The levels of productivity and competitiveness that we propose pass, surely, through a more effective training of all, in all segments. But it is worth focusing on training that is closest to job performance, and it is especially important to focus on training that is apparently most in need of quality: so-called virtual training.
I was assigned the first presentation in the morning, at a conference on e-learning held in Madrid in June 2008. I remember that my presentation on lifelong e-learning in the emerging economy seemed to be well received, judging by subsequent talks with attendees. The fact is that I stayed to listen to the following speakers. One of them presented us with a new AENOR standard on the quality of virtual training, UNE 66181; a norm that had been talked about for a long time and that had already been presented in different places.
Around this new norm, some concerns immediately arose; However, I thought that I should not draw conclusions without reading the corresponding document when it was published. I had started working with the so-called Computer-Assisted Teaching a couple of decades ago (1980s), and it seemed to me - wrong or not - that the definition of quality indicators that the new regulations on virtual training deployed (I never liked it) was somewhat distorted By the way, the "virtual" training because, I thought, the classroom could be virtual but the training should be real, effective, virtuous).
It was published months before, but it was in January 2009 when I had the text of the standard and began to read it. It seemed to me that, consciously or not, the regulations deployed came to contribute to the drift that the sector had taken, in my questionable point of view. I already believed then that technology was being given more importance than information; that course-producing technologists generally added more cost than value; that, in the layout of screens, the technicians manipulated signifiers and non-signifieds, to the detriment of learning; that, in sum, teachers were considered “subcontracted” in not a few of the e-learning projects.
I don't want to generalize, because I understand that there are e-learning providers that relate product quality to learning effectiveness; But I do believe that there are others that trivialize the importance of didactic information, and contribute to the bad press of continuing education, especially the so-called virtual one.
In fact, I remember that, in 2009, an APeL-associated businessman who was looking for scriptwriters, asked me if I could write scripts from texts on topics that I did not know. I replied that, in my own opinion, nobody can teach what they do not know: I would learn it first and I would teach it later. I also remember several nonsense in the production of courses for e-learning; among others, that, in a 2008 project, the technicians divided the steps of Argyris's inferences by steps, to show only one step at a time, in exchange for each click. It was as if a teacher wanted to show the entire Eiffel tower, and the production technicians offered only partial sections on screen and never, at any time, the entire tower. Despite my warning, I never saw it corrected.It is seen that -for them- the course was better the more clicks the user had to make.
Let's go back to the quality standard of virtual training. As early as March 2009, I had drafted an article that demanded a careful application of AENOR's recommendations to those interested: I thought that a healthy interpretation could be made, but also a biased interpretation.
As I mentioned, in passing, to that speaker who sparked my interest in the subject, I contacted him in case he had any problem quoting him in the introduction. Incidentally, and although I did not explicitly cite AENOR (only UNE 66181 standard), I sent the article to this entity to inform of my intention. I used some generic AENOR addresses (e-mail), but then I also found that of the coordinator (director of FUNDIBEQ) of the expert drafters of the standard, and I also addressed him.
To my amazement, the speaker, whom I had heard months ago, responded to my message (on March 17, 2009), referring to the Data Protection Law so that I would refrain from using his name.
I still have his strange message because I was very surprised (I only said in my article that I had attended a presentation by such a man, in such a place…), and I still keep wondering about this unexpected reaction.
I decided not to quote him in the text and I told him so, although I also did not believe that there was any law that prohibited it. On the Internet there was already, and still is, evidence of his intervention at that table.
In the afternoon of the same day, this man wrote to me again: “Mr. Enebral, to my knowledge I have never participated as a speaker in (here I mentioned the place of the event), excuse me. ” Now I have already replied, apologizing myself for disturbing him (without knowing exactly what or why), and attaching to him information attesting to his intervention, of which there must have been at least a hundred witnesses: the room had been quite crowded. Curious thing.
I decided to eliminate from my article not only the mention of his person, but also the mention of that day; so the article was published in March 2009 without mentioning the trigger of my interest. But I still wonder what had happened, so that this man felt (apparently) so threatened by my modest article - one more of the dozens and dozens that I myself had published on the subject, and of the thousands and thousands that on quality e-learning have been written in ten years-, this received without objection by my interlocutors from AENOR and FUNDIBEQ.
Around the date of San José (2009), my text was already on the Internet on various portals, signed with my usual pseudonym, as I had communicated to AENOR. Sometimes I have certainly published under a pseudonym, so as not to link my views to the companies with which I could relate; It is not the usual, but sometimes I sign with a pseudonym, although my friends know what it is. Obviously, in my email contacts I always use my real name.
Now, today, when more than a year has passed since that curious experience, I observe that, entering Google with "UNE 66181", several thousand references appear, and that my text is just the third. The fact is that I want to return to the content of my article, that is, to the quality of the so-called “virtual” training. I have reread it and still believe that my reflections, formulated with moderation, were perfectly legitimate; I even received assents from some readers, also from well-known experts in the sector, and they even called me to give a talk about it in a university. I do not know if my points of view were correct and timely, but it did seem that the subject was interesting.
Above all of the above, there is the fact that the quality of training is as important as the levels of productivity to which it would contribute: this is what should matter to us. We cannot allow there to be a standard to guarantee it, and it can be used instead to distort the concept of quality. So it is worth reflecting on this concern and on this concept. The norm does not come to close the debate, despite the traditional Zeigarnick effect; The debate will remain open as long as there are people who reflect on it, and this writer joins it.
Let us remember, from the outset, that UNE 66181, despite the generic nature of its title, referred exclusively to unregulated training, both if it was aimed at achieving a job, or if it was aimed at improving existing working conditions. It seemed to me that this left out much of the so-called lifelong learning, largely oriented to the mere preservation of the job that one occupies, and that every day demands new knowledge and skills.
All of us, workers and managers, must-it seems to me-practice lifelong (and lifewide) learning, whatever the method chosen (formal classroom courses, e-learning, informal conversations, readings, on the job, etc.), and in this endeavor virtual training was generating (according to, among other voices, that of the Tripartite Foundation) insignificant learning: it was also urgent to improve the quality-effectiveness of virtual training corresponding to lifelong learning, which was excluded from the standard, although it was not said why. Quality demanded the training of unemployed people, and also quality demanded the continuous training of workers, especially in the online modality.
Quality indicators of the UNE 66181 standard
Let us go, yes, now - and excuse the reader for the long process - to the quality indicators or parameters that were indicated for virtual training (remember: the one aimed at achieving a job, or a better job), apart from the fact that the suppliers always provide the necessary - unavoidable - information about the products and services they offer. Three indicators were displayed:
- Employability Ease of assimilation Accessibility
Let's start with "employability". Curiously, still today there are consulting companies that have preferred to write “applicability”, perhaps thus amending the term chosen by the standard. It read: "Employability is the ability to integrate into the labor market or improve the existing condition-position." "Applicability" would perhaps refer to the knowledge transmitted by a course, but "employability" is a condition of the individual, not of a course, so we must understand that the course is good if it improves the user's ability to access to the desired job position, which seems safer when there is demand for a certain profile of workers.
Of course, we can legitimately consider a course magnificent if one goes looking for work and, as a consequence of following the course, finds it; Superb not so much for its own sake, but because perhaps it was a condition for accessing a job and the job has been achieved: the course has been very useful. We do not know if what was learned could have been learned in less time or with less effort, but it does not matter: the case is that the job that was sought has been obtained, or simply a job. Given that there are more than four million unemployed, we could think that the many courses that are orchestrated for them are being very bad. I don't think so, but that is what the rule seems to suggest.
We really have today, in the spring of 2010, more than four million unemployed, and I am not sure that this is the case because of their lack of training; Sometimes I think that - I don't support it, but sometimes I think about it - the unemployed are better trained than the employees, if the hyperbole is accepted. In short, if the diploma served to find work, then the course was good. Sure, I thought, this rule left out formal training because, otherwise, we would have had to say that, at university, training was good if young people found work, and it was bad if young graduates did not find work..
Let us now recall the so-called “ease of assimilation”, the next indicator. We read verbatim: "The ease of assimilation symbolizes the level of interactivity and tutoring of the training action…". I did not like this statement, although I may not understand what to symbolize. The norm related interactivity and guardianship monitoring with assimilation, motivation and avoidance of abandonment. Obviously, I thought, if in the end you wait, or seem to wait, for a job to which you aspire, you will get to the end, without abandoning, regardless of the intrinsic quality of the course; but an intrinsic quality of the course is required, in my opinion, always.
Let's talk about motivation and interactivity. One thought and thinks that the ideal is that the user arrives already motivated to the course, eager to apprehend certain knowledge or skills; although without a doubt the main desire is to find a job, when you don't have it, or to always find a better one. I am afraid that if you are not convinced of the need for learning, you will not feel more motivated based on the number of clicks you are forced to do; Of course, there are also different interpretations of motivation.
The reader will, of course, think that interactivity is more than clicks: I thought and think so too. In fact, I would distinguish between an interactivity (didactically effective) that recreates the teacher-student dialogues in the room, and another interactivity (which I fear is more frequent and less effective) that consists of forcing the user to click, like someone flipping pages of a book.
Welcome is the defense of interactivity that makes the norm, but that one well understood. Let me remember another experience of my own. As a screenwriter on a 2008 project, I had arranged the short, linear text on a screen, divided into four small paragraphs. Here the production technicians saw their opportunity and articulated a “1-2-3-4” for the user to read it little by little, in exchange for clicks. To me (although my criterion was poorly respected) "1-2-3-4" seemed good to me when the script foresaw four independent elements, and not to split a linear text, apart from didactic criteria. I proposed, for example, the “1-2-3-4” for the summaries at the end of each unit, also allowing the user to see all four messages at once. Then I tried to make the final summaries of each unit four paragraphs,but they no longer used the “1-2-3-4”.
Now I would like to insist that the ease of assimilation could come more from the care with which the teacher had written the script-storyboard, than from the number of artificial clicks incorporated (I do not intend to be right, but to say what I think). I have also seen animations without didactic meaning, in which it also happened that if the user attended to the image, the screen timed without being able to read the text. And I have seen locutions accompanied by a talking doll… If an information is relevant, I prefer it written, so that I can keep it after the course; and if it is irrelevant, the text and the talking doll could be left over. Anyway, by dint of simplification, I may be looking forceful.
Let's go to the tutelary follow-up (“tutoring”, according to the norm). It seems, for example, that a course will be better if there is a tutor who comments on the assessment tests, although the standard did not seem to talk about the quality of the assessment tests, or the quality of the tutor's comment. Let us take it for granted: good quality would have to reach all the teaching materials and tutoring. I remember that, in the 90s and when addressing quality issues, I came to the conclusion that a company was "good" if it measured customer satisfaction, even if they were not satisfied! They are things of the quality, according to how it is interpreted; but we should not lose sight of the professional ends pursued.
I would say that the content of an online course should be assimilable, intelligible, apart from consultations with the tutor. Doubts can always arise even if the content is clear, and for this reason a genuinely expert tutor is often required; but I think the content should be assimilable by itself and I'll explain. I would see the tutor as a very necessary element to ensure the strength of the inferences. I think Jim Rohn said it: "Knowledge is made up of 20% of what you know, and 80% of what you infer from what you know." Let us properly cultivate inferential thinking (such as conceptual, analytical, synthetic, connective, exploratory, lateral, systemic, reflective, abstractive, and even intuitive),and we go to the tutor to try to fill the gap between knowledge and its application.
Let us finally tackle the issue of "accessibility": the third indicator. It seemed to refer to physical accessibility and people with disabilities, and welcome is the concern. It is obvious that the courses must be accessible to the users to whom they are intended, to the point that this should not add quality stars, but subtract them in case of lack of accessibility. I said it then and I hold it now, if the reader agrees.
Final message
What I want to add or underline about what has already been said in previous articles (about Kirkpatrick's quality levels, etc.) is that many of the online courses that I have been able to see, although only partially, suffer from a lack of teacher presence and of excessive prominence of technology and technologists. The graphic form seems to be valued more than the background; technology, than information; the signifiers, that the meanings; animation, that its didactic contribution; the continent, in short, than the content. Some providers no longer ignored the importance of content in e-learning years ago, with arguments, by the way, somewhat fallacious; although it is also true that other providers warned about the risk of observable drift.
I would insist on the idea that an online course is better, insofar as it provides me with more effective, faster and more pleasant learning than that achieved through another type of training. But in any case, any training must seek knowledge or skills, in the fastest and most effective way; knowledge or skills (also attitudes, beliefs, values, habits, strengths, etc.) that are applicable after a more productive performance of everyone at work. And, of course, I am still betting on informal learning and self-study, also using the Internet. This week I was in the Senate in an act of Internet Day, and I think, yes, that the Internet is a treasure that we are not taking advantage of yet, when it comes to learning.
