Sales Play and work through it as the structure of our field training,” explained Day. “What we did is we’ve taken the structure that Highspot provides — what to know, say, show, and do — and we’ve really run with it. We organize our field training around that exact same structure. It’s given us a new structure to engage with the field.” 

Since shifting its training efforts to Highspot, Coursera’s enablement activities now operate in conversation with each other, building an environment of ongoing, self-serve learning that is reorienting outcomes for the better. As more and more reps see the value of the new strategy — with 92% adopting Sales Plays — the effect on Coursera’s go-to-market motion is clear. “Sales Plays have helped us, from a go-to-market perspective, become much more deliberate than I think we were in the past,” continued Day. “We’ve been following up with training more than we have in the past to reinforce that know, say, show, and do.” And with 81% of reps regularly using Highspot, that impact is compounding, sparking consistent, well-informed execution in the field.

Mending Present Pains and Laying Plans for the Future

Now that every enablement activity is firmly situated in Highspot, it’s been much easier for the enablement team to develop a holistic picture of how their efforts support reps. “For us, Highspot really simplified the one-stop shop for our team to go to as it relates to Learning Paths, new go-to-market builds, upskilling, and reskilling,” explained Day.

With natively built training and coaching capabilities transforming 94% of reps into active learners — and, in doing so, shaping them into aligned, consistently executing experts — Coursera has reignited its learning culture. Now, it intends to take this learning a step further, aiming to introduce Digital Rooms to its learners. “There’s a huge opportunity for us to have that more customer-facing Digital Room approach,” added Day. “That’s the next step in our maturity.”

As Coursera lays new plans to mature its enablement arm, it is enthusiastic about the future of its new partnership. “When we build, we build in Highspot,” concluded Day.