Quick wins | E-learnings Greatest Hits

According to the CIPD’s Martyn Sloman, “We are no more than a few years in to what is effectively a 25 year process of change in our thinking of how we can use technology for learning.” True, but many trainers are far too impatient to wait that long – they want to see some quick wins. Contrary to popular belief, some things in e-learning can be accomplished quickly and cheaply as well.

Quick wins are important to trainers because an increasing amount of the training that’s needed in organisations is for relatively small, specialised audiences, has a short shelf-life and is required next week. Trainers are accustomed to working with longer timeframes and the economies of scale derived from larger, homogeneous audiences and unchanging needs. In these circumstances, they know they’ve got the time and the money to design and run a first-rate face-to-face event or to bring in a highly-professional team of e-learning developers. But what about all those other needs? Surely they cannot simply be ignored.

Here’s just some of the things you could do by harnessing the power of the information and communications technology. Firstly, please give everybody Internet access. The web is the world’s greatest learning resource and it’s free. Web surfers are not time wasters, they are web learners. In the words of Epic CEO, Donald Clark, “Most trainers would rather spend 1000 going to a 2-day conference on e-learning than type the word ‘e-learning’ into Google” – it’s a mindset that simply has to be overcome.

What we can look forward to

An acknowledgement that e-learning is not so different to other training methods. It just provides additional ways to bring learners into contact with useful materials and people.
A realisation that all trainers can harness the power of e-learning; not just the techies and the under-30s.
An acknowledgement that to use e-learning well, trainers need to add some new skills and refine some existing ones.
An acknowledgement that e-learning can help you to implement quick and dirty solutions to training problems and that quick and dirty solutions are often enough.
An acknowledgement that computers are powerful interactive devices, so why not use them to deliver powerful, interactive learning experiences?
An acknowledgement that, amid the general market gloom, many e-learning vendors are still doing really well and that many e-learning projects are hitting the mark.
An acknowledgement that there is a natural resistance to change which extends to the adoption of e-learning. For perhaps the first time ever, trainers are having to manage significant change in the way they deliver their service.

Then, using the most basic virtual classroom technology, you can deliver short, interactive, online presentations, with audio narration, to just about every employee in the organisation, wherever they are in the world. This is the most popular form of e-learning in Cisco and you can see why – the preparation takes no more than a few hours, the cost is minimal and the reach global. And if you’ve got a little spare bandwidth in your organisation, use video streaming to enrich the content further. Where rich media aren’t required, but interactivity is, why not produce simple tutorials using the new generation of enterprise-wide authoring tools?

Still too difficult or too demanding to set up? OK, here are some more ideas. Install discussion forums and chat rooms to bring together learners with common interests. Get subject experts to share all those Word documents and PowerPoint presentations through a simple portal. Make yourself available to help using instant messaging. Enough?

The good news is that you don’t need to take giant steps to make effective use of e-learning. You don’t have to have the technical skills; you just need to know what computers can do. You don’t need to be a highly-talented graphic designer, although you do need to understand adult learning. You don’t need to have installed a giant learning management system, just make a start by getting everyone connected. The use of computers to help people learn is not such a big deal, yet at the same time could be the biggest deal you ever make as a trainer. As US e-learning commentator Clark Aldrich points out “e-learning has been over-hyped in the short term and under-hyped in the long term”. Only time will tell.