By Mark Phelps
It’s a fluency we didn’t know we needed a year ago, but now learning professionals utter terms—like virtual breakout rooms, VOIP and annotation tools—that weren’t in our vocabulary before travel budgets were frozen leaving people sometimes hundreds of miles away from training locations.
For example, are you fluent enough to achieve the same learning success that people receive when they’re gathered in a classroom, face-to-face with the instructor and held accountable by their peers? If not, you are probably trapped in a deep hole, created by typical webinars and their ilk, where lackluster learners demonstrate ingrained bad habits of multi-tasking and half listening.
Virtual learning can be successful if we create a total break from the world of lecture-heavy sessions and instead employ learning methods and engaging facilitation, regardless of whether the classroom walls are brick and mortar or bits and bytes. Great content, delivered by engaging facilitators, will keep learners engaged.
Even when learners are separated by rivers—or oceans—we can foster the social connections that come naturally in a traditional classroom and create a genuine learning environment.
Mark Phelps is a practice leader and manager for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
This is a significant contribution to the leadership development "tool box." In this current economy a virtual delivery system allows the needed training to be accessible anywhere. This builds on the distance learning models being used in higher education on a global platform. I appreciate the commitment to learning models that reflect an active approach to adult learning styles. I look forward to learning about the modules that DDI will offer.
Dick Daniels
CEO, The Leadership Development Group
Adjunct Professor in Organizational Leadership
dickd@mark1.org
Posted by: Dick Daniels | 12/04/2009 at 08:23 AM