Long Live Instructor-Led Learning

Before you buy it, perhaps I can interest you in some mortgage-backed securities? Consider the case for the death of the classroom to be about as strong as those securities.

For starters, if the best predictor of future performance is past performance, the numbers don't suggest a death anytime soon—unless some jarring event warrants it. Past performance suggests no change in the level of instructor-led training, at least, according to the most recent ASTD State of the Industry Report [1]. Despite a steady climb in the availability of e-learning, the overall percentage of instructor-led training is nearly unchanged: 71.97 percent in 2003 and 70.58 percent in 2008 (the most recent year for which statistics are available). What has changed, though not as significantly as one might expect, is the percentage of instructor-led training offered online, rising from 2.92 percent of all training in 2003 to 6.39 percent in 2008.

For those of you thinking the current recession is the jarring event that will result in a revolution in learning; think again. Although a speaker at Online Educa in Berlin this past December predicted that entire training departments will be obliterated in the recession, that's only likely to happen if the rest of the organizations these departments serve are obliterated. Otherwise, what we have learned from previous recessions is that training receives—on average—equal treatment. That is, if the overall staff of an organization is cut 10 percent, then the training staff is cut 10 percent, as Training magazine reported in 1993 when it analyzed spending on training during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2002, when ASTD analyzed spending during that recent recession.

And even if companies cut training, many of the economic stimulus packages being passed by federal governments around the world include large infusions of cash for classroom-based job retraining programs, including those of Canada ($CDN 1.8 billion), China, and the U.S. ($4.6 billion).

So, rather than the death of the traditional classroom, current trends suggest that we will merely see an acceleration of the transfer from the face-to-face to the live virtual classroom as organizations seek to further reduce classroom-related travel expenses, and shorten time out of the office (the live virtual classroom—Webcasting—facilitates both).

More flawed than the analysis of the numbers is the proposition that formal classroom learning will be replaced by informal learning, which will primarily occur online through blogs and social computing tools. Although it sounds exciting at first, and certainly appeals to the emotions, several practical issues—all of which are ignored by the contributors to the ASTD 2019 discussion—limit the likelihood that organizations would primarily rely on informal learning.

I should be clear; I don't have anything against informal learning. The primary claim that informal learning can lead to powerful insights and learning experiences is one that I share. Informal learning was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. But through my research, I also learned that, despite its power, informal learning is flawed, just like its classroom sibling.

One of those flaws is that informal learning is sporadic and, when job-related, often focused on a particular task at hand, rather than the larger context in which that task occurs. As a result, someone might have learned an entire body of knowledge, but has no idea what it is or how the different pieces in that body of knowledge relate to one another and can only leverage that knowledge in a limited way.

Another flaw is that informal learning can be inaccurate. In some cases, it's the learner's fault. Research on reading suggests that people tend to read inaccurately, especially online. So someone might interpret a point incorrectly, or mistakenly remember a fact. (As a result of this lack of credibility, people like President Obama don't rely on blogs [2]).

But sometimes the errors in content result from the publication of erroneous content or opinion that is not properly labeled. The potential for those is high in blogs, which many people cite as an excellent learning resource.

In her qualitative study of people who keep blogs on training and development topics, Kristina Schneider found that few of the bloggers differentiated between fact and opinion; nor did they verify the information they published; nor did the bloggers provide disclaimers about the nature of the content they published [3]. As a result, readers might believe the content they're reading is true when, in fact, there's also a chance that it's not.

Another flaw with informal learning is that people only learn it when they find it or stumble onto it, which might not occur when people actually need the material. In the case of getting to content when they need it, one of the problems with material on the Web is that people do not find it when they need it, or they find material that seems to be appropriate, even when it is not. They might not have assistance in verifying the selection or they might not seek it because they might not appreciate the need.

Similarly, informal learners might need the information, but can only learn when their time permits. Too often, however, the time set aside for learning is interrupted by something more immediate. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why the completion rates for tutorial-style e-learning are often disappointing.

The contributors to the discussion also suggest that social networking tools (also known as Web 2.0) will play an important role in training. But that, too, might be an overstatement.

On one hand, these tools are becoming increasingly pervasive (indeed, the percentage of people with accounts on social networking sites exceeds the number of people with email accounts).

On the other hand, even the experts admit that the numbers merely indicate the quantity of people who have access to these tools; the numbers do not indicate the quality of participation. For learning purposes, it's the latter that matters.

Certainly the quality of use will improve in time, but not if our simplistic understanding of the tools persist. For example, consider the belief that usage of social computing tools varies by age. More specifically, people believe that millennials are more comfortable using social computing differently than baby boomers.

But that might result from the fact that tools like Facebook and MySpace were originally marketed to millennials and did not start marketing to boomers until more recently. (In fact, both of those mega-popular sites kind of kept older people out of them for a while.) The biggest growth in users of these sites is among older folks, so the age differential is not likely to persist.

Indeed, even among millennials, use of computing varies widely. Bennett, Maton, and Kervin [4] reported last summer in the British Journal of Educational Technology that:

. . . researchers found, however, that only a minority of the students (around 21%) were engaged in creating their own content and multimedia for the Web, and that a significant proportion of students had lower level skills than might be expected.

Research suggests that gender might play a more significant role than age in the use of online media. The same article reported that games are more popular among males than females [4], and a 2008 Pew Internet and American Life Survey found that teenaged girls were far more likely to blog than boys [5]. (For what it's worth, a 2006 study found that males and females were about equally likely to download porn on the job (but that's another issue altogether [6]).

In other words, not only does social computing take a variety of forms, but different people respond differently to each of them. In practical terms, that means that no single social computing tool is likely to meet every organization's learning needs. And those of us who want to promote the adoption of e-learning should recognize this fact and use it to advise our clients.

Furthermore, although social networking is available online, perceptions suggest that the social networking available in face-to-face contexts like the classroom is still considered superior. For example, experts on business networking sites like LinkedIn advise people to schedule in-person meetings [7].

If instructor-led learning is not going away, what is the fate for informal learning and e-learning? Perhaps the model might come from a training program that a colleague told me about during a recent lunch. His organization—a public foundation that is the primary source of funding for more than 300 nonprofits in the metropolitan area in which he lives—offers year-long training on program evaluation to its constituent agencies, so that they can demonstrate what impact the funded programs are having in ways that will be meaningful.

The program consists of instructor-led learning to introduce the principles of evaluation and guidance in writing an evaluation plan, followed by individual assignments in which participants develop their own evaluation plans. Mentors review the plans before they're implemented, and the cohort of classmates provides guidance to one another during the rest of the year, when participants implement their revised evaluation plans and prepare reports. This support can be provided online.

Occasional instructor-led sessions prepare learners for milestone events, like writing reports. Additional support can be provided between sessions online.

But one question still nags; if the evidence suggests that instructor-led instruction still has a long, healthy life (whether in the classroom or online), why do bloggers continue to insist that its death is imminent?

The Schneider study mentioned earlier offers some clues. Of the five bloggers she studied in depth, none had attended a day of training in the past year. Most went to conferences but when doing so, most reported that they didn't attend sessions; they merely networked [3]. Perhaps they feel that, if informal learning through blogging works for them, it works for everyone.

The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

References
[1] Paradise, A. ASTD State of the Industry Report. ASTD Press, Alexandria, VA.
[2] Cooper, H. and Stolberg, S. G. Obama ponders outreach to elements of Taliban. New York Times (Mar. 8, 2009);
[3] Schneider, K. A Qualitative Study of Five Authors of Five Blogs on Training and Development. Master's thesis. Concordia University. Montreal, QC, 2008.
[4] Bennett, S. Maton, K, and Kervin, L. The 'digital natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology 39, 5 (2008), 775-786.
[5] Montgomery, S. Girl bloggers rise in numbers, could help narrow tech gender divide. The Canadian Press. (Mar. 19, 2008).
[6] Armstrong, M. Porn on the job: Report on the inappropriate use of information technology in the workplace. Global National (broadcast Saturday, May 27, 2006).
[7] Kent, C. How and why to grow your LinkedIn network. The Ragan Report (2008);

About the Author
Saul Carliner is an associate professor with the graduate program in educational technology at Concordia University in Montreal. He has published several books on e-learning, including The E-Learning Handbook (with Patti Shank) and Advanced Web-Based Training (with Margaret Driscoll). He is a certified training and development professional, serves on the Board of the Canadian Society for Training and Development, is a past research fellow of the American Society for Training and Development, and is a fellow and past international president of the Society for Technical Communication. He can be reached at [email protected].

©2009 ACM

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