Virtual Training. Jeb Blount
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Название: Virtual Training

Автор: Jeb Blount

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Маркетинг, PR, реклама

Серия:

isbn: 9781119755845

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ couple of weeks later, we were delivering virtual training to a group of sales professionals in India for one of our most valued clients. Because of our history with this company, it hadn't been too difficult to convince them to shift the scheduled physical deliveries to virtual.

      Still, there were top executives observing the training because there was so much skepticism (this was true for almost all of our early VILT deliveries). About 10 minutes into the training, we overheard the senior vice president on an unmuted mic calling the CEO and telling him, “Log in now … You've never seen anything like this!”

      The company subsequently engaged us to deliver virtual trainings to participants in countries all across the globe. We began following the sun from Asia to Europe to North America, teaching people from around the world, from our virtual training studios in Georgia.

      What we hadn't anticipated, though, was that the savings on travel costs and flexibility that VILTs afforded would cause them to double, triple, and even quadruple the trainings they were ordering. In the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, our business exploded.

      Before I make the case for virtual training, let's acknowledge that dynamic in-classroom training can be a powerful learning experience. This is especially true when it includes collaborative breakout sessions and experiential learning elements delivered by a talented, passionate instructor. For many participants, perhaps, it provides the very best overall experience on an emotional level. Few rational people would argue otherwise.

      The problem is that classroom-based, instructor-led training is both expensive and inefficient. First, there is the investment in the actual training:

       The trainer

       Content licensing (when using a third-party curriculum)

       Travel and meals

       Lost productivity while participants are out of the field and in the classroom

       The training space (whether it is a dedicated area in your building, or rented space at a hotel or conference center)

       Printed materials (e.g., name tags, tent cards, handouts, and workbooks)

       Liability insurance

       Indirect environmental costs (e.g., energy consumption, carbon emissions)

      More often than not, the investment in the trainer (and licensing, if applicable) is dwarfed by the expenses that aren't directly related to the actual training. We surveyed our clients and found that between 50 and 80 percent of classroom-based, instructor-led training investment is spent on nontraining expenses like travel. With so much money wasted on incidental expenses, in-person training programs make it challenging to get a return on the investment.

      These high costs also mean that learning and development (L&D) organizations cannot afford to experiment or make mistakes with physical classroom training. This stifles innovation, agility, and speed when organizations need to change. These incidental costs also put severe limits on the amount of ongoing training that can be delivered by an organization.

      The truth is, there will always be a need for in-person classroom instruction for adults. There are some forms of training—for example, how to repair a diesel engine or perform a medical procedure—that require a hands-on learning experience. Yet, even this type of training may be blended and enhanced with e-learning, virtual training, and virtual and augmented reality components to accelerate skill development and mastery.

      Of course, you can eliminate most of these costs and rapidly deploy training with asynchronous, self-directed e-learning. Just send learners to your learning management system (LMS) and have them advance through a series of videos, online modules, and assessments.

      With e-learning, people may consume training content and learn on their own terms anywhere, anytime, on any device. It is a cheap and easy way to train lots of people fast, with little friction. But driving real learning through self-paced e-learning courses has some serious drawbacks, as anyone who's tried it will tell you. The truth is:

       When left on their own, most people abandon the training. Studies indicate that more than 90 percent of online learners never complete their courses.2

       E-learning on its own doesn't work well for teaching complex skill sets and competencies.

       People learn better when they collaborate with other people.

      Don't get me wrong, there are certain subjects such as compliance and technical how-to instruction in which e-learning excels. Even so, because e-learning leads to a “set it and forget it” mentality, leaders and L&D professionals tend to take a hands-off approach to directing and monitoring e-learning activities. This dilutes the potential return that e-learning offers because either learners abandon the coursework or just go through the motions to check off the requirements so that they look good on reports.

      People wish to communicate, collaborate, and at times commiserate as they stretch through the process of shifting their mindset and acquiring new skills. Humans long for social engagement and the shared community and experience of a classroom cohort.

      Simply put, e-learning is missing that social component, so by itself it is not an effective way to develop competency and drive behavior change.

      This is exactly why synchronous classroom-based and virtual instructor-led training is, and will continue to be, an important cornerstone of learning and development initiatives.

      Virtual instructor-led training (VILT) blends the social learning benefits of classroom-based training with the speed, agility, СКАЧАТЬ