Posts Tagged ‘training’

Games in Corporate Training? I think so

// January 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // e-learning, games

Learning by playing is neither a new invention nor a gift of the digital times we live in. All of us remember our first toys that taught us to count beads, recognize shapes, build a tower, win a business park, spell words, solve crosswords, and so on. We learned! Very effectively indeed! Because we had fun!

The problem with learning usually starts when it becomes divorced from fun, when it becomes a chore, a “must do”, a training requirement to be accomplished. This is very frequently the case with corporate training. It is seen as a very serious need—which it indeed is. An organization’s productivity, survival, profit, its competitive edge, and everything besides depend on the efficacy of its employees for which ongoing training is needed.

But we also know that putting people in a training room with a trainer and expecting a miraculous ROI to occur never worked—unless the trainer is exceptionally brilliant and knows the pulse of the learners and the organization inside out. This arrangement is also expensive with enough logistic issues (especially if the organization has more than one office in different geographies) to drive even the most placid HR or training department slightly insane.

I have noticed that most companies, realizing this, have resorted to (or will soon resort to because others are doing so) transferring all their training materials to CDs or web-based training that is a little better or sometime worse (because of the lack of a dynamic trainer) than badly designed PPTs. All of this in the name of “just-in-time” training, learner-centric training, use of the web in training, e-learning, and so on. The training department rejoices because now the courses can be tracked, no logistics need to be arranged for, learners do not spend “productive” time away from their desk, learning can happen at a time convenient for the learner, and all of this within the training budget (which is the first thing that has undergone reduction during this recession). And the training department—for whom this has been a new venture (more of a hit-and-miss adventure because they are new to the e-learning concept) can proudly tick off one more task accomplished from their task list.

Training is over; everyone has taken the course. Eighty percent of the learners have received above 80%–the set pass criteria. The rest twenty percent have been sent a mandate to take the program again—within the next three weeks. For the ensuing two quarters, managers, heads of departments, and the training department anxiously follow the productivity matrix, the delivery quality, the client satisfaction surveys, process and project delivery cycles—and come to the conclusion that things are much the same.

The training department head, the initiator of the program, now vaguely recalls the e-learning consultant (someone like me) saying that the kind of program required to make the training effective and bring about a behavioral change in the learner could not be addressed by just simple “click and reveal” slides. This would require an initial investment much higher than the budget put forth. But the end result would be effective. The complexity of the training need required an approach that would bring about the necessary behavioral change. “How”, had been the question from the skeptical training head. “By making the training fun, by incorporating games”, had been the answer. “Oh, games! No, no, not required. We don’t want our employees to play games. They need to be trained to work effectively. Just make all the content available through CDs and the internet.”

What do you all think?

Is now the time for e-learning?

// December 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // e-learning, rambling, strategy

We know the answer all too well: Frozen budgets, limited spare time and a desire for better balance between your personal and professional life make keeping your skills current a real challenge. The evolution from classroom instruction to self-paced e-learning in the late 90ies never quite delivered on the promise that people just learn by themselves without an instructor or coach to help them along the way. E-learning never became the “one size fits all” learning method we may have hoped for. Rather, it became only one of many learning options that are available for an efficient knowledge transfer. In the past few years learning specialists like me tried to overcome the separation of e-learning and physical classroom training by the creation of the “blended” learning concept. For those that don’t know, blended learning is basically an integrated learning approach blending different learning methods such as instructor-led and self-paced learning to create a holistic and role-based learning experience.

From my research, the latest addition to the blended learning family that has proven quite popular with many training providers is virtual live classroom training. This learning method adds an important new element, the live instructor, to the virtual learning options. In a typical virtual classroom training, the instructor uses web based connectivity to deliver the same or slightly adapted content as a student would receive in a physical classroom. The goal is to create the same learning dynamic of the bricks and mortar experience in a virtual environment. Many training organizations have migrated part or all of their physical classroom training to online instruction.

The typical virtual learning day is a continuous change from presentation to exercises to questions and answers to maximize learner’s attention.Capturing the learner’s attention seems to be the critical success factor of any efficient virtual learning experience. Besides the everyday challenges of our multi-tasking work lives, the question of how much online training we are able to digest remains open.There are many so-called virtual classroom training courses that actually are only just another type of webinar, i.e. with little or no participant interactivity at all. The differences and commonalities between webinars and virtual classroom training slightly blur the virtual learning method overall. Whereas both formats use the same technology there are some distinct differences between the two. The primary goal of a webinar is to share information to a large audience in a single direction (instructor to learner). On the other hand, virtual training is usually delivered in smaller learning groups with the purpose of achieving a tangible learning objective and has a more collaborative nature often with hands-on practice. Nevertheless, a learner may not always be sure what they get from a virtual training course and whether this is the best choice for a an efficient knowledge transfer.