Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Is the one or two day training course dead?

Somebody recently asked this question on LinkedIn:
"Is the one or two day training course dead? In a time-poor world i wonder if all training from now on, will be either online and/or in say two hour (face to face) bite size chunks?"
I'm a big fan of blended learning, with a combination of face-to-face and on-line; group and individual; synchronous and asynchronous; video, audio and text; interactive and passive; and so on.

So in general, I agree with the idea of moving away from long training sessions. After all, they were probably only originally designed that way for convenience and logistics, not for maximising the educational benefit.

However, there are situations where the extended training session is exactly what you need - for example, the 2-3 day "boot camp" where you eliminate all other distractions and focus on one practical, well-defined task for that time - e.g. constructing a business plan, designing a training program, building a presentation, facilitating a strategic leadership summit. These are examples where the long focussed session is an advantage - a key advantage - not a drawback.

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