Failing to understand the Online Training Medium

Much of the reason for making Mistake 1 is that of thinking about online training as a substitute for face-to-face training just delivered cheaper and faster whenever it is wanted.

This is not what online training is about and certainly not what the HRD Online training management system is about.

While computers bring strengths and opportunities to the learning experience, it must be remember that they also remove some of the critical components of face-to-face learning.

To partially overcome this we believe in setting up blended tutor supported online training programmes and in-house action learning groups, plus educating managers in their role of coach and mentor, and continuing to deploy learning groups in in-house workshops with supporting work based assignments.

(In-house workshops can of course focus on the online training systems support functions, blended online training courses and knowledge tests, etc., to both consolidate the learning and also be used to focus on links with other corporate learning initiatives, learning assessment and the application of learning within the workplace).

We can also ensure that in addition to the systems online training courses and www study links the HRD Online training system can also include customised, corporate courses and also corporate study links to your organisations learning materials and corporate documents where appropriate.

We recognise that the evolution of good online training content, and its design, is still in its infancy and therefore much is still to be done. We know that whilst online training cannot avoid being reliant upon text we try to make the information layouts pleasing on the eye, relevant, current and interesting.

However if online training course content is to compete with face-to-face delivery for richness, then there is still a lot of audio and visual work to be done to compensate for some sensory loss!! The HRD online training system can incorporate both graphics and multi-media and so we are working on such integration BUT until the world is on broadband this media, with its potentially slow download time, could disadvantage many of our online training users.

While a lot more thought clearly has to be invested in the design of online training content and its presentation there are powerful opportunities offered by the elearning medium as well. With elearning taking the burden of knowledge presentation, live face-to-face training, when combined with online training, can become much more focused on rich interaction, group work, dialogue, coaching and feedback, i.e. skills development. Therefore the blended online training format allows for extreme flexibility for both knowledge absorption and for collaborative work with colleagues via e-mail and virtual meetings. In particular the problems of sychronising face-to-face learning, made more acute if personnel function in widespread locations, are overcome by greater scaling and speed of delivery of customised online training programmes.