As promised, this post offers my perspective on what went wrong with the training scheme scenario I described a couple of weeks ago: (Original post: An elearning cautionary tale I: Our online training scheme).

What went wrong

Fundamentals

The problems started immediately with the MD’s own attitude. On one hand, it’s great that he takes a real interest in the CPD that goes on in his organisation and wants to bring it up to date, but his lack of knowledge about elearning and tendency to be waylaid by shiny toys are obstructive. In addition, both the HR Manager and (especially) Head of Staff Development are themselves in need of CPD about organisational elearning.  Better backgrounds and knowledge would have stopped this situation from happening in the first place. If the MD had asked his HR people to upskill themselves instead of pushing software at them, the foundation could have been put in place to allow updated learning to be implemented properly.

If they felt things needed to change quickly, this would have been the time to bring in an eLearning Specialist or Consultant to provide some immediate support with the whole process of updating their training.

eLearning is not IT

Another fundamental and extremely common error was going to the IT Manager for an opinion about elearning. Some orgs even go so far astray as to class elearning as an IT project, giving more emphasis to the “e” than to the “learning”. From his answers, it’s clear to see that the IT Manager (rightly) concentrates on his area of expertise — the technical aspects of the software and its ability to integrate with the org’s own systems and network. This is important, but it tells nothing about how effective the software will be to deliver the particular training envisioned.

eLearning is not IT, in the same way that dentistry is not drilling equipment and cooking is not pots and pans. These are all tools used for a more varied discipline or activity. IT is a complex and technical subject that infiltrates just about every part of our lives; “elearning” merely calls attention to that fact in relation to traditional ways of learning.

Reactions

These fundamental errors and warning signs put in motion a whole chain of reactions that developed as a somewhat panicky response to the MD’s original whim. The organisation does not seem to have a culture in place allowing managers to disagree with the MD, or else the Head of Staff Development may have been able to talk about the virtues and benefits of their current practice. I’m a firm believer in the “horses for courses” tenet, which advocates finding the best solution for a problem — don’t change just for change’s sake. There was clearly no driving need to force a change, and experiments with using elearning could have developed with deliberation and small-scale piloting.

Lack of skill

The project staff knew they didn’t have the expertise to use the software to full advantage in terms of both creative multimedia skills and dynamic instructional design, and thus could only produce boring text-heavy tutorials.  Where affordable, external contractors with a track record of producing vibrant elearning may have led to the best results, and/or intensive CPD for the project staff, which has the added benefit of giving them valuable skills.

Chaotic rollout

With any major change to working practice, especially anything viewed as mandatory, more consideration needs to be taken for preparing the staff and then for the actual rollout. Instrumental to this is training, even if the software seems “intuitive”. HR should have thought ahead of time about issues of access for travelling or remote staff, and this is where IT should have been consulted to make sure everyone could get onto the system one way or another. Finally, anyone else required to complete the training who is not set up with computing (e.g., cleaners) should have an alternative version to make sure they’re included.

The knee-jerk draconian reaction to employee disatisfaction simply made matters worse, and a betting man would have put money on someone finding a way to circumvent the system.

What started as a simple attempt to bring in some new training ideas turned into a major war between management and staff.

Solutions

Ideally, an eLearning Specialist would have been called in at the first glimmer of an idea to avoid problems from happening, or at least somewhere earlier in the process to do damage limitation.  Even at this late stage, he or she can help with finding ways to get back on track.

The first thing to do is to make sure everyone is able (one way or another) to complete the first of the tutorials which have already gone out and been mandated.  Be gentle and don’t worry about a few cheats. Let this episode fade from memory. Run a traditional workshop with an especially good lunch, end the day a bit early and let people go home, creating goodwill.  Use your best HR techniques to restore a good relationship with the staff. Stop production on the further tutorials and call in the eLearning Specialist, who will help you decide how to rethink the use of elearning in a more organic and successful way. If you’ve already bought software, he or she can make sure you find ways to use it well. If you haven’t he or she will have an opportunity to present a range of options that might suit your needs better.

Did you see other issues or solutions?

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Nancy Weitz

Nancy is Director at Architela and specialises in internet strategy, collaborative learning and user-centred design

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Picture this scenario:

The MD of a mid-sized service sector organisation attends a business networking lunch where someone from a learning software company gives a presentation showing an exciting-looking product designed to be up and running quickly and easily. All you need to do is set it up on your server, add some text and pictures and your staff is on the road to better training. The MD takes a brochure back to his HR manager and suggests she have the Staff Development Team look at ways this software might help them expand and improve their training across the organisation.

The Staff Development Team runs mostly face-to-face workshops and doesn’t have much experience with elearning software. Most of the sessions involve flipcharts, presentations, breakout groups, discussion and a catered lunch, which is a fairly pleasant alternative to the usual workday, and the head of Staff Development nas never felt the need to look for new technical solutions. So the IT manager is brought in to provide technical expertise. He explores the software, which has a lot of functionality, seems robust and should be relatively straight-forward to implement. The HR manager OKs the substantial purchase and the Staff Development Team sets about looking for ways to use it.

The software is expensive and impressive, but the Staff Development Team feels a bit out of its depth. The newest member of the team used to work for a big company that had elearning specialists on staff. He’s worried they won’t get the kind of results the MD expects without the help of external contractors, such as elearning specialists, instructional designers, content writers, graphic designers, and so on.

The head of Staff Development thinks this sounds a bit OTT, but she starts to worry that what first looked like a bit of updating and enhancement to their old-fashioned but workable methods may require additional investment. She goes back to the HR manager, who knows the MD won’t cough up any more money and consults with the IT manager about whether his team can fill any gaps. The IT manager assures her that as long as the Staff Development Team can write up and upload the content, his team will make sure the software works. The HR manager is satisfied.

The head of Staff Development takes the brief back to her team and assigns two project officers to work on the project for two months. IT sets up and configures the software and the project officers get to work cutting and pasting the content from workshop notes into the software.

At the end of the two months, the project officers are pleased to have made the deadline. They’ve prepared three tutorials to replace three half-day workshops on Health & Safety, Diversity in the Workplace and Using the Outlook Calendar. All three tutorials consist of blocks of text with the occasional clip art image and a quiz at the end.

They present the tutorials to the Head of Staff Development, who acknowledges the work but secretly feels them to be dull and inferior to the original workshops, which were lively, active and social. However, she also knows that this is the wave of the future – it’s what the MD wants – and she has to move with the times. She also sees that the tutorials will take less time out of the day than the workshops and that the staff may appreciate this.

As it was originally his idea, the MD asks to be shown the tutorials. The IT manager sits in. At first, the MD seems pleased, but as page after page of text blocks go by, he gets bored and asks we they haven’t used some of the whizbang features he saw in the sales presentation: animation, movies, music, etc. They admit they didn’t feel they had the time or expertise to make use of these. The MD asks why someone from the IT team didn’t show them how to use the other features. The IT Manager gets annoyed and says they did, and the project officers admit they know how they work, but just not how to use them. This makes no sense to the MD who sends them away to add some “good stuff”.

The project officers go away wondering whether they should be looking for a new job, but one of them suggests they film the HR manager talking about Diversity and upload that. They also throw in a few more quizzes and pictures.

The MD asks the IT manager what he thinks, and the IT manager says it’s a nice piece of software, so the Staff Development team gets the go-ahead to launch. A memo goes round with instructions how to access the tutorials through the intranet.

At first, the staff are generally curious about the software tutorials and seem pleased not to have so many workshops to attend, but it quickly becomes clear that some of the less computer-literate are having trouble getting started. An emergency meeting is called, and the Staff Development team quickly cobbles together some training sessions for those who need it.

Meanwhile, the project officers get the green light to replace more workshops with tutorials. Another three are prepared in short order.

Those who don’t need the training sessions are first amused about the whole thing, then bored with endless reading on screen, and by the third one, fed up. They also begin to realise that they miss the workshops, with their social component and catered lunches.

When HR notices a groundswell of staff members ignoring the tutorials, they send out a punitive memo stating that they are mandatory: HR is collecting date about who completes them, and anyone who doesn’t may face disciplinary action. The outcome is that someone discovers it’s possible to “fast forward” directly to the quizzes and circulates a cheatsheet with all the answers.

Some of the computer-illiterate staff miss training sessions for legitimate reasons and others still have trouble despite the sessions. Some staff members who travel or work remotely are unable to access the software at all. They become angry that the tutorials may affect their employability even though they continue to perform their own jobs well.

Morale dips and previously content employees grow negative. Things are a mess.

Two questions for you to answer in the comments (my own answers in a later blog post):

1. How can the organisation fix the problem from this point on?
2. What should the organisation have done in the first place to avoid it happening?

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This is the fifth and last in a series of posts aimed at organisations and educational institutions who wish to overhaul existing learning programmes. I bring together keypoints from the earlier posts along with new ones.

7 Recommendations

1. Planning

Before rushing ahead to ‘blend’ a programme or implement any major changes, it is important to start with first principles:

• Review the purpose, aims and objectives of the programme, and assessment processes to make sure these still hold up, especially in light of the possibilities e-learning opens up.
• Review the organisation, environments and modes of delivery already in place, and consider why the programme is structured the way it is, what the specific benefits and drawbacks are, and how changes might affect the outcomes.
• Consider what you hope the programme will gain by changing it to include e-learning, especially in terms of increasing learner numbers and decreasing dropout rates. E-Learning offers an additional set of tools for building your programme, and it is important to use the right ones in the right place for the right reason.
• Anticipate issues that may arise from change for learners, tutors, support staff, and anyone else involved in the programme. Manage those changes carefully.
• Recognise that the changes you desire may involve resourcing issues, especially in terms of additional staff or additional payment for current staff. This is not a consideration that can be ignored without endangering your goals.

2. Increase interactivity and group learning opportunities

Distance learning particularly suffers from the danger of isolation and tedium, which can be alleviated with structured online group learning.

Possibilities include:

• Online discussions: these should be fully mediated by a tutor-facilitator, who is both skilled in online facilitation and is also a subject expert. However, this can be split between a facilitator, who actively helps the discussion to evolve, and a tutor, who will read regularly and intervene periodically when a question is asked that the facilitator cannot answer or if a point needs to be corrected to avoid perpetuating incorrect information.
• Collaborative assignments: case studies and problem-based learning (PBL) provide good opportunities for group learning, in the form of targeted discussions, collaborative documents and reports, role-playing, project teams, joint knowledge-building and peer review.
• Other online activities that allow learners to share and build knowledge together and interactively.

3. Modify and re-purpose content to fit the different environments

Often, the first thought a team has when considering an online presence for a programme is to turn all printed materials into PDF files or static web pages. This has the benefit of increasing access to those who do not already have print copies but it has the drawback of extending online time and shifting the burden of printing to the learner without offering a real change in the programme and possibilities for learning.

There are more effective ways that programmes can be blended to include online elements, including:

• Increasing the opportunity for interactivity and collaboration (no 2 above)
• Creating ease of access to information and resources, assessment tools and assignments, contact and support
• Providing variety in order to maintain interest and appeal to a range of learning styles and preferences
• In some cases, you will want to shape the materials to fit the means of delivery; in others, you will want to choose the means of delivery to fit the material. In either case, the learning objectives should remain the foremost factor.

4. Increase/improve tutor contact and involvement

Quality tutor contact and involvement can help to stimulate and encourage learners to remain on a programme. However this can be a fraught issue when expectations change abruptly, particularly when there is little or no remuneration for the work. The key here is quality of contact, rather than simply quantity, but quality does require commitment and time. The online environment provides an opportunity for tutors to speak one-to-many, which could conceivably reduce the time commitments that individual emails or phone calls might require.

Some of the ways tutors could participate online effectively:

• Facilitate structured online discussions (no 2 and no 6)
• Offer online question & answer “hotseats”
• Lightly participate in informal discussions, just to show presence and involvement
• Send out group messages periodically to alert learners to upcoming events or opportunities
• Check often and respond to private messages in a timely manner

5. Formalise learner networks

Learners can create the same kinds of support networks for each other that should exist with programme staff. By creating a space ready for learners to create this network, some of the pressure can be taken off staff. However, just stating that learners can do this and leaving them to their own devices will not work. Telephone and email are not the right methods for many-to-many communication, and face-to-face is clearly out of the question in a distance learning programme unless a couple of learners just happen to live in close proximity. One online network is ideal for this.

Suggestions to help build successful online learner networks:

• Appoint a facilitator to build and support the online network. This person must be an experienced online facilitator but he/she does not need any background in the programme subject.
• In all welcome materials, learner handbooks and other programme information, publicise the learner network as an expected element of the programme. Not everyone will use it, but most will at least give it a try and many will depend on it throughout the programme.
• The facilitator will need to build the community and populate it with discussions and initial information before the learners are enrolled. The community needs to look appealing and useful from the beginning. There should be a significant social component.
• The discussions and information need to be kept up-to-date and mirror events in the programme calendar.
• Ideally, the more active members will begin to feel a sense of ownership over the community and should be given rights to create discussions and other items and upload documents.
• Learners should never feel they are being spied on by programme staff. Decisions need to be made about who will be able to access the community and what ground rules apply.

6. Promote formative assessment

Formative assessment in distance learning study is a key way to ensure that learners stay on track with the programme and get regular progress checks, tutor contact and general feedback. This constitutes a level of support that can help reduce dropout rates.

Ways to add/improve formative assessment:

• Make sure assessment tasks and feedback are designed to elicit maximum performance
• Make sure assessment tasks and feedback truly reflect the core aims of the programme
• Include discursive comments on all assignments
• Use online discussions with significant tutor participation to provide informal feedback
• Create collaborative assignments (case studies, PBL) that are assessed or contain an assessed component

7. “Future-proof” the programme.

Keep with other available tools on the internet that freely enable collaboration, sharing of information and use of latest technologies. Develop the habit of thinking about the programme when you discover new tools and considering whether they might be useful to certain aspects. Make sure the programme has room to grow with new discoveries.

Some of the popular online spaces and tools currently being used in education include:

• Dedicated learning management systems (e.g., Moodle)
• Online networking (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
• Shared private or public document spaces (e.g., Google Docs, Wikipedia)
• File sharing (e.g., Dropbox)
• Photo sharing (e.g., Flickr)
• Video sharing (e.g., YouTube)
• Blogging (e.g., Blogger, WordPress)
• Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life)

In addition, a shift in emphasis away from independence and towards collaboration paves the way for the development of communities of practice — spaces to share good professional practice, ideas, resources and support. These are easily created and sustained through online environments, and they can provide informal continuing professional development for those who have successfully completed the programmes.

These are my key recommendations. Please add your own suggestions for updating learning programmes.

Posts in this series:
1. Updating Learning Programmes I: 10 First Principles
2. Updating Learning Programmes II: Assumptions that form obstacles (DL in HE)
3. Updating Learning Programmes III: Assessment
4. Updating Learning Programmes IV: Active online participation
5. Updating Learning Programmes V: 7 Recommendations

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Nancy Weitz

Nancy is Director at Architela and specialises in internet strategy, collaborative learning and user-centred design

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