Face-to-Face training is dead - hold the horses!

Time to debunk a learning myth or two.

Here is one I hear quite a lot……Face-to-Face training is dead. The future is all about ‘resources not courses’. Really!

Now don’t get me wrong, digital technology and tools such as Zoom and MS Teams offer great potential for the world of learning but sounding the death knell of Face-to-Face learning is way too premature.

It doesn’t matter how many times I watch video clips of Roger Federer playing tennis (although not so much now he has retired!), it won’t make me any better at playing tennis. I still need to physically go onto a court and practice.

However, this is all missing the point. We shouldn’t start with learning mechanisms. We need to start any people development process by answering the questions….What do we want to see people doing differently? And what is the best way to make it happen?

People learn from experiences. They have an experience and then reflect on how it made them feel. If they felt good, they are more likely to want to repeat the experience. If it made them feel bad, then there could be fantastic learning in understanding why. In both cases the stimulus to learning is how an experience made someone feel.

So when designing learning programmes, it is vital to look at the behavioural change you want to see, the feelings you want to stimulate to spark this change and the type of experiences you need to create for this to happen. Then you can select the best learning mechanism.  

Let’s look at three scenarios…

• If, for example, the learning aim is to provide knowledge of a new process or tool, some form of online learning ‘resource’ can be very effective. You can potentially incorporate interaction with the tool or process as part of the ‘resource’ and knowledge will be enhanced.

• If however, the aim is to get people to follow a process or use a tool that they are currently avoiding or not using, then some form of behavioural change is required and online learning ‘resources’ alone will not make the grade. Take CRM for example, the world of sales is littered with CRM systems that people don’t use as intended. Changing this status quo requires immersing people in an experience where they feel the pain of not using it or they feel the benefit of using it. The more immersive the experience, the greater the chance of evoking the emotional reactions required to spark the desired change. Sometimes this can be achieved virtually. However, this type of immersion will often benefit from a physical, Face-to-Face setting.

• Finally, if the aim is to get someone to develop a new skill or enhance an existing skill, then again, a more immersive experience can make a massive difference.  

So getting back to the original point about Face-to-Face learning being dead….There is no denying the impact the pandemic has had on learning. The advent of Zoom, MS Teams and other such applications have made an enormous difference to the way learning is now conducted.

However Face-to-Face learning contexts still have a vital role to play. Of course they shouldn’t be content dumping sessions but done right, they offer huge potential for creating sophisticated and powerful experiences that are vital to bringing about effective behavioural change.

So let’s start by defining the right course and then picking the right horse for it!