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Published July 2006

Courses are Dead

  Jay Cross

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When I tell training vendors “courses are dead,” they look at me as if I’d brought a skunk to their picnic.

Roger Shank sums up the failure of training in four little words: “It’s just like school.” The better part of two decades of schooling has brainwashed, er convinced, us that courses are the default means of learning. People think of courses as the basic, fundamental model against which other modes must compare themselves. Propose that workers learn something through conversation, a game, or trial and error, and the knee-jerk response is “How do you know it will be as effective as a course?”

Upon close inspection, you find that courses themselves are not that effective. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of what is taught in a course transfers to the job. Courses have a miserable track record when it comes to changing behavior. The most common way of learning one’s job comes not from taking a course but from asking someone.

Four years ago, someone asked me if e-learning worked. I told her that for proof that e-learning can be powerfully effective, I had only to look at my son. He has learned more about meteorology, PERL, San Francisco politics, network administration, environmental action groups and obscure singers than his dad will ever know. All online.

None of the things I mentioned were courses, and this got me thinking. I realized that the course is not the appropriate shell for many learning experiences. We all know the story: The 50-minute class was created for the convenience of the institution, not the learner. The course is a triumph of standardization, so ingrained in our thinking that we buy and sell training by how long it takes rather than what it accomplishes. It’s the industrial model, which puts a higher value on efficiency than on effectiveness. You can have learning any color you want as long as it’s black.

Part of the reason I say courses are dead is for shock value. It’s to jolt people into considering alternatives. Courses are the bedrock of compliance training (although I don’t consider much of that learning.) Certification depends on courses (although you always should have the option of testing out of prerequisites.) In some circumstances, utter novices benefit from courses because they otherwise lack a framework for learning. For most other corporate learning, courses are dead.

The next generation entering the workforce doesn’t learn like you and me. They work on assignments together. (What did you think all that instant messenger stuff while doing homework was for?) They have no patience for one subject at a time. They’re accustomed to learning by discovery. They have little tolerance for irrelevancies. Ask any recent graduate how they’d like a day-long corporate training class. You’ll get an ear-full of reasons why those courses are so bad.

I’m in the midst of designing a series of un-workshops to show professionals how to use blogs, wikis and Web 2.0 technology to leverage corporate learning. Here’s the design challenge: The subject matter is volatile and new innovations pop up daily. Participants range from novice to semi-pro. Some will come from non-profits, others from the Fortune 1000. Big thinkers will gravitate toward RSS, and those we used to call “people people” will be drawn to tags.

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