What (Specifically) Gets Scrapped When Classrooms Go Virtual
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Main Feature: What (Specifically) Gets Scrapped When Classrooms Go Virtual
Jobs and Talent
What’s On My Mind & What I’ve Been Reading
Personal and Professional Updates
What (Specifically) Gets Scrapped When Classrooms Go Virtual
“It’s just not the same.” - Every Learning Expert Ever When Discussing Virtual Instructor-Led Training (vILT).
Those in learning professions know this intuitively and the pandemic seemed to highlight this for the rest of the planet. Google “what gets lost when learning goes virtual?” and you’re faced with a litany of articles about how much learning suffered as classroom teaching went virtual during the pandemic. The articles focus on academia, but those in the corporate and professional education space know the same is true. A lot is lost when physical classrooms go virtual.
It’s not even a mystery as to what gets lost when classrooms go virtual: the social, human aspects of learning environments that make them more effective. What isn’t often articulated (and is probably more interesting) is how those key elements are diminished – if not outright vanquished – from even the most technologically-savvy virtual classrooms.
Since the start of 2020, I’ve facilitated over 250 live virtual instructor-led sessions on topics ranging from traditional leadership and managerial development modules (typically soft-skill and business acumen modules), functional-skill training such as my beloved designing influential presentations course, and even guiding other trainers on virtual facilitation. Ninety-five percent of these would have been in a physical classroom if not for the pandemic.
After reflecting on my own experiences and consulting with a handful of other learning professionals (thanks MB, JB, SK, and AA!), I want to share some hypotheses as to how learning gets scrapped and value (ROI) gets lost as many in-classroom experiences migrate to the laptop. Plus, I’ll share four key criteria I devised for helping to evaluate whether or not a learning experience should go virtual.
First, a quick caveat: This isn’t a crusade against synchronous virtual learning! If anything, the pandemic proved that a great deal of learning experiences should have migrated to virtual years earlier (indeed, a great deal should be asynchronous, too). What I am suggesting is that it’s not always worthwhile to migrate from the physical to virtual classroom. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Variables to Consider
There are several variables that moderate how much learning gets scrapped when learning experiences are commuted to Zoom:
How mechanical (hard skill) or nuanced (soft skill) is the content?
How dependent are the desired outcomes on incorporating prior experiences of the learners?
How intellectually and psychologically sophisticated are the participants?
This is far from a complete list, of course. However these are some of the most salient questions one must ask when identifying the value in transposing learning from the physical to virtual.
(You’ll notice that they’re also great questions to help assess how best to lead any learning experience: Generally, the more mechanical the content and more novice the learners, the more that learning design will tilt toward didactic, instructor-led content delivery. Likewise, the more nuanced the content and more advanced the learners, the more it requires a facilitative posture from those leading the experience and a greater reliance on participatory learning.)
Continuing with broad stroke generalizations, if the content requires a more rote learning approach (e.g. how to use Excel) and the learners are less experienced (and as is often correlated, less sophisticated), you’ll retain significant value migrating to a synchronous virtual environment. Hello, Zoom!
When the content is more nuanced (leadership and human skills) and the learners more advanced (senior management and executive development), the more value will be lost transposing to a virtual setting. This loss of value is driven by the virtual environment’s impairments to both the facilitator and the learners.
Facilitator & Learner Impairments
Building trust with participants is essential to creating psychological safety for more transformative learning. The talented facilitator uses the in-between moments to connect individually with participants and deliberately positions themselves in physical space to build rapport as an experience evolves.
Similarly, when content is nuanced and the participants harness greater benefit from peer-driven, participatory learning, a strong facilitator will maneuver themselves and shift into a coaching, facilitative posture to enable fluid dialogue. Conversation bounces around the room; you get basketball rather than tennis.
Adjusting the experience on-the-go to deliver maximum value for participants is critical in adult learning. The skilled facilitator is constantly fine-tuning their antenna to side conversations and cross talk, monitoring subtle cues to assess whether useful learning is taking place, and modifying group work on a case-by-case basis in order to adjust the experience in real time.
These crucial aspects of skilled facilitation are significantly impeded, if not outright eliminated, in the live virtual classroom.
Learners are similarly impaired. In the physical classroom, there are ample opportunities for informal conversations and cross-organizational networking. Some of the most useful relationships and powerful discoveries arise in the unscripted moments subsidized by propinquity.
Learners can better focus and extract the benefit of their time investment when together in person. Succumbing to distractions is socially stigmatized and there’s more relevant sensory data to occupy the mind. In the virtual classroom, learners are positioned directly in front of portals to an endless supply of distractions – distractions which are designed to manipulate and hijack their attention.
These critical aspects of engaged learning are meaningfully diminished, if not outright eliminated, in the live virtual classroom.
In keeping with the Extreme Presentation format, I’ve packaged these differences between traditional classroom and virtual learning environments in this one, simple graphic:
Still, the unquestioned push for virtual classrooms continues.
“But it’s cheaper!” they cry, conflating up-front costs with overall value and ROI. “But it’s more efficient!” they insist, as if minuscule gains in efficiency are usually worth diminished outcomes of improved effectiveness and performance.
Four Factors
So when are synchronous virtual learning experiences most worthwhile? Here are four key factors to consider:
When it is physically unwise to be in the same space (thanks, Covid!).
When topics are very mechanical and therefore the learning design will inherently be more content dissemination (instructing) than facilitation (if not delivered asynchronously).
When you have really small class size and/or multiple facilitators (note: this increases the cost inputs to any ROI calculus, negatively impacting the very cost/time savings virtual is meant to provide!)
When you have an average or below-average facilitator. Yes, you read that correctly! While it may seem counterintuitive – wouldn’t you want a really strong facilitator if you’re already missing out on key aspects of the traditional in-person classroom experience? – I would argue that the dropoff between in-person and virtual is minimized for less-than-top-notch facilitators. In other words, you’re leaving far more value on the table when you do have a strong facilitator and you don’t get to optimize them by having an in-person environment. With a strong facilitator, the quality of a virtual learning experience may have a higher floor, but by sticking them in a virtual environment you dramatically lower the ceiling. To use a poor analogy, Steph Curry will be the best shooter on any basketball court, but his relative value increases (as do your chances of winning!) when the court has a three-point line.
So don’t ditch virtual classrooms – just be very intentional about the practice. If you’re hearing pushback about cost and feasibility from those who instinctively judge the value of a learning experience as a matter of cost inputs rather than complex (and harder to quantify) performance outputs, stand your ground.
If you’re not hearing this pushback, your colleagues are probably on mute.
Jobs and Talent
Jobs: There are tons of jobs out there! Here’s a few that some readers asked me to highlight:
A friend at Coinbase shared that the Talent Programs Team is hiring for a program manager role.
The Visiting Nurse Service of New York is looking for a Culture & Inclusion Manager, an HR Manager, VP of Employee Relations, and an HR Generalist. They have recently added more exceptional talent to their organization – I’m quite impressed.
Culture AMP is looking for a Director of Learning & Leadership. It’s a hybrid role based in Australia!
My friends at Linkage are searching for an Associate Product Manager.
Talent:
An NYC-based friend is searching for a new opportunity in organizational and/or talent effectiveness and development. With over a decade of experience, this person would be outstanding at a Director/VP leadership role. They’d prefer to stay in NYC but would be willing to relocate for the right in-person (non-fully-remote) role. If you’re hiring for someone at this level, message me and I’ll do some matchmaking if appropriate!
If your organization is looking to build or improve your podcast and don’t know where to turn, check out podcast.love. My friend, Alex Kapelman, has been creating and producing podcasts for nearly a decade (before they were really cool) and is a master of his craft.
What’s On My Mind
I’ve taken a slight social media hiatus (my work with Endeavorun requires a bit of online interaction) and I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. I plan to keep it going! It’s been aided by an old form of media: I’ve started getting daily home delivery of the newspaper. It’s been quite enjoyable. There is something deeply satisfying about holding and folding a physical paper.
My dissertation! I’m hoping to finish this semester, so I’ve dedicated nearly all available energy to my fourth (of six) chapters.
This idea for a “Dream Job” feature on LinkedIn. Do me a favor and go and ‘Like’ the post so it gets more visibility? they should make this!
What I’ve Been Reading:
(Note: As a new approach, I’m also going to turn this section into its own brief recurring newsletter using LinkedIn’s Newsletter function. It will premier on the 4th of each month, and I plan to offer more commentary in that version).
This NYTimes article “What Do You Think You Should Be Paid?” about salary negotiations.
An article on HRDrive about required, minimum time off.
This summary of a recent academic article on team building activities and how to make them better (hint: voluntary).
This post shares an excellent list of questions to ask when asking reference-check questions.
This article about Trainual’s policy of offering to pay recent hires to quit as a means of achieving buy-in.
Conference Board Report C-Suite 2022 Outlook Report. There’s some useful data on global CEO priorities around attracting/retaining talent.
My friend and former classmate, Lindsey Caplan, wrote this article in Fast Company about making change stick.
I’ve taken out a few titles from the library via audiobooked recently. The Libby App is quite good. I’ve channeled my inner philosophy student and read a pair of titles on theodicy and recently started a book on psychological criminal profiling. Let me know if you’re curious for more details.
Personal & Professional Updates
Cold temperatures, Omicron spiking, and a toddler desiring socialization make for some very long weekends here in Arlington. We’re just fortunate everyone is still healthy.
If you’re a beginner to intermediate runner looking for an amazing experience to kickstart a great year, join me in Austin on February 17-21.
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Be compassionate and intentional.