And here I am reminded of the Emirati senior manager who, some years ago when I told him that his Asian workforce was to be replaced by Emirati employees, spent almost 10 months asking me not to do that.
He only ended his opposition to the plan when he had had the chance to see that a correctly designed learning programme, that was assessed and passed by his existing (Asian) line supervisors was in place. I remember clearly the day when he walked into my office and, instead of continuing our long-running argument, he asked, “When do we start the next batch?”
Not all learning adventures end so happily.
The dropout or failure to graduate rate for even traditional face-to-face methods is alarmingly high with, in some cases, the success rate for eLearning course being in single figures.
Being relatively cheap and accessible is no consolation for failing to complete or failing to pass the final assessment. And it is in the nature of the assessment that I would argue that success or otherwise resides.
No matter how visually appealing the material, or engaging the role-play, it will only be when a competent authority (and that is not necessarily the eLearning author or vendor) is allowed to validate the new competence of the learner that we can say the delivery worked.
We should not forget that eLearning is only a tool, one of many, and ultimately it is people who pass judgement.
Dr Barry J Cummings, Chairman and Managing Partner of Action in Business International is a learning and development consultant with over 40 years of experience, worldwide, in designing and delivering individual and group learning solutions. Based for almost 20 years in Dubai and serving the entire MENA region.
http://www.axnbiz.com
Learning Technology