Same old story

Last Friday I was delivering a workshop for trainers. While we were chatting before the event got started, one of the participants told me that her organisation, a large government department, had initiated a major e-learning programme, but the response had been disappointing. "I bet I can guess why," I said. "Really?" she said, "Do tell me." This was my guess:

• the e-learning was entirely self-study;
• the e-learning was unsupported;
• the content was largely textual and uninspiring.

"How did you guess?" she said. "Easy," I said, "that's always the problem."

I must admit that it makes me mad when I hear about the mess organisations make of e-learning. Do organisations ever learn from the mistakes made by others? Does every organisation have to find out for themselves?

When e-learning goes wrong, you can be sure that the only reason it was introduced was to save money. There's also a strong chance that the project was put in the hands of a small group of specialists working with outside contractors and that the rest of the training department was alienated as a result.

From a pedagogical perspective, the organisation almost definitely didn't realise that by switching from classroom to online, they were not just changing the medium (from face-to-face to online), but also the method (from small group to self-study). The change in medium may make the training more efficient, i.e. cheaper, but the change in method may be completely inappropriate for the subject in question. That's why I always encourage designers to start by selecting the methods likely to be most appropriate for meeting the learning objective, and only then move on to determine the medium or, in many cases, the range of media.

Only the most motivated and independent learners can sustain prolonged periods of self-study, however good the materials; and only a minority of topics can be handled by self-study alone. All of which brings us back, of course, to blended learning, which is where I'd recommend any organisation to start their journey of transformation.