Our organization, WD-40 Company, is like many others—trying to take advantage of the developing technologies that claim to be able to offer learning experiences remotely, online, in digitized content that supposedly increases the efficiency and effectiveness of education. We’ve employed some of the tools available to good effect, but we don’t rely on the digital, remote learning mode as our primary method. There are limitations that don’t address our core objectives for such programs. The issue boils down to the fact that humans are a critical ingredient to the process.
It starts with the behavioral principles of adult learning. There are different learning modalities that work best for different people, of course, but there are also common principles that apply to the vast majority of adults. The first principle is that people learn much more by doing than by studying or watching others. However, if you combine all three (doing, studying, watching), you get more effective learning in a shorter period of time. But if you only have time to focus on one of these, better focus on the doing part.
An online course is largely the studying part, maybe coupled with some video modeling examples. For self-study of knowledge content (the facts, figures, descriptors, etc.) remote digital learning methods can be extremely effective. And they allow “just in time” content delivery to the learner when they need to become educated in a specific topic. Videos that show how to do something are often quite useful. But live interaction modeling can be more effective than video, because the modeling can spontaneously adjust as necessary to enhance learning for the participants. Even if the online learning has branching choices that the student can select, making it lightly interactive, the variances possible are minuscule compared to what physically interacting with skilled people can provide.
A true advantage of online study is that you can distribute content across distance and time very efficiently. You can store everything in one place and get it updated instantly with version control and distribution tracking. So online education is a very efficient way of managing content for instructional purpose, the “study” part of the adult learning equation. As said earlier, however, study is a minority of the source of learning impact. Live modeling and live interaction, including learning by doing, are not yet replaceable with digital, online formats, given the state of technology.
What about AR and VR (augmented reality and virtual reality)? These are concepts that have been in development for over thirty years. The technology is indeed improving, but we’re a long way from the “holodeck” on the television show Star Trek, Next Generation. And there is still the advantage of live interaction that AR and VR can’t address. We get something else with human interaction that may be beyond the capabilities of technology for quite a long time to come. Why is that? Let’s look at a couple of truths about humans.
An organization only has a chance to achieve its objectives if people choose to work together towards those common goals. Let that sink in for a while. It’s such an obvious truth, but too many leaders either don’t pay attention to it, or they give up that it might be achievable. To create this cohesive collection of people engaging fully to accomplish common objectives in a manner that is congruent with their common chosen values, they must trust each other. That’s another “d-uh” statement, but again, few leaders prioritize improving trust in their organizations.
To build trust, humans require a lot of information about the people who they might consider trusting. That information comes in the form of shared experiences, in multiple contexts, over time. The more senses that are included in those shared experiences, the higher the likelihood that enough information will be gained to establish mutual trust. The five main senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Digital interactions can provide a decent measure of what’s available with sight and sound, although not completely equivalent to live settings, because digital fidelity can’t duplicate reality. So far, digital formats can’t produce human interactions that include three spatial dimensions, a full auditory environment, smell, touch and taste.
Interestingly, the last three elements, and especially smell, are the most directly connected senses to the brain structures associated with emotions. As it turns out, humans can’t fully establish trusting relationships that will endure through challenging times without shared experiences in which all senses are employed over a significant time period.
Understanding these principles of human behavior—and having the imperative to create and sustain a highly cohesive global company with employees in 15 countries—our learning programs combine the principles of adult learning with the principles of building trust between human beings. Therefore, we prioritize live-interaction educational settings over digital forms. We still use the digital methods for the efficiencies they provide, and we employ them to augment learning in every way they can. But if we must choose which to do and we can’t do both, we choose being in the same place with others, going through experiences that create trust and long-term learning.
And we combine the learning experiences with other events where people collect, like business meetings and conferences. Our learning “faculty” and our global leaders spend a lot of time on the road. Our general employee population travels to be together for various reasons over the course of a year. The travel costs in time and money are therefore yielding three results at once: the goal of the business meeting, effective learning experiences and trust-building.
If we were a company that didn’t have decades-long plans, nor comprised of many people who choose to pursue a life’s journey with the organization, we might be tempted to pursue efficiency over effectiveness and go all-in on digital alone. But in my opinion, for our purposes and our principles, nothing replaces human contact.
[Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the author, and do not represent those of WD-40 Company.]