Warren Buffet and E-learning

Well what can possibly be the connection between one of the richest, smartest, wittiest man in the world and E-learning. If that’s the question you want an answer for, just spend the next 3-4 minutes reading this article.

Warren Buffet has often been asked about the biggest mistakes he has made in life. His answer has always been “I have realized that errors of omission are much greater than errors of commission”. The simplicity and the profoundness of the answer define the man’s greatness. In simple words, when you know enough to make a decision, not taking a risk is way more damaging than the money you would lose in case you take the risk.

The e-learning industry may seem to be blooming for anyone who observes it. Instructional designers are well paid individuals and more companies have opened in house training teams than ever before in the history of the business. Rapid e-learning has made training an affordable commodity to even the smallest of companies. However, I would like to argue that rapid e-learning would be the precise reason why the e-learning industry would never be able to realize its true potential and be the game changer in the learning domain.

E-learning was introduced so that people could learn from desks instead of travelling all around the globe to attend classes. As technology matured, e-learning incorporated branching, non-linear learning, effective scenarios, interactivity and basic gaming. All of this enabled students to take interesting and effective curriculum at home or in office. Meanwhile a parallel revolution was taking place. Capitalism crept into the learning domain and the wise guyz decided it was not enough to make good training. It had to be made faster and cheaper. Notice I did not use the word “better”. Enter Learning 1.3 where Rapid e-learning entered the picture. The idea was to empower SMEs to create basic trainings by giving them easy to use tools, which converted PPT in e-learning courses.  These tools allowed various companies to hire IDs, train them on various technologies, and then get them to create PPT based trainings. Rapid e-learning, in a matter of few years became the McDonalds of the training industry. Every company worth its salt had a training team that used rapid e-learning products to create training. Rapid e-learning put entire companies into a low fat diet mindset. Training costs had to be cheap and the ID wrote the content, created graphics, and published the course.  In Warren Buffet’s terms, we made a huge error of omission and missed out on the ultimate commission.

Excellent e-learning can eliminate the need for instructors in many cases. Rapid e-learning ensured that the lure of low cost would force companies to adopt this model and e-learning would never act as a global change catalyst that it could have.  One off cases would not create a revolution. Some companies still create excellent training but most companies have now chosen the rapid e-learning path. The challenge is now to at least progress down this path with caution. We now have products that help add interactivity into rapid e-learning courses. This is a bit like cutting down a jungle and then planting a few trees in the shopping mall you create instead. Rapid e-learning is not bad. It’s great when you have to teach product based courses which would have a lot of screenshots. It’s even possible to add a few interactivities. Where it fails miserably is when you want to make up for the missing instructor. There is no way to add a virtual coach who can give corrective feedback when needed. You cannot consistently add pop up’s and create effective templates.

Rapid e-learning has taken the learning world by storm and changed the way we perceive training. Good IDs can still create nice courses. My only concern is, however good the chef, he can only accomplish so much at Mc Donalds. Give him a restaurant and the look at the delicacies he can whip up.

In adopting rapid e-learning we have opted to go the fast food way. Let’s just wait and see if we can do something great besides serving good burgers.