Trainers Talk Tech

I was at a client location all last week, co-facilitating a customer service training program being rolled out to the entire organization. It is a huge undertaking, involving more than 15 trainers, 5 contractors and over 14,000 employees. While on a break, I had an interesting conversation with one of the participants who found out about my passion for eLearning. He was kind of an older learner...I wouldn't describe him as Gen Y at all! He turned his head to one side and looked at me with a bit of suspicion. He asked "What can you REALLY teach with a computer?"

Of course, it got me thinking. What can we really teach with a computer? In fact, this simple question turned my head around and in a most peculiar way, I started thinking about the bigger question: What can we really teach?

Follow up:

Before you click away to the next site, think about that for just one second...If we strip away the technology, the web 2.0 stuff, manuals, books, tutorials, "job aids" and just focus on how people learn, it raises more questions than answers.

While getting my MA Ed at Pepperdine, Frank Smith's excellent book, "The Book of Learning and Forgetting", explains his belief that schools and educational leaders destroy children's ability to learn, and that most of the things that teachers do (regulation and testing) destroys the ability to learn.

We learn by doing; we learn by getting our hands dirty; by watching and observing a more skilled mentor. Frank Smith calls this the "classic view" of learning. Imagine learning to build a wagon or hone a sword or lead an army. Did you go to "leadership school", sit in several weeks of classes, practice your "battle cry" with other participants in a "safe environment"? Or, did you draw your sword, fight your way through the opposing army and emerge as the last one standing. People looked around and point "He lived. Let him lead us on the next attack."

So, what does this have to do with eLearning and computers? Learners need to learn by getting dirty. Learners need to get off their butts and apply what they have learned. Learners get no benefit from reading a page of content and then listening to lecture. They get no benefit from sitting and watching a facilitator if their new skills are not tested. Learning is much larger than the delivery method: self-study, eLearning or facilitation. Learning involves getting the user to get up and change his/her behaviors.

So, to answer my gentlemen, I told him that I can teach anything with a computer. I also told him that I can teach nothing with a computer. The computer is a tool for delivering training as part of a program to bring the learner into a state of change! The eLearning program should be a part of an entire course where delivery methods are mixed and practice, demonstration and trial are built in. Rather than "hope" that the learners get it, spell it out for them with activities or simulations that put them to the test. Don't ask them 10 T/F questions, design a practicum project they complete on the job.

Make managers accountable for the learning by assigning projects, meetings and activities that they supervise while observing the person on the job. Design post-training activities, coaching sessions and purposeful on-the-job stretch assignments will move the manager from a passive observer of their learner's experience to an active participant in the process. Mentoring anyone?

You can teach anything to anyone using any method you choose. However, being mindful of the integration of deliver methods PLUS a close eye on behavior changes PLUS a clear set of expectations for change means that you focus on the learner, the overall program and the organization rather than on the single module, class or learning activity. Everything will fail or succeed based on how mindful you are of the behavior changes you need to see in your learner, and building programs to encourage those changes.

eLearning is not about the "e" - its about the "learning".