Suddenly, management became interested in digital self-education ...
Below the cut are brief summaries of the current situation and forecasts from those who have been teaching for a long time both online and offline. We invite you to look at the situation from different continents in order to assess which of what is happening is temporary and which is the new norm.
Author Ryan Tracy has been in the L&D industry for over 20 years and has a popular online learning blog. Recently, he asked his colleagues from different countries to summarize the first results of the sudden transition of all educational processes to online, as well as give predictions for the future.
We came to the idea of making a translation of this article when we studied our own statistics. It can be seen that in recent months the number of online events on the platform has grown by more than five times, while offline events have decreased by about seven.
In general, the number of events has decreased markedly. The main reason is that not all formats can be transferred online, and we have more than three dozen of them , and not all organizers are ready to hold meetings online.
The overall attendance of the events also decreased predictably. At the same time, the level of online events this summer, as well as their attendance, are at the level of "offline" last August.
Of course, there are many factors here. All University Points are closed until September 1st. The teams of the City Points themselves choose: either the events of 50 people and all security measures in person, or everything is online. Then we thought about which tendencies would stay with us and which ones would disappear along with the precautions, and decided to see what experts from other countries think. So back to Ryan and his colleagues.
Ryan Tracey, Australia
So, we were forced to switch to remote control. But the problem is that digital self-education hasn't become the norm. In contrast, the standard response to changing external circumstances has been to transform classics into webinars. I'm not against webinars per se, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the general tendency to blindly perpetuate old approaches in a different environment.
Like face-to-face training, webinars have their place. But I would like the massive isolation to lead to more and more creative solutions to the educational challenge.
It may be too early to draw conclusions. It has only been a few months since the start of the pandemic. All this time, the main task was to maintain the stability of the business. Perhaps the "new normal" is just one of the quick fixes to hold out, and it will change and diversify over time.
I would be interested to look ahead: what happens when the restrictions ease and everyone returns to the offices? Will we go back to our old processes? Or has the genie been released from the bottle?
No one can know the answer to this question for sure. So I relied on the wisdom of the crowd - I asked several L&D practitioners from around the world to answer the question: How will the COVID-2019 pandemic affect L&D in the long term?
Below are some answers.
Taruna Goel, Canada
I am interested in the effect of quarantine, social distancing and teleworking on a person's cognitive abilities, memory, learning and behavior. As much as technology helps us in the short term, we're already seeing the impact of too many synchronous video calls in the form of "Zoom fatigue."
The L&D industry needs to explore the challenges of teleworking and distance learning. Professional development in the workplace must be based on evidence-based research methods that address factors such as online distraction, laptop fatigue and changes in productivity, along with worker mental health, emotional well-being and stress levels in a post-pandemic technology-driven world.
If telecommuting is not the new norm in the long term, it will require new skills, attitudes and attitudes to fulfill its responsibilities. The L&D segment will have to take the lead in developing these skills, attitudes and mindsets. It is necessary to create channels for learning, growth, communication and exchange of knowledge, as well as help employees learn new ways to work effectively and efficiently.
This does not mean that we will need more virtual webinars and online video meetings. Instead, I hope that L&D will become the lead of the process and bring together a common experience that will allow employees to be more independent on the path of development.
Mike Taylor, USA
After we get through the pandemic, one of the important things from an L&D perspective is that we will try out a lot of new ideas. We really don't have a choice, do we?
One of the biggest changes should be the transition from the traditional static stock of knowledge (“course” way of thinking) to accounting for information flows. Courses are time-consuming, expensive, and most of them start to become obsolete during the creation phase.
Given the speed of development of the modern world and the shortening of the term of relevance of knowledge, we must allow business to constantly update it.This means that more attention needs to be paid to the supervision of experts. The experts themselves need to be helped to learn effective ways of delivering trainings that shake their knowledge. The rest will have to “learn to learn” and take responsibility for the process of managing their own knowledge.
Think of knowledge as a virus, i.e. we want them to spread as quickly (we wish the opposite for the viruses themselves). To do this, you need to expand distribution channels, help people talk about what they are learning. How can we use technology to put people in the digital space and help education go viral?
Instead of copying classroom lessons in an online environment, it should be taken as an opportunity to change our thinking, to see a wide range of alternatives. Now is the best time to use dedicated tools like Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Jive, and more to unlock knowledge locked in information vaults within a company. And this is just one of many paths. See what colleagues are doing for this. It's important to try new things, experiment with new, better ideas.
In our new world, learning is more important than ever before. As Jack Welch once said, "The ability of an organization to learn and quickly translate what is learned into action is its strongest competitive advantage."
Mayra Aixa Villar, Argentina
I am an optimistic and positive person, but I am afraid that COVID-2019 will stay with us for a long time. And it will greatly affect the processes of personal learning and development.
The challenge for L&D professionals is to think of more creative ways to help organizations and educational institutions make digital learning not only attractive but also more accessible to all as we adjust to the new standard.
We've always talked about creating a more fun online learning experience, but this time it's more than just a wish. Think of all the training courses that were previously delivered face-to-face and were designed in this format for a reason. These are courses that require practice or where close interaction with a mentor is absolutely essential for the successful completion of an assignment. Businesses and educational institutions need quick and creative solutions to teach online and effectively compensate for the lack of personal interaction between teachers and students.
We need to start thinking not only about traditional learning environments, but also about the conditions and characteristics of learners from different countries. Uploading documents to a webinar platform is not a solution. L&D professionals must be more careful than ever before the constraints students may encounter. They may not have access to the Internet or a computer, and they may feel uncomfortable using technology. Regardless, we must offer educational resources to those children, adolescents and adults who will not be able to attend face-to-face classes.
I think L&D professionals will need to consider changing content delivery methods to make education more effective, engaging and accessible to everyone.
Ger Driesen, Netherlands
I think the impact won't be that big in the long run. The COVID-2019 crisis will be “just a shake-up” in history. It will have a big impact on the minds of those who have had a hard time and will become a "generation marker". It will be a big event ("Do you remember 2020?") That we will be talking about for years. But on the practical side, the pandemic will have little impact on L&D.
First, as we see now, there will be a push towards online learning. At the current stage of general panic, we are adopting online tools that are good enough at the moment, but not suitable for long-term work. Those L&D professionals who have prepared ahead of time (who have already experimented with online learning) will benefit from the current situation.
L&D material that has been moved online will remain here. Companies and students who hesitated will have a positive experience and realize that it is more practical and efficient to do online learning (and will want to continue it).
Of course, we are also in for a rebound to conventional educational processes. People were, are and will be social beings, they will always appreciate real meetings. My prediction (for about two years) is that "old school face-to-face training" will be trending in the near future.
All this will help us to more clearly distinguish which L&D materials are needed on the Internet, and which part of the training is better left in a face-to-face format. Over time, we will find optimal, well-thought-out “mixes” of approaches.
And one more remark. Life slowed down for many during the crisis. These periods are usually good for learning. I hope that slowing down becomes one of the usual elements of L&D.
Belen Casado, Spain
I think pros in the future will try to work from home and take courses with tools like Zoom.
During the COVID-2019 pandemic, I saw that people appreciate being able to communicate with each other. Therefore, students value interaction with both their teachers and peers. This does not happen in a regular click-and-read course, which is why it always leaves a lot of questions.
Students also appreciate being able to see their teachers live, even if the image quality is poor, with their own apartment in the background. In contrast, in the past, we spent a lot of money creating professional instructional videos that were not as attractive because they were made by actors who were just reading their text.
Click-and-read courses are boring because learners need to see “live” people who motivate them to attend. In a sense, in this format, they feel "seen".
So if we want to be successful in the new eLearning world, I think we need to add more live interaction, especially with the students at the center of these communications, including through video assignments or webinars.
Gautam Ghosh, India
There are two aspects.
First, in the broader business context, most companies are struggling to survive, so many traditional long-term training activities have been suspended, especially those that are personally implemented and cost a lot of money. This leads to the development of content delivery over the Internet. However, in the short term, this can lead to a deterioration in the quality of training, especially if the organizer is new to online and is trying to reproduce the face-to-face model here.
Second, I hope that in the long term, L&D functions are more integrated into the employee and business development path. Many employees are self-educating and preparing career take-offs, and L&D needs to talk about how to build a community of learners within or outside organizational boundaries.
Ryan Tracy again
I agree with colleagues that the short-term response to the COVID-2019 pandemic was more reflexive. But this is understandable. The finished instrument is better than the ideal hypothetical one. It makes sense to leverage existing tools (such as a webinar platform) to meet urgent educational needs.
I also agree with the opinion of my colleagues that the thoughtfulness of our services will evolve. To remain effective, educational solutions must become more accessible, replicable, integrated, social, interactive and self-navigating. It's important to recognize that the challenges of distance learning won't go away when we get back to the office. Although we will put private lessons back on the agenda, we will still need to serve part of the class remotely.
Thus, in this human tragedy, a glimmer of good may appear - a provocation to change the education system, its development for the better.