The ‘New’ Learning
It’s been said that, “The ability to learn faster than your competitor is your only sustainable competitive advantage.”
But ‘learning’ has come under the knife in recent years. Many conferences and face-to-face sales training events have been replaced by less costly and less time consuming virtual learning events.
As a trainer myself, I personally prefer virtual events to live on-location events. Why? They are much less costly in terms of down time for travel in airports and hotels, and frankly, all hotels and airports start to smell the same after a while.
I can also squeeze a lot more live virtual training events into a six day week than in-person on-location events.
But I also recognize the difference in companies that have ‘training’ as an expedient budget line versus training as a strategy to stay ahead of their competition.
In the training world, there are basically two learning models; Inductive Learning and Deductive Learning.
In the Deductive or ‘direct instruction’ model, information and knowledge is passed from teacher to student through telling, showing, reading or lecturing usually in a seminar-style setting or webinar.
The Inductive Learning model or ‘guided discovery’ model,is an inquiry-based method where the teacher creates a motivational environment that generates creative problem solving situations.
In this workshop environment, students draw on their experience and existing knowledge to debate and discover facts, relationships and new truths through interaction with their peers and creative thinking.
Workshops require skilled facilitators who can read and interact with the participants and manoeuvre through the various experience and interest levels to motivate ‘take-home’ learning.
There is no doubt that students who discover the answers in a workshop with their peers, take ownership of their answers and use what they’ve learned in a more sustainable fashion than those who have had to listen to the instructions of others.
Online seminars/webinars, are more efficient than hands-on workshops. But efficiency and effectiveness are not synonymous terms.
If companies are serious about sustainable learning as their competitive advantage, I guess I’ll have to keep smelling airports and hotel rooms.
Randy’s
What If you had a hybrid learning solution, with a combination of live face-to-face workshops and ongoing webinars to keep new concepts relevant and sustainable?
And, what if training was not an expense, but rather a guaranteed investment? ENS Media Inc. guarantees a minimum ten to one return on all of our workshops in new and lift business or we refund your investment in full!!