Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Blending Traditional and Virtual Classrooms

In the previous blog article I suggested that the virtual classroom doesn’t need to threaten the traditional classroom. And, in the article prior I described how Bob and I are finding greater fulfillment as trainers in the virtual classroom than we have typically found in face-to-face training. None of this suggests that traditional training should ever disappear.
Tim Bosworth’s comment “Don’t forget that there’s still value in old-fashioned, face-to-face learning” is an admonition we all need to heed. Here are some of the unsurpassed strengths of the traditional classroom:

Connecting
The personal connection that can take place when people gather in person is certainly unmatched. The time required to forge this connection is generally short and the sustainable strength of these connections is what keeps me engaged in face-to-face training.

Escaping
One of the great challenges we experienced with eLearning 24x7 is that learners have continuously struggled to find the time during their work to learn at their desktop. Continuously interrupted learning in the workflow is tough work. Again, Tim Bosworth’s comments on the last blog ring true:
“It's a different kind of learning. You're sitting in your office or home, all the old familiar cues are around, that report you have to get done before you knock off for the day is sitting in front of you, your secretary is telling you your boss needs to see you ASAP, so on. It's just a different venue than going to a place and putting the world aside for a period of time. If you're going to do e-learning, you have to make sure that you are going to "teach" the kind of material that can be taught in that environment.”

The traditional classroom certainly helps here. Some learning merits our escaping from the workplace so real learning can take place—uninterrupted.

Adapting
The most fundamental gift a trainer brings to training is the capacity to observe performance, provide immediate feedback, and check to ensure that the performance of the learner adapts appropriately. Not all training requires this kind of immediate feedback, but when it does, face-to-face training is vital.

Collaborating
When skill development isn’t singular but collaborative, the traditional classroom becomes a crucial environment. Collaborative work has, at its core, moment-to-moment exchanges of interpersonal effort sustained by trust. A group of people don’t simply master skills independently and then naturally collaborate. Most collaboration skills are best developed in a setting that provides people opportunity to intermingle their skills and in doing so develop the trust required to sustain future collaborative efforts.

Interacting
Interpersonal interaction skills are similar to collaboration skills but with these skills an individual interacts with others in the context of a specific situation (e.g., applying listening skills to resolve a communication problem or sales skills to make a specific sale.) The development of these kind of skills calls for interpersonal practice with real-time feedback. Today, this type of learning is best accomplished face-to-face. This is not to say that preliminary skill development can’t be achieved elsewhere by other means, but in reality, the traditional classroom, is the best place for polishing these kind of skills.

The Virtual Classroom Lets Us Use the Traditional Classroom More Effectively
In the past, when training has required an instructor, we haven’t had the option to safely offload learning requirements that don’t require the level of connecting, escaping, adapting, collaborating, and interacting described above. The virtual classroom allows this.
A crucial question for us to always ask is “What is it that we can only accomplish by physically gathering together to learn?” Everything else should be pushed to other learning modalities, and, whenever an instructor is still needed, the virtual classroom can most certainly deliver high-yield learning.

The Strengths of the Virtual Instructor-led Training (VILT)
In addition to the capacity of VILT to extend the borders of the traditional classroom, there are other compelling reasons for organizations to add VILT to their learning options arsenal. Here are some:

First, VILT doesn’t require travel. Many organizations simply can’t afford the costs of pull-out training.

Second, VILT imbeds learning into each learner’s workflow. This is an advantage over the discontinuity inherent in full or multi-day courses.

Third, VILT allows training to scale more readily to a large, dispersed workforce in a constantly changing environment.

Fourth, VILT allows learners to learn a bite at a time in the context of their work rather than all at once and away from work.

Fifth, through spaced learning, VILT allows learning to transfer more readily into the personal work streams of learners.

Unfortunately, much of what is happening today in the virtual classroom fails to take full advantage of these strengths. Dean Bennett posted a comment regarding the last blog that puts it best:


“The future, with its plethora of communication media offers huge potential for more engaged, active and sticky leaning. I think we are still in the early stages of understanding its full potential.”

The good news is that there is a growing community that is actually doing this. They are taking the virtual classroom beyond the one-way content dumps that have been taking place in the name of “webinars.” Instead, these professionals are designing, developing, and delivering “high yield training in the virtual classroom.” They are achieving a healthy balance between traditional and virtual classrooms, maximizing the strengths of both. They are growing populations of learners who are finding in the virtual classroom a rigorous learning experience. Stay tuned to this blog and we’ll share with you how they are doing just that!

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