Benefits of IDL vs 4-Walls Training: The Environment

Al Gore is telling the world. Scientists everywhere are warning of melting icecaps and ancient glaciers. Animated kids' movies - like Open Season and Happy Feet are educating our children about the situation and its effects. We can see and experience for ourselves the reality of climate change. Animal species are disappearing for some new reasons - not just because of overhunting or habitat lost to mankind's need to lay blacktop and erect buildings everywhere.

To varying degrees, the corporate world is addressing the need to Go Green. Some give it lip service only, but many businesses are working very hard to identify and implement new ways to reduce their carbon footprint. In reality, most businesses are somewhere in the middle.

But using conferencing technology and "Interactive Distance Learning" is a way that all of those businesses can make a significant difference to our world. And the fact that it saves them $$$ in the process is an added bonus.

How does the Environment benefit?

• No one travels. No exhaust emmissions, no planes or trains or ferries are needed. No use of fossil fuels.
• Far fewer trees are needed for paper. No workbooks or multi-page and all-too-often single-sided handouts are needed. Material is emailed to Learners and many of them use it electronically without printing.

Just two benefits?

Well, yes. But they are huge ... especially the first one. Companies and other organizations that are using technology to deliver their training via Interactive Distance Learning rather than within the 4 walls of traditional classrooms, have - IMOHO - earned major bragging rights in the struggle many of us are facing in Going Green.

Benefits of IDL vs 4-Walls Training: The Trainer

IDL has important benefits for the Company and the Learners ... and also for The Trainers. In fact, virtually all of the benefits are actually advantages. Yes, it's true, for all types of soft skills training and for many other types as well, IDL has been proven to produce better learning outcomes, higher likelihood of skills application on the job, and longer term retention than traditional 4-walls classes.

So, how about The Trainers?

Here are some of the primary benefits for those folks.

• Little if any need to travel! A lot more at home time and a lot less suitcase-packing, flight-catching, and hotel-sleeping.
• Increased ability to respond to training needs. Because the technology is so inexpensive, because no rooms have to be booked, because nobody has to go anywhere ... it is possible for the Trainer to provide courses whenever 1 or 2 or 3 employees need it. No longer necessary until there are enough people "to make it cost effective". This flexibility and availability feels good! (as well as being hugely important to the company's operations!)
• Ability to get "better" results. Because courses are delivered in short segments with days in between, and because Learners are doing their skills application exercises on the job in their real work environments ... Learners pick up the new skills, attitudes and abilities more quickly, and are much more likely to actually learn and use the material.
• A lot less details to deal with. No need for booking rooms, arranging catering, getting loads of printing done ... and then organized ... or schlepped to the training room. Or any of the other little details associated with 4-walls training. Handouts are sent as e-mail attachments or posted on an intranet site ... and people can handle their own coffee!

Post a comment if you have more benefits to add to the list!

Next time: Benefits to the Environment.

Benefits of IDL vs 4-Walls Training: The Learner

First - apologies for the long delay ... busy holiday season!

So what's in it for The Learner? Again, there's a list:

• Small Chunks. Material is delivered in short - generally 1 hour or less - sessions; rather than the half-day, full-day or several day format typical of 4-walls training. These 1 hour, topic & skill focused sessions, make it much easier for all of us, as Learners, to absorb the new behaviors, attitudes and/or skills ... and to actually work with them ... before having to move on to learn some more.


• No horrible in class "role plays" or other artificial, awkward exercises! With an IDL class, we Learners get to practise our new skills and abilities in our real world of work - with real people, in real situations.


• On-Time Learning. Even if the Learner is one of just 1, 2 or a few who need the particular course, it can be delivered ... without waiting for enough people to make it cost effective.

Next time ... Benefits for the Trainers.

Benefits of IDL vs 4-Walls Training: The Company

IDL = Interactive (Synchronous) Distance Learning. And it clearly has a wide variety of benefits over traditional classroom or 4-walls training.


There are benefits to the learners, the trainers, the company, and the environment. This post is about Benefits to The Company - the LEAN part of LeanGreenTraining - and there are several; all of which affect the bottom line.

• Elimination of Travel Costs for both Trainers and Learners. And travel costs are not just airline tickets .. there's also hotels, meals, ground transportation, airport parking, etc., etc.
• Huge reduction in Loss of Productive Time. Since no one has to do any travelling - which represents a lot of lost productive time - the only downtime is for the training itself.
• Bring Staff Up To Speed Faster. When training is done in the 4-walls environment, it is not economically feasible to do it for 1 or 2 or a few employees ... meaning that those folks are working without knowledge they need to do parts of their job, or to do their job efficiently. Using IDL, it is absolutely feasible to provide training to small groups or even to individuals when it's needed.
• Higher Uptake Rate means Less Training. Because IDL courses are delivered in short sessions, generally several days or a week apart, individual Learners have a much better opportunity and proven likelihood of actually learning the material and applying it on the job.

Next time ... benefits to the Learners.

4-Walls vs Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) ... and the winner is ...

For Soft skills training, it`s IDL. Soft skills being topics that are best learned when theory and classroom discussions are combined with hands-on skills practice.

Is that shocking?

There are two main reasons for this, but before we get to those, I want to describe the IDL learning environment that I'm talking about here. It's a fairly simple one ... web conferencing combined with a conference call.

First: Material is delivered in small chunks - 60 minutes max - with several days or a week between sessions. This gives learners lots of time to absorb ideas and practice skills before having to move on and learn the next segment.

In the traditional classroom environment, material is generally provided in much longer sessions - half-day, full day or even several days. A lot to absorb all at once.

Second: Experiential Learning Activities - ELAs - are tasks to be completed between sessions in the real world rather than via artificial activities like role plays in the classroom. Learners complete these exercises on the job, in dealings with real colleagues, prospects, or clients.

As an example ... Not long ago, I was teaching Consultative Sales to Customer Service staff for Agents of an un-named neighborly insurance company. These were folks who really liked customer service, but really did NOT like sales. And they didn`t see themselves in that role, although they are perfectly positioned to hear about sales opportunities during their `service`calls with Clients. They were not the most receptive Learners I`ve ever dealt with!

One session was about teaching your Clients how to provide you with valuable referrals. The assignment for the week was to phone 3 existing Clients and practice the skills we had covered. I told them to pick the 3 Clients with whom they had the best personal relationship, and to tell those folks that they were taking a course, and that they had to practice what they had learned, and ask if they would help. The phonecalls and emails that came in from those Learners were all pretty much the same ... Susan! It was amazing! I got 2 (or 3 or 4 or more) referrals from every person I called! This is great!

Try doing that in a classroom!

Next time ... some of the more general benefits of IDL vs 4-walls training.

Lean, Mean & GREEN

This is not the promised next post ... and I apologize for that. But something is bugging me.

Some of us remember back to the early 80's when the term Lean & Mean came into the language of business. I've been thinking about it lately ... and am wondering if anyone can tell me what the mean part was about. Please comment if you know!

Today's businesses need to be Lean & GREEN ... but do they also need to be mean? I need to know!

The Basics

Despite the rapidly growing use of various distance learning technologies, there is still a lot of 4-walls training going on in the corporate world. But in today's economy - AND with all the pressure on business to "Go Green" - it's definitely time for traditional training departments to begin exploring some of the other possibilities.

Those of us who have been around for a few economic cycles - or maybe more than a few - know one of the hard truths: in tough economic times, "Training" is often the first department to experience the downsizing / right sizing or whatever term is being applied to cutting jobs.

And we Trainers know another hard truth: when companies are reorganizing with smaller workforces, training is needed more than ever.

Corporate Training in a Lean Green World is here as a support and an idea sharing forum for corporate trainers & training departments. We'll talk about building a business case for shifting from 4-walls to virtual training ... about specific skills trainers need in this new environment ... about the proven superiority of IDL (interactive distance learning) over traditional 4-walls training, in some applications ... and more.

Next post ... the primary advantages of IDL over 4-walls.