Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Understand your audience

by Personnel Today 1 Jan 2002
by Personnel Today 1 Jan 2002

IT professionals form the biggest challenges to trainers when it comes to
e-learning, says Iain Smith of IT consultancy Diaz Research

Once upon a time, people learned in only two ways: by making mistakes and by
listening to other people describing their mistakes and conclusions. You could
call the latter p-learning.

Eventually, classes were set up so that one mistake-maker could teach more
than one learner in a group, and c-learning was born.

After a long time someone had the idea of writing things down in books:
b-learning. This meant that you could still learn from others, even if you were
not in the same room as them – or even not alive at the same time.

There then followed hundreds of years during which making mistakes,
p-learning and b-learning were the only learning options. Until the 20th
century and v-learning: the educational video, the Open University, for example
– a major advance.

Now, of course, we have e-learning. It is illuminating to consider the
future of e-learning by asking how coaching actually happens in the information
technology sector itself.

IT employers have long had a poor-to-indifferent record on training and
development. Many prefer to buy in skills, not develop them. That has not
changed with e-learning, but research from Taylor Nelson Sofres (carried out on
behalf of SkillSoft) indicates that the IT community uses e-learning more than
others. Why?

The answer partly lies in economics, not IT’s zeal for training. Despite
some claims, good e-learning products are not cheap, but they are
cost-effective if the costs can be shared by large numbers of learners.

They are well-suited to mass learning, and mass learning means generic
skills such as English language, financial, customer care and, of course,
mainstream computer skills – common applications, operating systems and
languages.

This makes it relevant to people in IT, but it does not extend
cost-effectively into specialist technologies – there the e-learning product is
obsolescent before it is launched and obsolete before it has broken even.

So, e-learning has its place in IT, and elsewhere, when aimed at generic
needs. But specialist needs – and they are dominant in IT where there are
scores of tools, at multiple release levels – remain untouched. This primitive world
is stuck at 3,000-year-old technology: learning by making mistakes, and by
p-learning (when all else fails).

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The reasons are primarily economic, but also cultural. Many IT people are
puzzle-solvers who prefer to "try it and see". Don’t send them on a
training course – you’ll only stop them learning. That is the challenge that
remains for training professionals, despite the e-learning revolution.

Iain Smith is founder of IT human resources consultancy Diaz Research www.diazresearch.com

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Local government anger over failed Sector Skills Council bid
next post
TUC trains 500 reps to tackle gender pay gap

You may also like

FCA to extend misconduct rules beyond banks

2 Jul 2025

‘Decisive action’ needed to boost workers’ pensions

2 Jul 2025

Business leaders’ drop in confidence impacts headcount

2 Jul 2025

Why we need to rethink soft skills in...

1 Jul 2025

Five misconceptions about hiring refugees

20 Jun 2025

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

Occupational health on the coronavirus frontline – ‘I...

21 Aug 2020

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+