Convincing the learner

At least theoretically, the learner has a choice – to do e-learning or not to do e-learning – and as a manipulator of people, your job is to influence that choice in favour of the former option. As ever, you have the choice of the carrot and the stick. Let’s start with the stick, because that’s more fun.

You can point out that no e-learning means no career progress. According to Professor Anne Jones from the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Brunel University, “people don’t understand that, without change they will be without work”. Make them understand. You can also point out that alternatives to e-learning are more expensive and much less flexible (sorry, all you classroom trainers). If you want to use coercion (because you’re in a hurry and in a position of power), why not make the e-learning compulsory? Don’t allow any alternatives.

A diversion here. A common argument from trainers is that e-learning must be run alongside traditional methods as an alternative, to accommodate different learning styles. Big mistake. Firstly, this destroys your ROI argument, as you’re now increasing the cost of training rather than reducing it. Secondly, it doesn’t give e-learning a chance, because very few people will change to something new if they have a choice. Lastly, it’s hypocritical. For years we’ve been giving learners no choice – it’s classroom or nothing. Why is it suddenly so important to do so now?

Case study: Norwegian government and Saba

As of August 2000, a whole country changed the way it trained and reskilled its people. An illustrious collection of the great and good from Norway’s government, business and education communities formally launched the Competence Network of Norwegian Business and Industry – or NKN for short. The plan was to provide more than four million Norwegian citizens – including government offices, trade unions, colleges and universities, as well as the private and public sector – with access to ongoing, personalised online training.

“We have a good level of education in Norway but most people now require several ‘refills’ of learning during their career,” said Tore Egil Holte, chairman of the board of NKN. “Workers need easy access to learning, in a way that is independent of geography and time.” So access to NKN was actively encouraged in the workplace as well as at home. Indeed, legislation had been put in place to encourage learning at work. For example, employees now have the right to have their skills, and any gaps in those skills, assessed; and their employer is obliged to pay for filling those gaps.

Sven Erik Sk nberg, NKN’s managing director, wasn’t daunted by the challenges that lay ahead. “We are moving at a fast speed,” he said. Indeed he anticipated more than 100,000 citizens could be using the NKN network within a year from launch.

For Bobby Yazdani, the chief executive of Saba, who supplied the learning management software to make this all possible, the Norwegian commitment is something special. “The dream of an entrepreneur is to transform people’s lives,” he said, “so it’s a great day when we see that our vision is affecting an entire population. Our technology is being used to better the lives and performance of people.”

And then, for the more liberal amongst us, there’s always the carrot. Make it clear how e-learning can lead to career success. Better still, design your courses so they lead to accreditation of some sort. As Professor Anne Jones says: “People really like external validation, any form of certificate.” To make the carrot attainable, smooth the way by making e-learning easily available at home or work, and ideally, allow time off for self-study.

Don’t assume that you’re always going to have to fight to obtain support for e-learning. A survey by KnowledgePool showed that employees now value training as much as a well-paid job. And at least as far as the latest generation of knowledge workers are concerned, learning from the Internet is just as natural as using it for research, shopping and entertainment.