In the current fast phased world that we live and work in, as managers or business owners we always seek to raise the efficiency of our employees through training.
But we all come across barriers such as employee time availability, work load and lack of equipped in-house training rooms. As a result we have all searched for an alternative, E-Training or Virtual Classrooms.
A Virtual Classroom is an online environment that allows students and instructors to communicate synchronously using audio, video, text chat, interactive whiteboards etc. Theses features enable training instructors and participants to interact as if they were face to face in a classroom.
Most employees will be very happy with adoption of this technology as it will save time, costs and it’s more convenient since training can be undertaken in the comfort of your own home. But you are stuck with barriers such as the lack of institutional support.
Before you decide that “Virtual Training” or ‘Virtual Classrooms” are a born failure lets explore the benefits and disadvantages:
1-Consistency in Training materials: in traditional training, different individuals provide training for the same topic, leading to variation of interpretation of the training material according to each trainer. In virtual training it is one person conducting the training to a whole company on a large scale, thus the consistency in the training.
2-Adaptability of Content: After analyzing an employee’s training needs, the e-learning system can determine what level of training that employee may require, along with the fact that the content and format of an online course is easily updated to reflect changing times.
3-Accessibility: Virtual Classrooms or E-Learning eliminates the problem of time and distance.
4-Flexibility: allowing a user the luxury of training where they want, when they want.
5-Cost effective: from a business standpoint, the advantages of virtual training starts with cost saving, while it is difficult to define the precise impact virtual training has on a corporate performance, virtual training was named as the most successful training cost control idea in 2002 by the institute of management and administration.
All that sounds amazing, but before you send the memo to implement it lets quickly view the disadvantages of it:
1-Culture: In general people are resistant to change, and their attitudes towards virtual training is not any different. Many senior managers who have participated in traditional trainings may take the stance “we have always done traditional training and it has always been good enough, why change?” In addition, many local managers look at the virtual training system as something less than a serious training activity, resulting in employees not being given adequate time to complete the training (Beamish,Armistead,Watkinson and Armfiled, 2002;Chase,1999).
2-Cost: developing an infrastructure to support virtual training systems and developing the training material requires a significant investment.
3-Acceptence: the most difficult barrier to overcome in virtual training is the end-user acceptance of it as a training medium. The lack of face-to-face interaction that causes participants to feel isolated is the most commonly cited objection of virtual training. According to Weaver (2002) students by nature are social learners who usually prefer to learn in groups and interact with their peers.
4-Effectiveness: there is a huge debate among researchers on the long-term effectiveness of virtual training, and more research will have to be conducted to accurately calculate that effectiveness. Some research points to the successes of virtual training such as its cost effectiveness and resourceful use of time. Opponents claim that it creates a passive learning environment and lowers the quality of training, but according to a study conducted by Ford (1999) at a southeastern university, classes taught using the internet achieve approximately the same grade as equivalent classes taught on campus.
5-Training instructors: they need to know that the time they spend on learning a new skill will result in better employee performance.
So in the end it all depends on your needs and budget. And as technology changes the world around us , we must change too. You have to start thinking about implementing virtual training in the future otherwise when the time comes that we all have to use it, you will be like a dying dinosaur.
