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.