Rob Chapman’s "The e-learning diet: Not recommended for long term results" has caused a bit of a stir in the global eLearning community.  This very polarized article makes a lot of assumptions, basically comparing eLearning to a candy bar, versus a nutritious dinner.  It's more like apples to oranges when the real question is what fruit is best suited to the meal.

I have been doing knowledge & process technical writing for years, and have had, and run, a lot of online and instructor led training, and one rule is always true.  Garbage In, Garbage Out.  It's not the tools, it's how (and when) you use them that matter.

Instructor led training can be a real value add scenario. But only if the course and the instructor are high quality,and it's the best option for delivering the content.  ILT should be reserved when a high quality trainer who really knows the material is needed to deliver content that is not effective in an online format. 

My previous employer had a lot of instructional (ILT)  and online training (OLT).  I can tell you a lot of horror stories about both.

On the ILT, the highlights include trainers insisting on teaching clearly outdated and false information, students having to take over the class, "graduating" new hires who couldn't handle the most tasks, to dozens of hours wasted by me personally being in training that didn't teach me anything I already knew, when they weren't wasting my time flirting and joking and trying to impress the class with their superiority, with different information being delivered depending on who's facilitating the class. Let alone being trapped in a classroom with students with vastly different learning curves.  And that's all within one organization.

On the OLT side, dozens of courses with the correct answer being wrong, or outdated, spelling errors, nearly incomprehensible content not geared to the learners, the objectives not clearly defined, too interactive, not interactive enough.

That's not to say I haven't had wonderfully effective trainers, and haven't experienced high quality online training. The point is, ILT and OLT are just two tools in the Learning and Development (L&D) tool box. Not all tools fit all needs. And not all tools can be used effectively and the right time.   Has having to be in a classroom ever caused you problems on the job? It's happened to me more than once.

I can think of several scenarios that make eLearning a cost effective tool:

Confirmed Delivery. Have a message you need to share with your entire, global organization, and ensure they all get the message?  Simply load the video or presentation on the LMS, and you can quickly run reports on completion. 

Express Data Mining.  That 200 question evaluation that 345 people in 5 countries must complete, that requires scoring as well as reports on individual results, as well as comparisons between roles, individuals, regions, and countries.  Instead of two temps getting carpal tunnel recording the results, and having to tweak the results, a raw data report can be fed into a database and voila, it's done, no human errors in the recording, and ready to be massaged any way you want.  And it's neatly stored to be pulled out next year for the annual evaluation.

No Waiting.  Don't want to wait on having enough students to justify the time and expense of running classroom training?  Put it online. Not all information requires an interpreter, and most OLT is available over the internet, so you don't even have to be in the office to take it, you can be at home in your pjs.

Consistent, Accessible Content.  Many of us have to learn dry, boring stuff. But it's important to know.  It can be mind numbing sometimes to be stuck in a classroom to learn it, only to forget it when you're back in the real world. OLT can remain online indefinitely, allowing students to access at need.

To make a long story short, one size does not fit all, and no learning tool suits every learning need.