Company: IBM, Armonk, NY, USA
Company Description: IBM is one of the most innovative companies in the world. It offers products, services and solutions to help customers solve problems. From Artificial Intelligence to Cloud Services to High-Speed Mainframe computing, IBM is about making the world a smarter, safer place. This guiding belief is what makes IBM unique in the way it serves its clients, employees and communities around the world.
Nomination Category: Thought Leadership Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Thought Leadership Campaign of the Year - Business Services
 Nomination Title: #KeepOnLearning – Doors to learning were open when everything was closed during Covid
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated thought leadership campaign or program - its genesis,development, planning, commission, and performance to date - OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one)
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
- Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
Total 2 words used.
August, 2020.
- Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the subject and content development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 133 words used.
Objective of the campaign was to offer uninterrupted learning to the students through a variety of initiatives like – KOL Guest lectures on our platform, Live Lecture series on the NPTEL platform leveraging our partnership with them, College Days series for our Senior Leaders to share snippets of their times and their learning journeys and last but not the least, a series of sessions focusing on Mental Health which was key given the uncertain times that the world was going through. Planning process included brainstorming sessions for scripting the campaigns, designing the creatives for each campaign ensuring that the theme of the creative emphasized the end objective of the campaign. Scheduling the campaigns involved identifying the timelines for releasing each basis the academic schedule thereby ensuring maximum attention and audience for each campaign.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 9 words used.
KeepOnLearning campaign materials provided in the attached URLs below.
- Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 126 words used.
Onset of the pandemic in India and the lockdown that started during Q1 2020 created a lot of unrest and increased anxiety amongst students who were not sure how their learning could continue, and how the academic year would progress. This situation triggered the need for a campaign to address the learning needs of students. Recognizing this need, Mona Bharadwaj, the IBM India University Relations Leader, teamed with her women colleagues Poornima Lyengar and Hema Vinod to create the #KeepOnLearning (KOL) initiative, and launching the campaign to address the problem pertaining to learning. Internally, they launched an #IPledge campaign to garner IBMers to support the initiative by committing to a few hours of teaching every week on the skillset they had using digital mode of delivery.
- Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of July 2020. Even if your initiative started before July 2020, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of July 2020 only (up to 250 words):
Total 145 words used.
Amidst continuing Global crisis COVID-19, Webinars under the #KeepOnLearning initiative continued to be a roaring success with sessions on Cloud Computing, Agile, DevOps, AI, Big Data, Programming Languages, Mainframes, Security for colleges across India covering over 450K students and faculty. Testimonial videos from Faculty of various colleges on the value the KOL sessions brought, are proof of the success of the campaign. IBMers who had pledged their time to give back to Academia posted their teaching experiences on social media encouraging other IBMers to also commit their time, thus creating an upward surge of positive sentiments.
IBM India Academia portal used to promote webinars has had more than 100K visits and 10K unique visitors.
IBM Senior Leaders and Technical experts featured on the Special Lecture Series on NPTEL (National Platform for Technology Enhanced Learning) and delivered 30+ lectures that garnered 80K views on the platform.
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