In October 2005, I wrote my first post for the Clive on Learning. It was called Bringing e-learning into the twentieth Century. We're now 20 years into that new century and I'd like to think that, thanks a great deal to coronavirus and repeated lockdowns, we now have a pretty good idea of what advantages we can gain by learning online. Paradoxically, we've also realised just how important it is for us psychologically to be face-to-face.

If you have an hour to spare (and, let's face it, in the current circumstances, that might just be the case),  you might enjoy this podcast hosted by the wonderful Jane Daly. I really enjoyed talking to Jane and reflecting on my career in learning and development.

Back in 2009, I posted a simple analysis of learning technologies based on Diana Laurillard’s conversational framework. This became the second most popular posting ever on this blog, so I thought I'd give it a further look.

I was particularly taken by Diana’s five media forms (the descriptions are mine):

1. Narrative media: explain, demonstrate, describe
2. Interactive media: facilitate reflection, check understanding, encourage exploration, provide feedback
3. Communicative media: allow exchanges between learners and between learners and tutors / subject experts
4. Adaptive media: facilitate experimentation and practice
5. Productive media: allow learners to articulate, express, demonstrate understanding

I was interested to see what light these categorisations would shed on my understanding of the wide range of learning technologies currently at our disposal. The following table is my updated 2020 attempt at allocating technologies to each of the five categories. I have added a column to explain whether digital content would be an input to the learning processes involved or an output.

Media form	Example learning technologies	The role of content
Narrative media	Online videos, online articles and papers, podcasts, software demos, infographics	Content is an input to the learning process
Interactive media	Scenarios, quizzes, simple games, click-through e-learning	Content is an input to the learning process
Communicative media	Social networks, forums, virtual classrooms, online meetings and discussions, webinars, email / messaging	Content is an output from the learning process
Adaptive media	Simulations, AR/VR, intelligent tutorials, strategic games, intelligently curated content, adaptive learning pathways	Content is an input to the learning process
Productive media	Wikis, blogs, spreadsheets, apps for editing text, video, audio and slideshows	Content is an output from the learning process

On re-visiting this analysis, I’m still not sure yet whether these categories move things along. Are some media forms more valuable than others? Are they situational? Should they be used in sequence or in combination? There's plenty of room to take this thinking further.

In my last post, I argued that, although face-to-face learning has been the default since the dawn of time, online learning has changed everything. As we have discovered over the past few weeks, online learning is scalable, flexible, accessible to all but a small minority, economical, environmentally advantageous and, of course, socially distant. What’s not to like?

So OK, there are situations when we simply can’t achieve what we want online, which is fine because, in time, we’ll be able to go back to doing some learning face-to-face. Used judiciously and typically as part of a blend, face-to-face learning is capable of adding tremendous value. But not for everyday learning, for special occasions.

Let’s imagine you’re currently in a position in which you simply have to deliver your programmes online because your classrooms are all closed up.  You still have a big decision to make …

1. Should I develop online materials to cover the content of my programmes?
2. Or should I run live online sessions that approximate what I currently do in the classroom?

If you spend most of your time in a classroom, you’ll be drawn to option 2, because the experience will be similar and you will have less work to do in developing materials. But, in doing so, you only take advantage of some of the benefits of online learning - the social distancing, the reduced carbon footprint, the cost reduction. What you don’t get is the scalability and the flexibility. You can’t address as large an audience as quickly as you can with digital content and you can’t offer your learners the opportunity to learning when they want, at the pace they want and in the way they want. So there has to be a good reason for delivering your sessions live. In short …

Live online learning is also for special occasions

So, what are those special occasions? Why do you want to fix your learners to a particular date and time? Here are some arguments:

1
Live events allow for a free-flowing dialogue, something that is simply not going to happen by email, in a forum or on Twitter. Many learning activities, including role-plays, simply have to be live.

2
In a live event, you have the potential to get quick answers to your questions and immediate feedback on your performance. This level of responsiveness can be important in some situations, such as learning to operate a process or to handle customer queries. Generally speaking, a real-time approach gets the job done quickly, whereas it can take ages to resolve an issue while you wait for people to respond when it suits them.

3
Live events can also have more emotional energy (sometimes negative as well as positive) than their self-paced equivalents. Most of us would prefer to watch a big sporting event as it happens rather than see the recording sometime later, even if we do not know the outcome. There is something about experiencing an event as it happens in the company of our peers, whether that’s face to face or online. And this upsurge of emotion is going to make a big difference in terms of what we remember.

4
In the context of a blended solution, live events also act as a milestone to encourage learners to get the self-paced work done. In a course which has no timetable, it is inevitable that individual study will be put off to a later date – after all, learning is rarely the most urgent task on our to-do lists. Even if deadlines are established for self-paced learning, there is always the feeling that these could easily be pushed back if required. However, when a programme is punctuated with live events, there is a massive incentive to get on with your ‘homework’ – no-one wants to be the one who hasn’t got their assignments done.

Choices, choices, choices. To keep it simple, let’s reduce all this to three steps:

1. By default, deliver your learning programme as online content
2. When online content won’t do the job (you want free-flowing discussion, you need to provide instant feedback, you want emotional energy, you want to introduce milestones into a longer programme, and so on) then consider delivering some elements live and online
3. When live and online still isn’t enough (people need to be hands-on, you need full attention, you need maximum sensitivity to body language, etc.) then consider delivering some elements face-to-face

Except, of course, that option 3 is not available at the moment. So, make option 2 work.

Easy

Having spent the past 25 years advocating the greater use of online tools and resources for education and training (not to mention many other aspects of our lives), I've met my fair share of opposition and have to admit that I've been frustrated at how slowly we have responded to the opportunity.

I needn't have worried! All we needed was a pandemic. All of a sudden, it seems quite absurd to question the concept of online learning. For me, this is the silver lining on a very dark cloud.

Of course, the crisis will come to an end and, when it does, we have a chance to re-think before automatically assuming our previous positions. So, should we simply go back to doing as much learning as possible face-to-face? Or perhaps dispense with the idea of face-to-face learning altogether? To answer the question, I return to my post of 9th December 2011. For me, face-to-face is for special occasions.

***

Ask yourself. What proportion of the music that you consume is at a live performance? Chances are it's something between 0 and 10%. What proportion of the drama that you watch is at the theatre, rather than at the cinema or on TV? I'd be surprised if it's more than a few percent. And what proportion of the sport you watch is in a stadium rather than on TV? You get the idea.

And yet, there's a good possibility that those live events that you have attended - music, drama, sports or whatever - are among the most memorable occasions of your life. Perhaps even peak experiences.

If you wanted to up the percentage of time you spent watching live music, drama or sport, it would come at a considerable price in terms of admission fees, travel, time and sheer adrenaline. Chances are that, unless you're rich and with considerable discretionary time, it would be completely impractical. In fact, with all the rush of modern working life, you're probably finding it increasingly impractical to watch TV or listen to radio at the times at which the programmes are broadcast. A great deal of your media consumption is almost definitely asynchronous - under your time control - using downloads, streaming media and the like.

Is it too fanciful to apply the same logic to learning? The default position is now asynchronous and online, giving you complete control over time and place. If you want to share an experience with other learners in real time, you go synchronous, using some sort of virtual meeting platform. If you need a rich sensory experience that you'll remember for years, then spend the money, put aside the time and meet up face-to-face at a conference or workshop.

There was a time when the only way you could listen to music, watch a play or a sporting event, or attend a class was live and face-to-face, because there were no ways to transmit or record these events electronically. Quite clearly those days are gone and we are the richer for it.

This week on The Good Practice Podcast, I join Ross Garner and Owen Ferguson to discuss the promise of e-learning.