Best Learning Method

We've got this sort of issue currently at work.

Our Techs (us that need to understand how they work and interact before being able to fix things, or call the right people at 2am) are older.

The traditional method of a classroom and tutor works well as it allows interaction and more explaining in some cases, or simply suggest an example.

It seems that someone in management decided that the new way is to introduce eLearning, which eleminates the tutor part and makes it possible to change the number of participants.

Aparently it is the 'new way'.

Sadly I think it is a faliure waiting to happen, and unless there are certain checks and balances to see if someone actually retained the information, is a waste.

I once got told that block courses (8 weeks) were good for passing the exam at the end, and I wonder if this is the same.

I chose the interact/mentor.

Mark

Some eLearning methods allow for interaction and additional explanation as well but they are generally the paid for ones rather than the free / low cost ones.

A lot of eLearning is basically a modern take on open learning which has been around for ages. A lot of components of eLearning are also being incorporated into modern classroom teaching as well now. It is not uncommon in a classroom course to sit in silence and watch videos / animations on the projection screen which has now typically replaced the OHP.  Pretty much the same experience you get with eLearning material except with eLearning you get the opportunity to rewind and reply it as many times as you want.

Interesting to note about the interaction aspect as I have found that with classroom courses most people are reluctant to ask questions and engage for the fear of being made a fool of, whereas with eLearning courses the opposite tends to be true and you can get a lot of useful discussion, references to related material and so on.

What checks and balances go on in the majority of classroom courses ? For information retention then I seem to recall that it has been demonstrated that unless you refresh the new information within 8 hours then you lose around 80% of it, and then unless you refresh again within 24hours then you lose around 50%. So that means for most classroom courses you need to be revising the day's learning after dinner and then again after an early breakfast, however not always easy if you don't have access to the materials to hand.

The classroom exam cram bootcamps appear to be most successful if you take the exam immediately on the last afternoon or evening of the course, or the following morning. After that there appears to be a significant drop off in pass rates unless the individual reverts to self-study and then takes the exam several weeks later. I however suspect that the retention of information from bootcamps is limited after the exam has been taken as there hasn't been sufficient time on the course to refresh and refresh again as part of the curriculum. To be effective I suspect that instructors need to be using the last hour of the day to refresh the day's learning and the first hour of the next day to refresh yesterday's learning and the last afternoon of the course to refresh the week's learning, and if it is a two week course then the first morning of the second week to refresh the previous week and so on. With eLearning it should be relatively easy to build that type of refresh mechanism into the course - every time you take a break then the system knows to provide a refresher before moving on.

However I'm pretty convinced that we all learn best in different ways. People's attention spans vary greatly so traditional teaching by lecture methods set to a fixed timetable are seriously flawed in my opinion. They appear to stem from Roman times when the instructor was a travelling scholar and the class was basically a human duplication machine as there was no printing press or photocopier to create copies of notes - everything there had to be mass transcribed in real time whilst the scholar was in town.

A lot of eLearning material however is poorly designed. Most of it is based on trying to copy traditional methods as opposed to making best use of the medium. Also a lot of it resorts to TV style video due to there being little in the way of cross-platform standards and authoring tools for delivery of interactive content.

beacon_dave  Some good observations.

In our situation there is physical hardware involved, and the manuals used to suport the device afterwards.

Most of the exercise is understanding how it functions as a box, how it processes or interacts, the symtoms of it not working, and how to diagnose and rectify the issue.

I do agree that retention is the problem, but with many Techs/Engineers it is a few triggers that lead to the "oh ... I remember now" moment.

You are right about the questions.

Because we and the instructors know each other, it's usually easier or the instructor can check that xyz understands by asking a leading question, or the really blank looks on everyones face.

Sometimes we've also had to correct the instructor, which is rather hard to do with eLearning.

Mark

beacon_dave  Some good observations.

In our situation there is physical hardware involved, and the manuals used to suport the device afterwards.

Most of the exercise is understanding how it functions as a box, how it processes or interacts, the symtoms of it not working, and how to diagnose and rectify the issue.

I do agree that retention is the problem, but with many Techs/Engineers it is a few triggers that lead to the "oh ... I remember now" moment.

You are right about the questions.

Because we and the instructors know each other, it's usually easier or the instructor can check that xyz understands by asking a leading question, or the really blank looks on everyones face.

Sometimes we've also had to correct the instructor, which is rather hard to do with eLearning.

Mark