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Here we are in the middle of another series of Strictly Come Dancing with all its sweat, sparkle and controversy and I have been thinking about how this relates to the world of training, coaching and learning.

Firstly I must confess to my addiction to both the show and to the pursuit of ballroom and Latin dancing! I spent most of my childhood being carted around in the back of various parent’s cars surrounded by yards of netting and chiffon to any number of weekend competitions and events – luckily the dresses are rather smaller and softer these days and I can drive myself. I returned to dancing two years ago, it felt almost as if I’d never left the world of sequins. Since then have been making a study of ‘how dance teachers teach’ and what dancing can teach us about learning and managing people in the workplace.

Strictly is a great ‘case study in learning’. This kind of dance is complex to learn – it must be correct technically (heels and toes in the right places), you must be in time with the music (a different dance every week with different timing to boot), you must move your feet to the right position and then use the arms attractively. Of course there’s the head and smile to consider and finally the frame – especially challenging for the male celebrities who have to lead their partners. It’s a set of skills that take most people years to master yet for some reason we expect perfection in just a few short weeks.

The dance professionals (the pros) seem to do a great job overall however they apply different approaches to their teaching. We witness some showing 100% support and confidence in their celebrities from day one; others show their frustration and sometimes despair at the lack of progress or aptitude of their celebrity partners. Some follow a softly-softly one week, with tough love the next week whilst always showing their solidarity on screen on Saturday night in a bid to get those votes!

When the training starts the pro has all the power, the knowledge and the skills to teach their apprentice. They quickly assess their potential and then attempt to build on the early emerging strengths whether they are an innate ability to spin confidently without falling over or a comic personality that can carry the dance and win over the voting public.

Each week there is a goal – a new dance, to perfect within a tight timescale and there is always the fear of the dreaded ‘dance off’ and eviction from the ‘Strictly Family’ where bonds grow fast in this shared experience.

This links neatly with the ‘GROW model of coaching’. G = Goal (the dance), R = Reality – the Monday morning assessment of skills for that dance and what can be realistically achieved in the rehearsal time available, O Options – what choreography will work best with the music to win votes, W = Will – the commitment to training, the desire to do well and not be in the dance off!

As their celebrity experiences their ‘journey’, their skills develop, their confidence increases and the pros let them have some say in their chorography, allowing them input, engaging them more as an equal partner moving from a predominately mentoring role into a more coaching role.

Finally we come to feedback and the judges! Confusingly for the celebrities each judge may have a different perspective or opinion on the performance to say nothing of their attitude! The dancers might hear anything from “you’ve really nailed it this week” to “that was a dance only a mother could love!”

Those of us in the world of learning are all too familiar with the Rules of Giving Constructive Feedback….. (it should be honest, positive, specific, relate only to things that can be changed etc) however I suspect that the judges may not have read these rules plus they have an additional brief to be entertaining to the huge Saturday night audience where viewing figures really count.

This week judge Craig told one celebrity that she looked like a bush kangaroo when she did her Viennese Waltz…. what impact do you think that will have on her performance this Saturday? I can’t wait to find out can you?

Julia Miles

I was delighted when my long term coaching colleague, Jackie Arnold, asked me if I would write a case study for her new book “Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace” How to motivate and get the best from your staff.

We have worked together for many years and the book is closely linked to projects we have undertaken which use the ILM Coaching and Mentoring qualifications to assist organisations to develop a ‘coaching culture’.

I wrote a case study for the book based on Kent County Council, one of our many clients who have fully embraced coaching. More than 135 Staff at the Council have already achieved their ILM Coaching and Mentoring qualifications and as a result they are reaping the rewards from implementing a consistent approach towards coaching throughout the organisation.

This book provides guidance on the requirements for the Institute of Leadership and Management coaching and mentoring qualifications levels 5 and 7. It supports leaders who would like to add formal coaching skills to those used as an integral part of a leadership or management role.

It will increase your awareness and understanding of how you interact with your peers and direct reports and will support you in developing and encouraging the growth of your staff so that you can get on with your own essential leadership role.

To find our more about the book and how to order see our “Key recommendation” on our recommended reading page.

I welcome any feedback you might have once you have read it.

Julia Miles

So here we are – launch day has arrived and we are very proud to announce that our Online Learning Portal - QEDLearning (www.qedlearning.co.uk) is now live.

As well as providing an enhanced version of our popular ILM Level 5 Coaching and Mentoring Online Knowledge Module, previously validated by the Institute for Leadership and Management, QED Learning also introduces a variety of NEW e-learning opportunities to suit businesses and individuals.

The ILM Level 3 Coaching Module will follow shortly and we will also being adding modules covering the topics most requested by clients such as Time Management and Training Skills. In addition to these subjects QED will be offering a bespoke e-learning service and welcome enquiries from all organisations who wish to provide specific topics into online format.

QED’s e-learning programmes offer access to learning at a time and place to suit learners and employers. QEDLearning is a cost-effective, vocationally relevant learning solution which we know will be a popular option for both groups and individuals with many benefits and real flexibility.

QEDLearning has additional features offering members of the learning community the opportunity to share ideas and discuss topical issues through dedicated topic related forums.

Take advantage of our downloads, including Free Top Tips on business issues and start interacting with other like minded individuals on our Learning Community Forum by registering your details today at www.qedlearning.co.uk

Julia

It’s now just 8 days before the launch of QED’s new Online Learning Portal. Make a note in your diary for Tuesday 30th June and take a look at www.qedlearning .co.uk

Join QED’s learning community and take advantage of our free top tips on “Improving Your Time Management” and “How to Select the Right Coach”. You can also benefit from sharing your ideas/knoweldge with others.

We decided it was time to develop our own Online Learning Portal to give our customers a more up-to-date and improved service.

QEDLearning will be launched later this month and is designed to help both our individual and business customers to achieve their goals for development in a cost-effective and flexible way.

E-Learning

Our first foray into e-learning was over 4 years ago when we successfully developed and received ILM validation for our ‘ILM Level 5 Coaching & Mentoring Online Knowledge Base Module’. The first to benefit from our new improved Level 5 online module will be our own customers as well as other ILM centres. This will shortly be followed by our new ILM Level 3 Coaching knowledge base.

As well as providing a growing number of e-learning programmes QEDLearning will be a wider resource. We’ll be inviting you to join our learning community where you will find interesting ideas, articles and information and be able to share your thoughts with us and others.

We plan to introduce a number of short e-learning courses (topics such as time management and training skills) over the coming months and we will also be responding to requests from our customers – so if you have any topics that you would like covered by e-learning please tell us by emailing us at mail@qedcoaching.co.uk

We are very excited about the launch of QEDLearning at the end of this month and promise to keep you posted with all new topics and resources that we add to our online learning portal.

Julia Miles.

This is a really positive article for all of us who know the benefits of coaching in all it’s many forms. The article highlights the importance of a) continuing to develop people during the downturn and b) the potential use of coaching as an extremely cost-effective tool in a time of reduced budgets.

Julia Miles
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Has the coaching bubble burst?

As more coaches than ever before join the profession, can it sustain them with enough work? Verity Gough discovers that, despite severe training cutbacks, coaching is thriving, even if there’s a little creative accounting going on….
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Coaching has certainly seen a rise in popularity over recent years. Not only have companies been quick to realise the benefits of executive coaching, but many are now embracing the power of coaching to improve and up-skill their employees across the board.

However, as the recession worsens, it is hard to ignore the alarming press reports which all point to a mass cull in training budgets across the UK. In January the Guardian printed a story
which stated that half of the training managers polled in 100 large companies including Xerox, Siemens, the NHS, Deutsche Bank, WHSmith, Barclays and Oracle said their budgets had been or will be cut, with barely a third expecting them to come through 2009 unscathed, and just 16% expecting their budgets to increase during the downturn.

“Senior managers know that right now they need the sort of help that coaching can offer even more than 15 months ago if they are to retain their confidence, performance and presence as effective leaders.” John Blakey, International Coaching Federation

Furthermore, over half of the managers questioned expected to reduce off-site training and similarly, the type of training most likely to be in demand has reportedly shifted from traditional classroom-based learning towards blended learning. So where does that leave coaching?
Alive and kicking

Despite the scaremongering, it appears that coaching is undergoing something of a rebirth. Buffy Sparks is the training and development manager at Npower. She emphasises the need for training to continue amidst the downturn: “We have made a promise to our key stakeholders that we will continue developing our sales training programmes and induction programmes, and off the back of those, our trainers will then go out and conduct one-to-one coaching sessions with advisers and also with the team managers in the field,” she enthuses. “This is something we are actually increasing this year.”

Sparks also plans to continue using an external coaching company, Fruitful Development, to impart sales management training: “It’s not something that we are cutting back on at all,” she says. “Even during the recession, it’s something that we absolutely feel has a huge impact within our business and the work that Fruitful do also encourages us to look at our own coaching – to further develop it and not get complacent.”

John Blakey, managing director of coaching company, 121partners and president-elect of the UK International Coach Federation, agrees: “What we are finding is that business decision makers still have faith in the value of coaching despite the current challenging times,” he says. “In fact, they are looking for ever more ‘creative’ ways to ensure that their investment in coaching is preserved amidst aggressive budget cuts.”

“If we mix up long-term training - as in workshops, training sessions, presentations - and we intersperse coaching within that to carry on the learning after that workshop has happened, this is where businesses are really going to start seeing the benefits of coaching more” Buffy Sparks, NPower

Interestingly, Blakey has also noted a trend surfacing as a consequence of restricted training budgets - requests for the word ‘training’ not to be spelt out when it comes to invoicing. He explains:

“A managing director of a FTSE250 client of ours recently asked that we go ahead with a major coaching programme but requested that we avoid using the word ‘training’ in any of our invoicing in order that we would not fall foul of a training budget freeze. Another senior leader in a FTSE100 organisation managed to secure a significant coaching budget for him and his team despite the Learning and Development function having suspended all investments in this area some time ago.”

And this is being witnessed elsewhere. The Coaching Academy has also seen an unprecedented rise in the number of people expressing an interest in becoming a coach. “We have exceeded all records,” says managing director and coach, Bev James. “Certainly the interest has doubled since January this year and interestingly, a lot of that seems to be people themselves going through transition who are looking at coaching as an option for a career,” she says.

James believes that the interest has been sparked by a lack of job security coupled with the flexibility that a coaching career offers: “Even if they are in a full-time job they seem to want to train to be a coach so they have a part-time income, so if anything did happen they could perhaps jump into it,” she explains. “We have also seen a rise in people wanting to coach full time and there are also those situations where one of the partners stays at home. They are training to up-skill so they can bring in money as a lot of coaching is done over the telephone - this allows the partner in the household to bring in another income,” she adds.

While this is positive news for trainers, it begs the question, is there still an availability of work for existing coaches, as well as the newly qualified? If the headlines are to be believed, training managers the length and breadth of the country are cutting their budgets back by dramatic proportions. “Senior managers know that right now they need the sort of help that coaching can offer even more than 15 months ago if they are to retain their confidence, performance and presence as effective leaders. What they need is for their HR departments to also ‘keep the faith’ and be equally creative and determined to secure and retain budgets for this type of work,” says Blakey.

“We have exceeded all records - the interest has doubled since January this year and a lot of that seems to be people going through transition who are looking at coaching as an option for a career” Bev James, The Coaching Academy

Coaching evolution

With a sea change for coaching on the cards, what type of training can coaches expect to be imparting over the coming year? Is it a time for short, sharp coaching or an opportunity for long-term planning? “I think it is a mixture of both,” says Sparks. “If we mix up long-term training - as in workshops, training sessions, presentations - and we intersperse coaching within that to carry on the learning after that workshop has happened, this is where businesses are really going to start seeing the benefits of coaching more,” she says.
James also has seen evidence that coaches training requests have shifted: “I sent out an email to all our coaches about this and what we found was there was an increasing interest in change management coaching, redundancy coaching, restructuring for those companies that have merged, where as a few years ago the focus was on succession planning courses, expansion support,” she says.

Similarly, coach and founder of leadership development course provider, Be Your Own Guru, Olivia Stefanino has also noticed a change in coaching requests: “I have had a number of coaches coming to me to coach them in how to do their marketing and branding, how to create products and in a way being more commercial – they know that they are good and what they do works for the client but also they need to set themselves apart from the competition,” she says.

Stefanino believes that the recession will help coaching as an industry as it will sort the wheat from the chaff, ousting the poor performers and allowing good coaches to flourish.
It appears now is the time for coaching to come into its own, for coaches to be savvy about how they market themselves and ensure that they can offer clients a good return on investment. This could involve retraining to ensure they offer the right mix of training opportunities for clients or expanding their reach into the public sector and look for opportunities to work with government agencies to help retrain those affected by unemployment.

As Olivia Stefanino says: “Now it’s about being very good at what you do so what the recession will do is weed out the coaches that do little for their clients apart from ask a few set questions – they are the ones that will go to the wall, and the others will get the business – it’s a kind of evolution.

A place has become available on our next open programme for the ILM level 5 Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring in Management.

Programme commences on Wednesday 1st April 09.
(Venue - Gatwick, Sussex
Dates for days 2 and 3 will be agreed by the group on day 1.

This programme is an ideal opportunity for individuals to attain a recognised coaching accreditation.
Our unique blended learning programme consists of: Classroom training and online learning.

3 days in the classroom
Online learning module with tasks to complete
One-to-one tutorials throughout programme
Buddy coaching activities
Course materials and course book
Assessment, verification and certification

Inclusive costs are £1375 plus VAT per candidate.

Dont delay. To reserve your place please email us today at mail@qedcoaching.co.uk or call us on free phone 0800 093 8419.

You may also be eligible for up to £1000 per person through the “Leadership and Management Grant” package for small buisnesses. Call us NOW and we will put you in touch with your local Skills Broker at Train to Gain SE.

I enjoyed reading this article on Coaching in Challenging Times. Those of us who work in the coaching profession do need to see what we do in the context of the current situations the clients we work are undergoing and the wider employment climate which is changing rapidly.

Julia Miles

We can sometimes forget that executive coaching is a young profession. The International Coach Federation, the largest global coaching body, was formed in the US in 1995. What is more, executive coaches have crafted their skills amidst a climate of strong economic growth, full employment and adventurous risk taking. John Blakey questions how the current economic downturn will shape the profession’s next stage of development.
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In the ‘me, me, me’ and the ‘more, more, more’ business culture of the past 10 years, executive coaches often found themselves working with ‘high potentials’ and senior leaders to focus on personal career visions, personal leadership skills and personal goals. It was all very ‘personal’.

Organisational buyers were happy because one of their key challenges was to attract and retain top talent. The principle of ‘following the coachee’s agenda’ in a confidential setting became paramount. At its best, this did create openness, trust and facilitated self awareness. However, at its worst, this environment tempted all parties into self-interest, collusion and the accommodation of coachee prejudices at the expense of the wider organisational system. In some situations, as coaching sessions departed from their original business intent, there was a lurch into indulgent self pre-occupation and a worrying lack of accountability.

Still, it is easy to be righteous in hindsight. The real value, now that we know what we know, lies in adapting and learning quickly, taking what has worked and building upon it a new layer of experience and expertise that will allow executive coaching to remain a robust and transformative tool in more challenging times. What then is the nature of these ‘challenging times’? Well, we can expect ‘risk’ to be replaced by ‘responsibility’ in the lexicon of leadership values. We can expect ‘us, us, us’ to replace ‘me, me, me’ as our collective dependency on the wider economic and environmental agendas overtakes our self interest. And we can expect that organisational buyers will shift focus from attracting and retaining talent towards improving the performance and productivity of the grateful survivors of widespread redundancy programmes.
Over time, the impact of these factors on coaching best practice will be significant.

The first ’sacred cow’ to fall is likely to be ‘following the coachee’s agenda’. Replacing the personal perspective with the systems perspective will enable executive coaching to serve the collective as well as the individual agenda. In practice, this will require a much more thorough contracting process throughout a coaching assignment in which HR and line management are more visibly involved. The ethic of ‘confidentiality’ will become less ‘black and white’ as this shift takes place requiring sensitive negotiation with all stakeholders.

With the emphasis on performance improvement, there will be no place for coaches to collude with the client or accommodate ‘blind spots’ in order to avoid difficult conversations. The current International Coach Federation (ICF) competencies that focus upon accountability and feedback will come to the fore and play a much bigger role in the typical coaching discussion. These ‘tough love’ aspects of coaching have always been present but were too easily brushed aside amidst the boom. How many times have we coaches let our clients ‘off the hook’ rather than hold them accountable? How many times have we not delivered honest, direct feedback when behaviours, actions and words were out of sync?

Another skill that has always been featured in the coaching text books but more rarely observed ‘in the field’ is that of ‘challenge’. The very word itself is enough to send a shiver down the spine of a profession that has yet to work out how to confront assertively whilst still ’staying friends’ with the people who are paying the bill. And yet how many of us can remember people we respected, and even loved, who had the courage to challenge us hard. Yes, it hurt at the time but, if delivered from a foundation of trust and humility, it struck home and accelerated our development in a way no amount of encouragement and positive feedback could have achieved.

With a wider systems perspective, feedback, challenge and accountability playing a larger role, we can also expect that the level of tension in a coaching relationship is likely to rise. Tension, like any energy, can have a constructive or destructive presence in a relationship. The challenge for executive coaches will be to work with tension constructively to make it ‘healthy tension’. Being able to ‘hold the tension’ will be akin to ‘holding the silence’ in a coaching conversation. Just as with silence, there is a temptation to feel uncomfortable in the presence of tension, to take responsibility for it and to seek to remove it as quickly as possible. In so doing, we might be denying the client a valuable opportunity to transform the tension into insight and action.

In summary, ‘the times they are a-changing’ and coaching will be ‘a-changing’ too. This young profession will face a different environment and will adapt quickly to reach a new level of maturity. In so doing, many of the ‘tough love’ skills will play a much larger role in the typical coaching conversation:-

• Feedback
• Accountability
• Challenge
• Tension
• Systems Perspective

For those who like a memorable acronym then these words, in a certain order, spell out the word ‘FACTS’. You could say that for coaches and our clients it is now time to face the facts and to not shy away from these important aspects of the coaching role.

John Blakey-managing director of leadership transformation consultancy

This article on the training zone website gives some great ideas about how businesses and organisations can make the best of their training budget. Too often evaluation is weak and this is an ideal time to really look at the results of training being undertaken, to develop inner resources, for example training your managers to coach their staff properly, and to consider a broader range of media to facilitate learning opportunities.

Julia Miles

Dealing with a credit crunched training budget

In difficult times, there are certain budgets that tend to get squeezed first, and training is often one of them. But after speaking with a number of training managers and consultants, Christiana Tollast finds that where there’s a will, there is most certainly a way.

“Firstly, pool your resources: nine borough councils in Sussex have formed their own training consortium and created a highly sophisticated programme of jointly-funded learning programmes. My own organisation, Breast Cancer Care, is a member of the Charity Learning Consortium, a group of over 20 charities who have pooled their resources in order to purchase elearning tools at a reduced rate.

“Secondly, now more than ever, organisations need to get serious about internally delivered learning. This requires changes to the very structure of an organisation, building a requirement to pass on skills and knowledge into job descriptions, work practices and strategic objectives. Only then will employees feel empowered and enabled to make the time needed to share their learning.”
Alex Dawson Learning & Development manager at Breast Cancer Care

“There should be no automatic assumption that a recession has to mean a budget cut - all training spend should be justified in both good times and bad. I have always advised that training spend is categorised into three boxes: ‘must have’, ‘added value’ and ‘nice to have.’ If anything has to go it should be the ‘nice-to-haves’ first while box one must always be protected.”
Paul Kearns, evaluation expert

“Crude approaches to cutting back can make you less cost effective – making it a double whammy. As far as possible make the biggest cuts against your lowest priorities. Tell the board precisely what they will lose for a saving of £X, and even offer to save them more if they are prepared to lose priority Y. Clearly identifying the consequences of potential cuts usually leads to more rational decisions. Simply cutting 25% off everything is absolutely the worst approach. Don’t do it!

“Lastly, it is learning that delivers benefits and training that costs money. It is vital to lever the absolute maximum out of the learning – to ensure that training is a value for money investment not an overhead. We exist to get the right learning to the right people to achieve the right effect. Doing it cost efficiently and effectively should be in our DNA and not just a consequence of the credit crunch.”
Graham O’Connell, consultant, the National School of Government

“Tie in what you do very closely to business needs - I attend operational meetings and even complaint meetings so I know what the issues are. This allows me to be seen to be making positive suggestions and offering help. It’s really a matter of looking for every opportunity to add value.”
Josie Roberts, training manager

“Be clear on what elements of training you offer give the greatest payback and make them available - and that may not be financial payback, but that which is most closely aligned to your key purpose or challenge - for the RNLI it would be operational training for lifeboat crew so that they have the skills to save lives at sea.

“Question whether you need to use consultants - some of the best training-related outcomes I have seen have been achieved through working groups of volunteer employees - they invariably know what the organisation really needs and put it in the right language with the right tone. That way you deliver what’s required and generate buy-in through the working group members who act as natural ambassadors.”
Geraldine Grainger, college principal/head of training, Royal National Lifeboat Institution

“Perversely, the credit crunch might have a benefit in pushing organisations to make more creative use of their internal resource. I think training managers will focus more on the ‘enabling’ skills in their organisations; for example, coaching, mentoring, shadowing and action learning.

“In tough times everyone becomes painfully aware of the cost of activity, but they forget about the cost of inactivity. Helping staff to develop builds confidence and commitment, which could have a beneficial effect on business for the future. That said, cutting back on learning activities is an instinctive response based on immediate financial realities, so finance directors often win the day.”
Colin Boxer, learning and development manager, Children’s Hospice Association Scotland

“Developing skills and motivating staff to perform comes at a cost, but a recession is about making sensible cutbacks, not wholesale budget reductions. Organisations need to invest in critical development areas to ensure as much impact as possible is made.”
Jo Causon, director of marketing and corporate affairs at the Chartered Management Institute

Ten ways for training managers to beat budget cuts

1. Jump before you are pushed: review all your programmes for the contribution they are making to current business or organisational goals and cull those that are not doing enough.

2. Make the case for each and every programme based on how it will help the bottom line and contribute to organisational goals.

3. Put elements of the programme online - enabling wider penetration at lower cost.

4. Which face-to-face seminars can easily become webinars? Prepare the staff delivering online so the experience is at least as good as what is being replaced, at a fraction of the cost.

5. Before you present your case to the board, rehearse it with a group of friendly staff outside the L & D function. If it makes no sense to them, it won’t make it at executive board level.

6. Mind your language! Cut out learning jargon; add in the language your organisation uses.

7. Have a fall-back plan. Work out what the absolute minimum resources you need.

8. Network: Grab colleagues in other organisations and pool ideas. Most people are in the same boat.

9. Start more focused evaluation based on what the programme contributes to helping the organisation survive.

10. Have a glass of wine and imagine what you will achieve when you are back on a growth curve two years into the future when most of this decline will have passed. This might not help much in the current circumstances, but you will feel a lot better!

I was very interested to read the following article, on the training zone website, on E Learning which has provoked a massive response from professionals in the field of learning and training. We at QED have been using online learning very successfully as part of our ‘blended learning’ programmes for some time so I agreed with many of the views given.

As with all things ‘it’s not what you do but how you do it’ and E Learning must be used appropriately and with the relevant support in place to help learners make the best of the opportunity.

Julia Miles

See this link for other responses to this article.
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=194343&d=680&h=608&f=626&dateformat=%25e-%25h-%25y
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The elearning diet: Not recommended for long term results

Like the Atkins diet, numerous boybands and the dot com bubble, is elearning no more than just a passing fad? Rob Chapman pulls no punches in this outspoken opinion piece about the fate of the elearning industry.
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The nature of fads is that they generate millions of devotees, deliver results for a short period and then suddenly fail – leaving fans dejected and disenchanted. The Atkins diet, numerous manufactured boybands, even the dot com bubble have all fallen by the wayside. Now it’s the turn of elearning to join the fads of the past as it crash-lands straight into the graveyard of training practises.

But why? In order to assess its downfall, we need to take a step back. In the late 1990s, elearning was the darling of the training market. Loved by employees for its flexibility and finance directors for its low cost, it was the perfect way to learn that suited everyone, with no drawbacks.

“Elearning is a classic example of the readiness with which people are ready to disregard received wisdom. We know that the more contact we have with our teachers the better we learn.”

The major selling point for employees was the ultimate flexibility offered by an online course. You can choose where and when you study, and at whatever pace you like. Indeed, this is an attraction for businesses as training can suddenly be squeezed into lunchbreaks to make the best use of employees’ time. A win-win situation all round, surely?
Learning or cramming?

But should learning be crammed into snatches of time, dragged out over months and cut off from the classroom? Is a student connected to an ISP or a webcam more likely to succeed than one connected to an experienced instructor?

The truth is, these skills are ultimately what are going to make or break your career. Do you really want to wait for a year or more before you can become certified? Are you really going to retain facts and figures crammed in between a half-eaten sandwich and a quick flick through a tabloid? Without the structure provided by a timetable of classes and the motivation generated by an examination date, it’s all too easy to put training at the bottom of the To Do list.

This is particularly true for IT employees, who are often at the beck and call of colleagues struggling with hard drive crashes, user permission problems and email delay. Ironically, it is training that will enable the IT team to provide the office with a better service, but try explaining this to the person who has to reconnect to the WLAN now.

The importance of verbal & visual clues
Another factor to consider is the benefit of learning in the classroom in close contact with an instructor. Humans are designed to learn from one another using both verbal and visual clues to process and retain new information. Discussions and Q&A sessions will often stoke up new insights into subjects, and may turn up the explanation needed for students to grasp a new concept. On the other side of the desk, instructors look for visual clues to confirm that students have understood what they’ve been taught. A wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, or a glazed expression can instantly indicate that further explanation on a topic is needed – how easy is it to detect a change in facial expression when you’re looking at a dozen or more webcams on your screen?

“Instructors look for visual clues to confirm that students have understood what they’ve been taught. A wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, or a glazed expression can instantly indicate that further explanation on a topic is needed – how easy is it to detect a change in facial expression when you’re looking at a dozen or more webcams on your screen?”

Elearning is a classic example of the readiness with which people are ready to disregard received wisdom. We know that the more contact we have with our teachers the better we learn. Just look at the concern surrounding growing classroom sizes. Equally important is the amount of contact students have with their peers. Learning in groups is not just socially more enjoyable, it is a proven source of motivation. Working towards a common goal, sharing tips on revision and simply offering encouragement: none of these factors should be overlooked.
The true cost of elearning?

Despite the obvious advantages of this learning environment, elearning advocates retain one vital piece of ammunition: price. The myth remains that learning online is the best option for tight budgets. Not necessarily so. Granted, the cost of an online course will always beat the instructor-led equivalent hands down, but what about the true cost of elearning?
Though elearning often appears to be a cheap option, the total cost needs to factor in the number of paid hours spent out of the office and the time it takes to put the new skills into practice. Elearning courses can be completed over a long period of time, so there’s no real incentive to complete them quickly. This is only going to lead to IT managers having to wait far longer for their staff to be trained up on new technology, and in some cases, have to send staff straight back out to retrain, because their skills have been outdated by the next wave of technology.

Perhaps most worrying is the potential threat to business posed by inadequate, outdated or absent skills. You only have to read the headlines in the IT press to appreciate the value of a network manager fully trained to protect company data. Viruses, hackers and DOS attacks are all examples of threats best countered with expertise, yet many companies wait over a year to acquire it.

At its inception, elearning was hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. However, just like the Atkins diet, former devotees are now hankering for something substantial and better balanced that will satisfy their appetite for learning – not just a quick fix.

Rob Chapman, Firebrand Training.