Employees who take company-sponsored online training courses are bored right out of their hard drives, according to a new study by Forrester Research.
The "Online Training Needs A New Course" report finds many online corporate training courses are so stilted and dull that up to 80 percent of workers who sign up eventually drop out. Likewise, many managers have a hard time just getting workers to sign up, as word spreads about the poor quality of the materials, Wired magazine reports.
The study finds that employees say most such courses feature "boring, text-heavy content," and they prefer traditional methods of one-on-one training with a live instructor instead of the virtual approach.
"Soft skills (conflict resolution, negotiation and customer relations) are things you simply can't learn from a Web page," David Anderson, an Anderson and Associates management consultant, told Wired. "You need face time to learn how to deal with people. When you're interacting with a Web page you can be as uninterested, sarcastic, or rude as you like. The Web page won't call you on it. People skills need to be taught by people."
John P. Dalton, author of the report, says firms cannot simply convert instruction manuals into Web pages. Studies show training is least effective when it is solely based on reading, especially when that reading has to be done on a computer monitor, the magazine reports.
"Instead of marketers creating static online brochures, now it’s trainers who are creating boring online textbooks," Dalton told Wired.
Many companies, such as General Electric, are combining virtual courses with traditional classroom instruction. GE also is going one step further by consulting with Cognitive Arts, a leader in interactive education software development.
Anderson, the management consultant, says many groups need to make changes in their offerings because online training will be one of the most active fields in the future, the magazine reports.
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