Live Training vs. eLearning: Which is Better?

by Jennie Ruby

I felt like a video star the other day. Well, at least in a tiny little way. I taught a class a few years ago on upgrading to Windows Vista and Office 2007. It was for a fairly large organization. The section of the class I taught had an attendance of about 40 people, and they had several more sessions scheduled. But I didn't teach them--at least not in person. They videotaped the first session, and although the audio quality their equipment provided was pretty terrible, they used the videos for the remaining sessions, and then continued to use them for new hires for a couple of years afterward. I walked by that company's building the other day, and a stranger said "Hey, Jennie Ruby!"

I think I am still pretty far from needing to wear sunglasses to avoid public recognition, but the incident made me think about how asynchronous learning extends the reach of one trainer. With one day's work, I had trained hundreds of people. However, people in the live seminar were able to ask questions and have them answered, while people who saw only the video did not have that opportunity.

On the other hand, people who saw the video could presumably stop the action, take time to practice the skills being taught, and then re-watch the action if needed. Even just the ability to re-wind and re-watch the action provides added value. That is still far from the interaction and involvement we try to encourage when creating eLearning courses, where we include constant opportunities for learners to practice the skills and actions they need to learn. Nevertheless, asynchronous training has some pretty compelling advantages.

But the reason I am thinking about all of this today is that I was recently asked how to show that live, classroom training still has an advantage over eLearning. What? For years I have seen people struggling to prove the opposite--to prove that eLearning works. And now I was being asked to justify classroom training.

My question for you this week is probably an old, familiar one, but one that comes up in both directions in the training world. Which is better, classroom training/live interactive training or self-paced/asynchronous eLearning?

Are classroom trainers going the way of the dinosaur? Will we ever? Are there different reasons for different kinds of training? Is there room for both? Are there new ways to combine classroom and eLearning modes of training? Are you being asked these kinds of questions in your work?

If you have been dealing with these issues and questions, we would love to hear from you. Whether you have long since reached an opinion, or whether you are doing on-going research about this, I would like to know. I'll share results next week.

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Comments

[shaun]

while interest over the last few years has grown tremendously face to face is still the leader by far. Could partially be the demographic I deal with. Now I contrast virtual with live class

[John Schuetze]

Having stumbled upon this posting, I'm taking a moment to give my opinion. I'm a fifteen year veteran of teaching software for the government. I started in the mid 90s as a classroom instructor and now am a fulltime online learning developer using Captivate.

My experience leads me to believe that online learning will eventually eclipse face-to-face learning as the preferred method of instruction in the adult working environment as adults down the road are going to be more attuned and inclined to learn via tablets. It's more fun than trooping off to a classroom and passively listening to an instructor without any control. The student has control over the online training experience and, eventually, there will be a computerized instructor that will answer questions posed by students similar in the way the new Siri answers questions posed by IPhone 4S users.