Pieter Nel

Learning – To be or not to be 

Shakespeare coined the phrase: "To be or not to be" in the play Hamlet. I believe the phrase applies to learning as well. In the past two weeks, I have had a significant number of client meetings and one area stood out particularly. "Please help us! This online rabbit hole that we went down is not paying off."

The more you unpack this statement with clients, the more you realize that it's not necessarily the fault of the eLearning tool that they have acquired.

Rather, it has to do with the buzzwords that they have bought. “This e-Learning tool has AI built in and will guide students to just receive what they need to learn,” or “Self-Directed Learning is the answer to all problems,” and a multitude of other buzzword-enriched sentences. 

What then is the answer?

Must they just throw e-Learning out? The answer is a resounding NO! The approach, however, needs some rethinking. I have added a few ideas below: 

  • How do you use international benchmarking to quantify your specific need?
  • How do you measure current skills – and this must not be done with yet another piece of technology – how do you measure current versus required skills within the e-Learning tool that you bought?
  • What about making the exercise of measuring current skills a fun competition within your company? 
  • What if you provide a learning experience enriched by real human contact – this can be accomplished by adding Subject Matter sessions and proper discussion groups. I say proper because it has to be well-defined and well-designed discussion groups. 
  • What if you have well-designed skills challenges at regular intervals?
  • What if you could provide access to environments where students can practice? 
  • What if you structure learning journeys for core skills across the disciplines of Behavioral (Human) Leadership and Technical skills? 
  • Are you currently measuring the skills gain at regular intervals to determine corrective action? We know that everyone does not learn at the same pace. 
  • Lastly, what if you do not limit what people can learn?

Have the need to discuss these questions in more detail? Contact me or wait for the next article in the series about ensuring that learning is a "to be" rather than a "not to be."

The LRMG group of companies specialises in igniting the high performance of people. We have a 25-year track record in partnering with high-consequence industries.

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