E-Learning with a European Accent

Etz isch fertig luschtig! – The party’s over! Many a time I hear this from the mouth of an exasperated Swiss parent on my local train as they try to bring order to their child swinging from the metal poles or climbing over the chairs.

The same phrase often comes to mind as I read the free newspapers on my way to work. The party is indeed over and many of us are being forced to look very carefully at how we spend the money and use the resources that we have.

As a Learning Specialist I think this should be a great time for e-learning. Simply put, it is interactive, flexible, consistent and highly cost-effective. And indeed many of our clients in Europe are looking at the potential of e-learning much more seriously. And yet, in many parts of Europe, e-learning has still not established itself as a standard part of the learning mix, especially in comparison with the English-speaking world. Why has e-learning still not fully won the argument and what can be done to ensure e-learning and other technologies play their proper part in European training? Let’s look at three elements of e-learning: technology, methodology and objectives.

Technology
I have been to two e-learning and learning technology trade fairs this year: LEARNTEC and the small learning section at CeBIT. What struck me both times was the emphasis on technology over learning. Now don’t get me wrong: technology is quite clearly a key component of what makes e-learning work. Indeed, without technology there is no e-learning. That is why part of the LINE consulting offering involves helping clients to select the correct technology infrastructure to meet their learning and communication needs.

However, the technology is there to serve an organisation’s learning, communication and information strategy which, in turn, should align with that organisation’s business objectives. Instead, many organisations buy technology and restructure their strategy in line with that technology. Technology is then no longer the tool – it has become the master.

Only with a proper understanding of how the learning process works and how to use learning as a catalyst for business change does the technology have any value. Otherwise it is nothing more than an empty shell. Putting too much emphasis on the technology alone is like going to a trainer conference and listening to countless speakers extol the virtues of whiteboards and marker pens.

Methodology
While geography might explain the popularity of distance learning, and therefore e-learning, in the English-speaking world (vast distances make it expensive to bring people together in one room), it doesn’t explain the way in which it has evolved. For that we need to look particularly at the US.

The US is the birthplace of the assembly line and mass production, whereby rigid processes and standardisation ensure that products are manufactured quickly and cheaply. Inevitably, the success of mass production meant that some of its underlying ideas seeped into other parts of business and society, even education.

E-learning has not been immune from the influence of this assembly line mentality. Indeed, it has often been seen as a way of “programming” human beings with new information and skills by taking them through a generic learning process that, with only a little adjustment, can apparently impart any kind of learning content.

This one-size-fits-all approach is of course highly seductive because it enables training to be delivered at a very low cost. Sadly, the focus has often been too much on cost reduction rather than what makes effective learning. Perhaps a formulaic approach would work if all people were identical – however, the messy veracity of real human beings requires a much more sophisticated and differentiated solution. Perhaps the solution is to create e-learning with a distinctly European flavour (although of course many in the US and other parts of the world are thinking in much the same way):

• E-learning should have more intrinsic appeal; that is to say we must understand how to make e-learning appealing and attractive to learners without distracting from the learning and performance outcomes.
• Knowing that we value “communities of learning” so highly, we have the opportunity to play a greater part in using Web 2.0 and other technologies to create effective “virtual learning communities” where the cost of getting learners to meet in person is too high.
• Perhaps in a purely European context we need to draw on the metaphors of our own learning traditions and translate them into an online context (for example: what could we learn from the Master-Apprentice Model that could be incorporated into e-learning?).
• We should further let go of the idea of e-learning as a solitary process by creating online tasks that can only be carried out in pairs, as a group or, as in the case of the German military, with the constant support of a coach.

Objectives
Much learning, and not only e-learning, is let down by a lack of clarity about what the learner should be learning and why they are spending time learning in the first place. Especially in these straitened times, it is an opportunity for companies like LINE that supply learning solutions to work together with their clients to ensure any piece of learning created:

• has clear performance objectives. How do you want the target group’s behaviour to change as a result of completing a piece of learning?
• is related to business objectives. To what extent does a given piece of learning contribute to the overall business objectives of an organisation?

A learning solution that has been carefully honed to work towards these objectives can become more than mere learning. Instead, the best solutions can become instruments for change within an organisation, equipping and motivating people to adapt to new ways of being and to meet new challenges.

Sometimes it costs a little more to capture hearts as well as minds. However, if it is clear that the performance objectives cannot be met without taking a little additional effort to persuade learners of the need for change, then the costs should be far outweighed by the benefits of offering a richer, more attractive learning experience.

In addition, careful focus on performance objectives allows experienced learning designers to pare away any extraneous content and focus only on the meat of the content that will satisfy the performance outcome.

Conclusion
So, etz isch fertig luschtig, these are indeed serious times. And yet times of crisis are also times for opportunity. My plea at this time of crisis and opportunity is for companies to re-examine the benefits of using technology to optimise their learning and communications strategy.

However, I have also wanted to set my own industry some challenges to ensure that we serve our customers better in these difficult times:

• Whatever kind of learning we sell, e-learning or otherwise, let us ensure that the tools we use serve the learning process, not the other way around. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself.
• The learning process should also be central to what kinds of learning strategies we choose: face-to-face learning, high quality e-learning, rapid e-learning, video, audio, reference tools, or more frequently a combination of more than one approach.
• Learning is about change: helping individuals change their behaviour so that they perform more effectively and ensuring this change fits into the overall evolution of the organisation as it adapts to a complex and highly volatile world. We learning providers forget this at our peril.

These are good practices now. They will also be just as good when better times return, as they surely will.

by Ade Derbyshire-Moore