Hey Hans,
We have been investing massively in digital learning since the corona pandemic. Online modules, e-learning, microlearning, onboarding platforms, all sorts of things. The idea is clear: flexible, scalable and accessible learning for everyone. Whoehoe!
But in practice, enthusiasm turns out to be variable. This became apparent last Wednesday when I went out to dinner with my father. To illustrate: my father has worked for the same employer for about thirty years. He has grown from junior to senior. He has seen directors come and go and is now part of the furniture. But yes, nowadays he has an annoying quota of e-learnings he has to make. *Sigh*.
He normally clicks his favorite button, the “Continue” button, at lightning speed. In this way, he manages to complete an hour-long learning module in eight minutes. Now that’s what I call efficiency. Unfortunately, his usual strategy didn’t work this time because he had to follow an interactive animation. This meant he couldn’t just click through, but had to actually watch the movie. And then you might think “Okay boomer,” but of course it’s not that simple. Therefore, I was extra interested in where things went wrong between my father and this e-learning module.
You get square eyes from staring at a screen
To keep the world around us simple, it is nice to divide everyone into generations. That’s because then you can make nice broad statements, such as “boomers probably have trouble with technology” and “Gen Z’ers probably lose focus quickly. Unfortunately, such statements are too short-sighted: the fact that something is true for a large group as a whole does not mean that it is also true on an individual level. After all, not everyone born around the same year has the same learning preferences or wants to develop the same skills. For example, I was often told during my HR days that some older people were just a little stuck up, and younger employees often didn’t show up during a classroom session anyway. After all, couldn’t they really do it online?
My mother often made this classic statement, “staring at that screen will give you square eyes!”. Every time I heard this, I rolled my (still round) eyes and continued staring. They were from a different generation and therefore viewed technology differently. But is the difference between generations really that great? Isn’t this just a random snapshot in time? Fortunately, scientific evidence is a lot more nuanced about the whole generational difference in online learning.
Research shows that generational differences in learning preferences and digital skills are often overestimated. Someone from the boomer generation who is curious and understands the usefulness of digital developments learns just as well, maybe even better, as a Gen Z’er who follows a mandatory module that mainly repeats what he already knows. So it does not depend on age how good or how motivated someone is to learn. What does matter are things like:
- How relevant someone thinks the topic is.
- How much confidence someone has in their digital skills.
- Whether someone is convinced that it makes sense to learn it.
So what could have been better in my father’s module?
So what makes my dad turn away from online learning? Fortunately for Dad, his digital skills are fine. That leaves two possible reasons. I asked him how it was:
- He thinks the subject is irrelevant. I quote, “this is yet another meaningless module”.
- He feels there is no point in learning. “It feels like no contribution to the process at all. A check mark from the board”.
What can you learn from this?
If you are involved in education, work in HR or just happened to come across this blog, I will explain below what you should do best:
- Avoid frustration
Have people estimate in advance what they already know. That way you avoid frustration from having to go over the same material again.
- Make the utility explicit (urgency)
Why are you doing this training? And why are you doing it now? It must be clear to the participant what it will give him/her. Think for example about digital awareness (very popular and yes this can also be done in Dutch). For example: don’t just say “the government thinks this is necessary”, but: “You protect yourself, your colleagues and your customers, because do you know for example the fake hotspot”. That comes in differently.
- Offer freedom of choice
Let participants choose pace, form or order. It is nice to be able to decide when you have time for a module, even if it is a few minutes. Make sure people can go straight to the chapter that is relevant to them. For example: I get stuck archiving documents. Then you want to go straight to the chapter on archiving.
- Make it recognizable
Use storytelling or realistic situations so that it becomes directly applicable to the work. Dry material (such as legislation) comes in differently when it is woven into a real-life situation. If I see an example of a phishing attempt, it sticks better than if I only learn what phishing is. That promotes the transfer from theory to practice.
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