Putting Learner Back Into Learning

This month’s LCB question is – What would you like to do better as a Learning professional?

My answer – I want to do a better job of putting learner back into learning, whose interests are often the first casualty when there are significant timeline pressures, or when client has low appreciation of the value e-learning brings on to the table.

I thus want to do two things better – first to persuade our clients for allocating adequate resources (read – time, and access to leaders/learners) to our ID team, so that they get enough time and inputs to wave their magic wand!

Second is related to the issue of ROI on e-learning. Now, it’s not about which makes more economic sense – almost 100% of decision makers agree that after accounting for everything e-learning is far more cost effective (and that fortunately or unfortunately is the primary reason why most organizations adopt e-learning). What is controversial is effectiveness of e-learning as training medium – does it really help, is it just a tool to save money or will I be better off spending money in traditional means of training which is a safer option and will hopefully give better results as well.

It’s this dilemma which at times leads to inadequate allocation of time, energy, and budget by the client to e-learning, which eventually results in average courses and low uptake, thus hurting the learner as well as organization interests.

Therefore to better address this issue, I want to collect empirical data of not only e-learning effectiveness, but also of comparison between e-learning delivered courses vis-à-vis classroom delivered courses so as to come up with fair set of expectations from different delivery mediums.

(Manish Gupta is Head – Business Development at G-Cube)