You Just Can't Teach This Stuff ... Online

In my continual exploration of online training platforms, I've repeatedly come up against a problem. So many of the topics I teach are about people working together and learning together.

In a training class, it's effortless to break up into groups of two or three people, work on a joint task, then reconvene with the group, debriefing, sharing key learnings and reviewing patterns that emerged. It's effortless to get people to repeat something that didn't quite go right the first time. It's effortless to get people to all work on a project together, taking on different roles, exploring the interactions as the exercise develops. It's effortless to spontaneously add some additional twist to the exercise to clarify some point of contention. Like storytelling, good training is not so much something you present TO people, as something you do WITH people.

Online, students either work independently, or go through everything at the same pace, sharing a common screen view. There may be shared audio, there may be webcams on the various participants, but the shared experience is still quite shallow. There is often a voting mechanism, or a question and answer mechanism, but it often takes preparation and training and struggles to achieve the easy adaptability of being in the same roon. Course preparation seems to end up as an exercise in squeezing the content to match the media.

We learn better with joint attention; when they can see, touch, hear the same things. we communicate better with verbal cueing, intonation, and body language. When groups need to learn something about how to work in a group, they need to work in a group. Military training emphasizes Drill, where the team works together, trains together, practices together.

It seems to me that there are some things, many things, you just can't learn ... online.