Karl Albrecht: e-Learning - Don't Spend the Profits Yet

e-Learning: Don't Spend the Profits Yet

The recent excitement about on-line delivery of education and training - "E-learning," to its fans and promoters - may be short-lived. Indeed, I suspect we're about to see a re-run of the "CBT (Computer-based Training)" story that captured the attention of the training industry in the early 1980s.

The parallels are striking. In recall vividly the buzz of excitement at Training Magazine's conferences in New York City, where I and several others were presenting some of the very first personal computer familiarization workshops for managers and HRD people. One of the early mantras of the technology wonks was "The PC will fundamentally transform the training process." "CBT," they declared, "is the wave of the future."

Some went so far as to predict that classroom instruction would all but disappear. Seminars would be replaced almost entirely by various forms of computer-mediated instruction. Costs per trainee would fall radically as software displaced human instructors. Interactive instructional design would individualize the training experience, as the software would continuously assess and adapt to the learner's level of mastery. People could learn at their own rates, and on their own schedules. To many, the PC's possibilities seemed limitless.

Software developers rushed to create "authoring" packages, that would allow course designers to produce finished training modules, complete with in-line tests, conditional branching, and learner selection of subject matter. Thanks to these products, the entire inventory of business training content was destined for computer-based delivery. Fortunes would be made by those who got to the market first.

It didn't happen. To the best of my knowledge, none of these products, or the companies that made them, exists today. The CBT revolution quietly faded.

There's an eerie similarity between today's E-Learning movement and its ancestor, CBT. New companies were launched, with oh-so-clever names and brave marketing claims. Articles preached the inevitability of the revolution. Conferences promised the secrets of success in this "exploding marketplace." Corporate cases were duly praised and offered as evidence that the new wave was rising.

Yet, almost two decades down the road, CBT hasn't taken over the instructional process. Even the most cut-and-dried subjects, such as accounting, statistics, and project management, haven't been "converted." Even PC learning products themselves are primarily print-oriented or video-based. Embedded software "wizards" that coach the user are typically more of a nuisance than a help. Some firms built significant course libraries, but the CBT revolution? Nah.

Will NBT (Net-Based Training) - or, if you prefer, E-Learning - succeed where CBT failed, and if so, why? What's different now, and do these differences favor or oppose the hoped-for explosion of demand?

The arguments for explosive growth in NBT are roughly the same as those advanced for CBT. A rapid, sustained rise in the number of Internet users (previously PC users) would automatically carry the technology to the target population. The obvious value of training and education in a competitive job market would presumably motivate almost everyone to want to improve their qualifications. And the advantages of digital delivery over human delivery made the outcome seemingly inevitable.

Yet, buried under each of these seemingly reasonable justifications was - and still is - a flawed set of assumptions about people, and about how and why they learn.

Technomyopia

Human learning is a much more complex and subjective experience than digital specialists want it to be. Courses, classes, seminars, workshops, and conferences are wildly popular in all business cultures, partly because they transform a solitary, lonely experience - absorbing information - into a more appealing social experience. And for more than a few working people, attending a seminar is a good break from a day's work.

Why is the standard four-year college program still so popular, when self-motivated people could easily achieve the same level of knowledge and competence at a fraction of the investment in cost and time? It's because it meets a whole constellation of needs, not least of which is a coming-of-age experience for many young people. If we didn't have the four-year college system today, we certainly wouldn't invent it as a pure educational solution. Yet a college degree is a world-recognized credential that conveys instant status and entitlement.

Human Nature

Most technical experts, who tend to be highly trained information processors, tend to project their own motives and priorities onto the general population. They want to believe that most people are insatiable learning machines, driven to acquire and process knowledge for the sheer satisfaction of the experience. There is scant evidence for this view. Aside from a small number of intellectuals, few adults approach the learning process as a self-justifying experience in and of itself. The sobering fact is that most adult learning is accidental, circumstantial, and shaped by selfish, immediate, practical needs. Most people who know how to manage a funeral learned it by having to do it, not as a matter of intellectual curiosity. Most people who can use computers learned their skills by trial and error and coaching, not by systematically studying the software. And what portion of a university education really involves self-motivated study based on curiosity, as contrasted to slogging through the required "material?"

In short, the case for the highly motivated adult learner is overstated to say the least; the NBT stampede won't happen.

Terminal Fatigue

As to the proposition that lots of people are already using network information sources, and will therefore naturally want to learn on line, there may be a fatigue factor to be considered. Working with information on a computer screen requires concentration, and it's a fairly tiring experience, however sedentary it might seem. The brain consumes almost half of the body's glucose supply, and several hours of on-line time can dampen the appetite for more.

Aside from a small number of addicted users, most people are likely to "level off" in their on-line time. To the extent that they have discretion over the amount of terminal time they put in, there is little reason to assume they have an unlimited appetite.

Further, an on-line learning experience tends to require a higher level of concentration, reasoning, and short-term memory than simply browsing around commercial Web sites. While the AOL user can wander indefinitely by clicking on ads, news clips, and "teasers," the on-line student has work to do. And showing up for the next work session or learning module requires more discipline than the mere passive goofing off that characterizes a great deal of on-line activity.

This key difference, between cyber-surfing and cyber-working, will always be a subjective barrier that limits the on-line learning population to a relative few.

Phantom Profits

One of the great lessons we have to learn about the Internet - which we are still trying to deny and avoid - is that it will be a profit destroyer, not a profit creator. It may well be possible to make profits with the Internet, but it will be nearly impossible to make profits on the Internet.

As the costs, and consequently the prices, of information fall toward zero, how does one make a profit selling information? In a business where information becomes a commodity with no "personality," and software designers are constantly fighting to a draw, how does one establish a sustainable competitive advantage over other suppliers? With no barriers to entry, how does one compete with the whole world? With search engines that scour the Web looking for the lowest prices on everything, and engines that search other engines, how does one maintain a profit margin that brings an adequate return on invested capital?

We will soon see on-line courses given away as embedded components of other marketing programs. Colleges and universities will force one another to put their courses on line. Supply will certainly outrun demand. And as information is increasingly given away free to sell other things, the distinction between education and marketing is beginning to fade. Is an electronic brokerage that offers free on-line courses to its investors in the education business or the investment business? The answer is: Yes.

Waiting for the "Killer App?"

Maybe NBT is in need of what the cyber-gurus call a "killer application," i.e. a software program or tool that people find so valuable that they use it in large numbers and therefore create a demand pull for the main resource. Electronic mail could certainly be considered the killer app for the Internet, especially as America Online made the online experience available to the masses.

If NBT is in need of a killer app, it might not be anything like a specific educational program or delivery method. Maybe it's something one step removed - something that would provide an alternative motivating force to the college degree.

I would suggest that such a killer app might be some kind of credentialing mechanism. Currently, having a document called a college degree confers on most people an instantaneous credibility. A degree holder is an educated person. No matter that such a person might have barely squeaked by his or her courses and just survived the educational experience. No matter that, within a broad range of institutions, a degree from an also-ran institution is roughly the same as a degree from an outstanding one. For the most part, a degree is a degree. At the first job interview in a professional person's career, the question is always "Where did you go to college and what was your grade-point average?" In every subsequent interview, the question is "What are you doing now and how much are they paying you?"

But beyond the college degree, it's very difficult for a person to express his or her qualifications in any kind of objective form, and equally difficult for a prospective employer to judge such a person's level of knowledge, competence, and experience. Perhaps some kind of independent, unbiased credentialing entity could establish a framework for evaluating various "packages" of skill and knowledge, and certifying people, either by testing or verifying other credentials, as qualified for various kinds of work. For example, it is a relatively simple matter to determine whether a person understands double-entry accounting, and to determine his or her level of mastery of its methods. "Soft" skills like leadership, interpersonal communications, and teamwork are not so easy to assess, but by no means impossible.

Maybe we need to aim for a situation in which each person in the workforce has an individual portfolio, i.e. a set of credentials, qualifications, and evidence of mastery, which grows with him or her over a career. With a well-established structure of knowledge and qualification, people might be more inclined to build their own career resources, and on-line learning might certainly then become a means to that end.

But, until we come to the point where on-line learning becomes a means to other ends of great personal importance to individuals in their own lives, let's not spend the profits yet.