Evaluating or escaping the evidence?Category: Education
Article added by: Bob Little
It was sabotage in the war against global terrorism. It was another case for e-learning’s fictional super sleuth.
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There was a loud, confident knock which rattled both the door and the sign on it that read: ‘221b: Walter Hart, e-learning consultancy’. The sound startled Walter Hart from his afternoon e-learning induced reverie.
'Ah! A military man I should think!' Hart murmured and then said: 'Come in.'
The door opened and framed in the doorway was, indeed, a thick set military man, resplendent in a braid-bedecked, medal-beribboned uniform that identified him as a high ranking officer in a navy that was not British.
Ill at ease, the man began: 'We have a training school for technicians in our country - and we think that it turns out the best navy technicians in the world. It should do - because it takes 241 days to bring a raw recruit up to standard to be posted to one of our ships as a qualified technician.
’Then we asked a Florida-based company to produce some self-paced e-learning materials. Using these materials, it seemed that our technicians could achieve competence in just 17 days. If that’s true, have we been wasting our time - and taxpayers’ money - in delivering the training via instructor-led training?'
Hart replied: ‘There’s no universally accepted way to evaluate organisational effectiveness - and the result often depends on the political rationale of the evaluator. Statistics can easily be selected that rate one measure above another.'
'Exactly!' exclaimed his client. ‘So we devised some new tests just for those who’d taken the e-learning. These tests were intended to prove what these technicians didn’t know. Sure enough, the ’17 dayers’ couldn’t pass the tests! So that sort of proves e-learning is no good, doesn’t it?'
'Did the ‘241 dayers’ also take these tests?' asked Hart, wryly.
’No. We knew that they were competent. We didn’t need to test them for what they didn’t know.'
'So, why come to me?' asked Hart.
'Because we need to reduce the time taken to train our technicians,' said the admiral. 'It’s not just a question of cost - although it would be good to use some of the dollars spent on this training elsewhere. It’s a question of improving efficiency and effectiveness - and there’s a greater need for trained technicians now that we’re fronting the war against global terrorism.'
Hart asked for time to think over the issue and promised to call the admiral the next day. When a contemplative calm had once more descended on the small office, Hart decided to discuss the issue with fellow consultant Jane Vaughan.
'Your admiral probably suspects that the command to reduce training time is being diluted down the chain of command so that, by the time it gets to the middle managers - the department heads at the training school - they’re only paying lip service to supporting the e-learning,' suggested Vaughan.
'Then there’s the instructors themselves,' added Hart. 'They’ve got a vested interest in keeping each trainee at the school for 241 days instead of just 17. The training school could lose up to 75 per cent of its staff. That would make the training operation more efficient but instructors would lose their jobs - and that might mean actually going to fight the war on terrorism rather than merely training others to do it.'
'That’s probably true for the trainees too,' added Vaughan. 'Clever trainees will reason that they should stay at the training school for as long as possible - to save them doing the job for ‘real’. So they’re not going to like the e-learning - and they’ll do all they can to stay at the school rather than have to be posted to a ship!’
The next day, Hart phoned the admiral at his hotel. Having explained to the admiral why the managers, instructors and trainees all wanted e-learning to fail, Hart suggested one way around the problem.
'If you introduced a learning management or learning content management system - and made sure that you, along with all the navy’s senior managers, tracked each student’s progress on a regular basis - you would be able to spot those trainees who were taking longer than they should over their learning,' he said. 'You could also spot the trainers who were reluctant to allow their students access to the learning materials they needed.
'That way, trainers who were not wholeheartedly behind this increasingly efficient way of teaching could be identified and offered more active roles in the war against global terrorism.'
By Bob Little
Please note: any similarity with any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Posted By: Bob Little
Web: http://www.boblittlepr.com
Contact: e-mail
| About the Author: |
| Bob Little has been writing and commentating on technology based training, including e-learning, since 1990. His work has been published across three continents – the USA, Europe and Australia as well
as in UK-based publications including E-Learning Age, making him unique as a commentator on the worldwide e-learning scene. |
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