The government’s attempts to stem the disastrous economic impact of Covid-19 has taken shape thus far in loans and furloughing offerings.
While there are many challenges to come in maintaining the country through the crisis, the larger looming shadow is the issue of restarting the economy. Couple this with predictions determining that up to 1/5th of all small UK business will go under this month, another form of support will be recommended and needed for many affected: the opportunity to retrain.
After the 2008 crisis, one of the key contributors to the steadying of the decline was the number of people entering training modules in colleges, places of higher education and work based training schemes.
Though obviously not an immediate concern for the government (FE and HE are notoriously a place where ‘savings’ are made) there will be no option but to focus fully and wholly on offering support to adults in our workforce who will need to retrain and up-skill for changing and developing roles with the very nature of day to day lives being fundamentally reframed, possibly forever.
Of course, online access opportunities will be found in abundance, but quality control and efficacy of what is available will come under the micro-scope as many items have been produced in knee-jerk reactions over the last month. The efficacy is as yet unfounded.
To be clear this is not a criticism of what training providers, schools and companies have tried to do, it’s a reminder that the goal of online learning is to ensure that the skill desired is understood, replicable and transferable. The focus so far has been to take content online, the future will demand that we actually take learning online with it, as there is currently a chasm between the two.
When building our company support system, Guide CORE, to avoid such pitfalls we knew we had to include the ability to track skill development in a variety of ways and the results have suggested positive outcomes thus far in tracking the development and training of 8000 teachers worldwide. But now our attention to turns to ensuring that our online offerings are adaptable to all company needs as well as our speciality area of ongoing teacher training.
For all modes and forms of training, the aspect of remote ease offered through online tools is invaluable and a game changer in the truest meaning of the phrase. And while some may question the learning efficacy of face to face training, and argue that the learning impact was never high anyway, it’s safe to argue that even if that was the case, the opportunity afforded us by everyone moving so much online, so quickly, we must make sure we don’t replicate the mistakes of face to face training and build a learning methodology that truly gives lasting learning to every learner.