Online Training: Bringing Virtuality and Humanity Together 

Over the past few years, the pandemic context has pushed the transfer of many activities and services online. The HR world has not been spared by the virtualization of assessment centres, including selection and development tests, structured interviews, new employee integration paths, training, etc.

As a result, with virtual and hybrid work becoming more common in many sectors, e-learning has become a very effective strategy for both employees and employers. The popularity of learning management systems and the large number of online courses on offer are proof of this irreversible shift towards knowledge transmission: according to Global Market Insights¹, the e-learning sector is expected to be worth more than $300 billion by 2025! Just an FYI!  

Why opt for online learning?  

Accessibility, simplicity, and convenience are some of the reasons why online knowledge sharing is so popular.   

• Accessibility: By train or plane, at the cottage or in the office, from Singapore to Toronto, at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night… it’s up to the learner to choose when and where they feel they are in an optimal learning context!  
• Simplicity: Using it is as simple as it gets, the online training courses are available to everyone with just a few clicks. This is technology at its finest and is extremely user-friendly. Everything is in one place, without logistics or administrative burdens.  
• Practicality: Convenient for both the instructor and the learner. E-learning accommodates a variety of learning approaches that meet the needs and preferences of all learner profiles.  

… What about people in all this?  

Virtualizing is not synonymous with dehumanizing!

Quite the reverse, online training meets all the learning styles preferred by participants with solutions that combine both concrete and abstract, visual and auditory, sequential and global, social and solitary, directed and autonomous, and technological and traditional elements².

The acquisition of new knowledge has never been so personalized and adapted to the target audience. It is up to the participant to choose the training path that will provide the maximum conditions for success according to his or her learning style and pace. A combination of synchronous and asynchronous modes opens up a vast world of possibilities, the limit being the trainer’s imagination: 

• Preliminary readings and exercises;  
• Virtual one-on-one meetings;  
• Online quizzes;  
• Audio and video clips;  
• Focus groups;  
• Workshops;  
• The use of fun and interactive applications;  
• Etc.  

Ideally, the trainer’s imagination should respect certain essential elements to promote learning, knowledge retention and then the use of the training content by the learner, if the pedagogical objectives are to be achieved. But that’s a different story!  

… What’s next?  

Are the time and energy invested in e-learning really worth it? Does online training have a genuine added value compared to the good old-fashioned in-person training method?  

Currently, there are limited studies on the concrete impact of face-to-face training and even fewer on the impact of e-learning. However, some studies seem to show, unsurprisingly, that the learner’s responsibility for their learning is key in e-learning. The learner is the main actor in their growth, whereas, in asynchronous mode, the teacher has relatively little direct influence on the motivation and commitment of learners³.  

But we are currently in a world of work where, according to self-determination theory, autonomy is one of the three essential pillars of basic psychological needs4 (in addition to competency and social allegiance). Betting on the learner’s increased responsibility for their own development through online training; therefore, represents an investment in people that seem to be low-risk and, on the contrary, should satisfy this fundamental need for autonomy!   

Hurray for humanized virtualization! 

 

Frédérique Henry

Chief Operating Officer (COO) at EPSI