SD: The type of training I was most familiar with throughout my corporate life was digital training. Who of us hasn’t clicked through 45 screens of bad dialogue and corny case studies just to end up at a 10 question “Test your knowledge” screen? In my previous job, I had to do about three of these a quarter.
Yes, they have their place. When the corporations need to be able to say they have trained thousands of employees to not do things like embezzling, defrauding, or harassing I guess this the way to go. But personally, I found myself skimming them for the test answers. Overall they felt like a poor use of my time. I’m never going to bribe a foreign official, and I sure don’t need a computer program to tell me it’s wrong to do.
Of course, I’ve been to many instructor-led classes. Most of these were offered in a classroom setting, employing a didactic lecture style. There was very little personal interaction, and there was even less of an emotional connection between the presentation and the students. When I needed to have some technical training back in my IT days, I sat through many programing language and software package presentations.
I found the most important part of those classes was the ability to ask questions and get support where I got stuck. At the end of the day, most of the classes weren’t much better than a web page with a good discussion group. Yet, this remains the dominant type of training class available in corporate America and at trade shows.
I want ImprovThis! to be part of the change where we move away from this style of teaching.
