One thing that Arun pointed out is that when he is looking at something that he needs he tends to turn to google or a friend. I have fond that I do the same for everything from working with various programs to issues around the house. The other day I was getting my oil change and they called letting me know that I need to have my filters changed and wanted to charge me $90 for parts and labor. I told my wife that I can order online for $40 and do it myself. She asked if I knew how to do it and I brought up a YouTube video and told her sure I do here is a video. I have used YouTube for many how to projects around the house and for hobbies.At work, we have eLearning training for various programs to include Microsoft Office and internal programs that we have developed. In most cases, I agree with Arrun people do not turn back to their eLearning often to figure out any issues that they might face. Since we know that people will continue to seek it out somewhere we have begun to develop how to quick reference sheets (QRS) that people can pull down to answer some common issues they face in the work place with the programs that we use. Instead of our IT folks having to connect to each person computer they are able to provide a how to QRS to assist the employees with their issues. In a recent project we looked at a couple of positions in order to do a job task analysis and was able to determine that the biggest need was the develop of job aids to help the employees with their tasks. We found that even if we developed formal or eLearning training that it would not be as useful since some of the tasks they accomplish have a great time length between when they would get the training and when they will need it.
Even though I do not think it is completely dead, I can see his point on how things have changed and we are changing to meet those new needs and trends.
Gotta admit - I've always found the page-turner e-learning modules to be pretty "meh." There was a "hey, look what we can do now!" period, and it's true that the ability to distribute content in that way has its perks (consistency, flexibility) and the analytics you can draw from it is cool and useful as well, but in terms of providing compelling, engaging instruction - meh. Only a select few elearning programs have been really well-designed. (And yes, I'm highly biased toward having human interaction whether f2f or computer-mediated over individual instruction for anything that will take longer than 15 minutes to teach.)
ReplyDeleteI agree, it seems that we are trying to turn everything into the easy button. Our almost entire general training is covered in eLearning modules now and after being in for twenty years and taking the same modules for the last ten years they are more of a check in the box then an educational tool in my opinion.
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