Why Education is a Terrible Model for Learning

Many years ago I won a ‘Gold Award’ from what was then called the Institute for IT Training for a ‘people development strategy’. We won this because we had figured out how to get 95% completion rates for our e-learning modules.

The wizard wheeze involved a complex system of job grades, each with associated rewards. Movement between grades was governed by completion of ‘gateway tests’ for which you were only eligible if you had completed the prescribed e-learning.

But from the perspective of our field-based engineers (who were the target audience) it was a ‘do your e-learning or you lose your car’ scheme. Anecdotally, some were getting their kids to complete the modules for them, after school.

I recently read a similar story in an article where the author was lauding the benefits of ‘marketing’ to get people to visit their LMS (Learning Management System). Sadly, I still see a world of digital content being force-fed to brow-beaten employees via an LMS, in order to sustain the illusion that L&D are impacting business outcomes. As soon as I read ‘LMS’ in one of those articles I think ‘this is going to be a sad story’ – a story that goes ‘we made mud-pies, but somehow we managed to get people to eat them’.*

(and then I respond with a caustic comment to the effect 'Maybe if you stopped making mud-pies...')

This is all horrible, and I regret ever being a part of it. I did these terrible things because, back then, I didn’t understand learning - and because I didn’t challenge the conventions.

In part it happens because school was equally terrible, and learning professionals think that we should therefore apply the same educational conventions to learning in our organisations. What I mean is this: education (largely) comprises a series of anxiety-driven tests, in service of which we try to cram as much information into our heads as possible. The anxiety stems from the myth that our future success depends on our performance on these tests. To some extent this used to be true – there existed a kind of ‘cash for certificates’ economy in which employers would offer you an HR job on the basis that you got a history degree from a reputable uni. – even though you had forgotten almost everything and the degree bore no relation to your work. Today some companies (such as Google) are beginning to explicitly recognise how ridiculous this all is.

Education is a terrible model for learning, and even worse model for performance. The good news is that this is all starting to fall apart. The bad news is that many education people don’t know what else to do, and many corporate learning people are still trying to educate.

Being able to access useful stuff on your mobile device is a big part of why it is falling apart – employees can figure things out for themselves. They are not ‘educating themselves’ (use of online educational platforms is still pitiful) – they are just getting things done. They use resources every day, but never courses. I still remember the days when we used to run workshops on the latest updates to Microsoft Office. Now we just get on with it. Unfortunately, some of the ‘useful stuff’ about your company (such as the best ways of doing things) may not be on the internet.

You would think that L&D would be rushing to plug this gap – but they are not. Instead much of the industry is busy dreaming up ways of using mobile devices to do the same terrible things that never worked before – pushing out little bits of content and testing people, rather than talking to people about the useful stuff they might develop (resources) to help them do their jobs (user-centered learning design). It is this shift of perspective - towards helping the employee rather than dumping content that needs to take place. No amount of technology or marketing will fix a broken model. AI and VR will not be more effective ways of dumping content.

* I ought to say something positive about the LMS: if you are trying to schedule experiences, then it’s a good tool. An LMS is generally a pretty good event-management system. If you are in a heavily-regulated industry then you may be required to show that people have passed some tests, and though this has nothing to do with actually changing behaviour, it may help mitigate some kinds of risk.