Technology is improving rapidly and with it comes along the convenience of being able to attend training, without leaving your desk.
Many of us used to venture to libraries or attend a specified course to learn new skills or information, however, these days it is all available at our fingertips whenever we want to access it.
But is this a good thing? Yes and no!
We thought we would put together a few face to face vs online training points to consider.
Cost Effective – For many, budget can be the issue when it comes to investing in training. Quite often it is thought that on-line training incurs a lower cost than attending a face to face training session. Is this the case? Depending on the topic of training you are looking at, on-line courses can actually be more expensive. However, what you do get is the ability to re-visit content from the training course, and learn at your own pace, therefore the cost effectiveness comes down to time spent on the actual training instead of what you pay for the content.
Questions answered – Attending a face to face training course, gives you the opportunity to ask questions if you are unclear on any element of the topic. You can also learn from other questions that your fellow attendees may ask, that you may not have thought of. Therefore, the span on learning is greatly widened and further knowledge gained and thought processes shared.
Interaction with others – Being in a learning environment with others can be great for social interaction and even networking opportunities. If you are attending an online training course then the only interaction you may get is through your computer and perhaps associated social media groups, specific to the course, but do you really get as much out of them as a face to face conversation?
Practical element – This is an important one. Some training courses will offer an opportunity to be practical and ‘take away’ what you have produced at the end. Therefore, you’re not leaving with just a bunch of notes and the concern of what time you have available to put things into practice before you forget.
There’s quite the argument when it comes down to what works best, but in the end that is down to the individual learner.
Here’s an interesting article, which expands on the points we’ve considered above.
A Training reader sent me an article about a study done at Washington community colleges, which showed that more students drop out and fewer get a passing grade when they take a class online than when they take it in a classroom. And students who already were struggling do worse when a course is changed over to online delivery than when it was delivered in a classroom setting. He wondered whether this might indicate a change in the training field, while I contemplated whether the results would carry over to the workplace.
Virtual Hand have extended our expertise by offering face to face practical business training. If you would like to see our upcoming courses, then you can visit our website.
We would love to have you attend our classroom environment, where we can take on the battle of online vs face to face and show you that you get more out of ‘being there’.
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