Instructor Led Training is on its way out?

Hi folks, I fielded an interesting querry today from a friend of mine and right away I realized what a great topic it was for our blog. The question I fielded was this, "is instructor-led training on its way out?" I guess with all the elearning going on these days, some people might come to that conclusion but the reality is no, instructor-led training is not on its way out. 

Generally, when you start elearning you quickly discover that "what's nice to know becomes elearning and what's need to know remains instructor-led training." That is, do we need to drag bodies into a classroom to deliver information that they might just as easily and more conveniently acquire from an elearning course? Absolutely not, lets bring them to class only when it's absolutely necessary. For example, lets assume you just trained a newly promoted manager of a car dealership how to read a financial sheet. Would you want him loose in your dealership without checking his competence face to face first. I don't think so--therefore, we bring the candidate into instructor led training after he's already completed the initial elearning training and check to make sure he has the necessary skill you hoped for. The initial elearning course delivers all the background information for the student and helps to make the in-class training more efficient by allowing the in-class instructor to target key areas to check competence and thereby not wasting time on extraneous details. This improves the quality of the in-class training and almost always reduces the amount required.

In a nutshell, elearning has become a great adjunct or supplement to hands-on instructor-led training but it is by no means going to eliminate instructor-led training any time soon.

Hope this helps!

Paul