When e-learning goes wrong!

Guest Blogger: Anonymous

It never fails to amaze me how many times I’ve been asked to design, develop and deliver an e-learning course within a week.  Unrealistic? Yes it is. But why do managers do this? Does it come from ignorance about how long it really takes to create an e-learning course, from lack of L&D experience or from them over committing so that they can look good?

I was recently asked to develop an e-learning course (in one week) for some updates to one of our corporate systems.  My first thoughts were – this is not the right delivery method for computer based training.  My second thought – one week is not enough to produce something workable that staff will actually find useful.   I voiced my opinions about this project to my manager but she had already made the commitment to her Director.  I worked ridiculously long hours to meet this crazy deadline.  The final product was delivered a week and a half later.    Was it embraced by the staff? No! They had problems completing the activities in the e-learning course because they had to refer to printed material for the answers as the new system was still not ready for viewing.  What should’ve taken 20 minutes to complete took them over an hour!

The end-result of delivering a rushed e-learning course in place of face-to-face computer training was disastrous!  Feedback from staff was that they had had enough of e-learning courses and that they weren’t getting any value from them.

So a bad decision by a manager has meant that in future any e-learning courses will be met be skepticism, reluctance and disapproval from staff – the very people it is meant to assist in their learning and development.

I’m sure that my experience is not the only one of when an e-learning course has not hit the mark and has alienated its audience instead of being fully embraced by them.

So maybe L&D practitioners and managers should take a step back and really think it through before nominating e-learning as the solution to all training needs.

I’d like to hear from fellow L&D practitioners, is my experience is just an isolated one or not? Have we got ourselves too wrapped up on e-learning solutions to be saturating our audience with it?