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The use of computers for instruction isn't new. Some of the earliest explorations in digital education for instruction were focused on making student experiences superior to the classroom as early as the late 1960s. Professor Patrick Suppes of Stanford University explored in detail the challenges of teaching a classroom of 25 students and concluded that computer technology available at the time could provide the individual instruction, lessons and support necessary to identify individual weaknesses and provide instruction tailored to those needs.

So why, in 2022, do we use broadcast technology like web meetings, boring PowerPoint lectures and ineffective eLearning videos and quizzes, which deliver the same instruction to every student? From K-12 education to corporate learning and development departments, the story is pretty much the same, everyone can access better learning tools and strategies, but they don't.

Related: Workplace Learning Is Broken. These 5 Steps Tell You How to Fix It.

It's safe to assume that you have had both good and bad learning experiences in your lifetime. What made the worst experience for you so bad? Was it boring, emotionally uncomfortable, the wrong subject or too difficult? Too often, designers of digital learning are pressured to create content quickly, by themselves, and for a budget so small that PowerPoint becomes the defacto solution.

But even when budgets do open up, our minds and imaginations in the corporate world are constrained by our past experiences and expectations. We all think we know what good learning looks like — so do the designers and creators of today's eLearning authoring tools. As an industry, eLearning suffers more from not looking into past mistakes than most others. Current innovation in learning technology tends to be focused on:

Since the 1960s, digital learning professionals have gotten everything they wished for from early access to AI, plasma touchscreens in 1972 with PLATO IV, sound, animations, augmented reality and virtual reality, but the real question is: Why haven't students gotten what they really need?

Learning is an individualized experience. The learner has to learn for themselves; no one else can do it for them. As the durability of skills in the workforce becomes shorter and shorter, a core competency of tomorrow's workforce will be learning. Maybe more importantly, workers will need to be able to choose experiences that will actually help them learn. Hint: It's not a lecture with a quiz at the end.

Technology isn't the answer, it's a medium to provide scalable individualized instruction, just as early edtech pioneers envisioned. The core impediment is our lack of experience and skill in designing individualized instruction. Today, yesterday and a long time ago, sufficient tools existed to create effective digital instruction, but as students, most of us haven't experienced what great instruction looks like. Our limited experience with greatness impedes our ability to demand excellence from the training we take. Digital or not, learning experiences must treat us and our needs as individuals.

Organizations that can make the leap from bad to great learning will gain a superior competitive advantage, especially under today's conditions of labor shortages, increasing skills gaps and reduced tenure. Great learning allows organizations to:

The fastest path to learning excellence starts with recognizing our expectations and constraints in training are largely arbitrary and conditioned by legacy practices. Learning doesn't have to look like classrooms of the past or bullet-point slides. If your eLearning is solving real organizational challenges like increasing revenue, improving client satisfaction scores or eliminating waste, its design probably includes:

Is your organization providing the best learning experiences for your employees? Again, technology is just a tool — it's not the answer. Reevaluate your practices, and take advantage of the greater learning tools and strategies that are out there. Make the leap from conventional to great, and watch your business — and employees — thrive.

Source: Entrepreneur

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