Web Based Training (Is it coming or going?)
(It’s probably not the next big thing (it’s actually definitely not), and it’s probably not “gone”)
Just a few comments on the issue of web based training.. First the quest to use technology in place of or to reduce human intervention in learning (and other areas) is exceedingly old, back to the origins of Television (the ultimate learning panacea (or so it was thought), learning machines a la Skinner, through CAI and CAL (learning languages like Logo and Plato). James, isolates the key problem, acceptability on the part of learners.
Cost effectiveness of such attempts can only occur when the technologies can actually REPLACE “high touch” environments, and that can’t happen until the desire for high touch disappears.
As additions to instructional systems, they may, in fact add value, but without the replacement benefits, they become less cost effective.
A couple of factors cloud this debate. 1) That we (N.A.) always look to technology for solutions, even in human endeavors; 2) That we tend to generalize our own preferences re: learning to others. (Hence the
split in perception about “how people think about computer mediated learning.
I think the reality is for SOME people, under SOME circumstances with some subject matter, machine mediated learning is acceptable, even desireable, and perhaps more effective than other methods.
That doesn’t make it more cost-effective. In fact, if one has to run dual learning systems, it adds cost.
Final aside. Any of you read Illich (Deschooling America)? It’s a book with what I think is compelling logic about learning and schooling…it’s now fairly old…we now have the technology to “deschool”. Yet there is hardly any movement in that direction.