Thursday, 7 February 2008

Online Training vs eLearning

I don't remember what I was reading, but the post/article differentiated learning as what the learner does and training as what we do to the person - and hopefully they learn.

What's interesting is that eLearning has become pretty much synonymous with Online Training as opposed to use of technology for various kinds of learning.

In a world:
  • where we have to be responsible for our learning,
  • where learning and work are often not separate activities,
  • where there's just too much for each of us to learn so we have to make choices,
  • where we have to continually evaluate our sources of information,
  • where we have to Stop Reading and instead Skim Dive Skim
How relevant is Online Training as compared to supporting Personal Learning?

This really relates to the questions being discussed in this month's Big Question (Instructional Design - If? When? How much?) where I've argued that Common Sense and Intuition Not Enough to justify ID. But maybe my concern stems partly from the targeting of smaller audiences, niche learning needs, diverse backgrounds - all that suggest a hard time for instructional design - although not necessarily for the right kind of instructional designer.

I'm not sure where I'm going with these thoughts, but it really struck me that confusing eLearning with Online Training is problematic. This relates to the discussions in Learning Systems and EPSS and ePerformance.

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