Millennials: Distance e-Learning vs Traditional Classroom

I recently had an opportunity to work with some high school students who were taking course work via distance learning. Here are some purely anecdotal observations along with a few possible implications regarding this limited sampling of Millennials. This may be of interest since these are some of the folks who will be entering the workforce in the next 2-7 years.

After retiring last year as a Learning & Development Manager with a large US financial institution, I've been keeping busy as a substitute high school teacher. Even though I was certified as a Social Studies teacher long ago, I am usually asked to substitute in a broad variety of subject areas. I was once even assigned to a Chinese class. Fortunately the regular teacher left work for the students to do independently, which is the common prep model for subs.

I was recently assigned to sub in a distance learning lab. As an Instructional Designer and former Learning (and e-Learning) manager I found it to be an interesting and eye opening experience. The students each arrived with their standard issue laptops in their backpacks. By the way, they use laptops in almost every class. Teachers often leave assignments on Moodle, which appears to be an effective communication tool for supporting instruction. In this distance learning setting, students logged in to their assigned modules, then completed and submitted them. Unlike traditional corporate e-learning, which is often built around interactions between learner and e-Learning program/course, high school distance learning work is submitted to a live instructional professional who may or may not be located in or even near the high school. The instructional professional scores assignments as they are completed, and then provides real time feedback. The students in my class were individually working on a variety of subjects including Math, Civics, Art History and Music Appreciation. I even had a few who were taking Latin. On a subsequent assignment I had an entire class of students who were taking Advanced Placement (AP) English online.

All this piqued my professional curiosity, particularly since I'd been reading about how Millennials appear to prefer online learning, though a widely reported study by Dan Schawbel of Millennial Branding disagrees. So I asked the students about their distance learning experiences and how they felt about using this approach. My first question was "why are you using this delivery method?" I was curious to know whether distance learning had been self selected or was it assigned. The common answer was that scheduling conflicts were the primary driver of distance learning as an alternative to classroom instruction. Students who needed a particular course, let's say in Latin, may have had limited availability within their particular class schedules. This appeared more common among Juniors and Seniors. So, taking a subject via distance learning offered a flexible option for scheduling it more easily. In the case of the AP students, they indicated that there was no available onsite classroom teacher. As a result their only option was to take the course online.

I asked how they liked distance learning compared to the traditional classroom setting, and would they have voluntarily selected it had there not been schedule conflicts or lack of a classroom teacher. The responses were interesting in that they centered around the particular subjects taken. For example, those taking math via distance learning generally did not like it. I asked why that was the case and the predominant answer was that it was "hard." I drilled down on what they meant and was told that it required a lot of work. That made sense to me since self-instructional methods do require a good deal of personal commitment for learners to be successful. What was also interesting to me about this response was that it was not dissimilar from what I had heard from corporate learners in the past when I'd asked about their preferences for e-learning vs classroom training. I often heard in business that e-learning was "OK" but that respondents frequently indicated their preference for classroom training. One inference that could be drawn from this is that some learners may find that classroom settings may be less personally demanding than e-learning. What I mean is that ILT may not require quite as much individual effort to listen to an instructor, ask real time questions and observe interactions with other learners than it might to work through the majority of the learning content by one's self. Additionally, the 'social' aspects of the classroom can be lacking in e-learning as are the verbal and visual cues that typically are present there. That was often cited by corporate learners as a key benefit of ILT in training. Of course there are ways to address this last point, by adding social media components for example.

As I said above, the high schoolers' opinions tended to center around subjects. Those students who were taking Art History or Music Appreciation indicated that they preferred distance learning. They said it was because they could move more quickly and at their own pace. They also referred to these as 'easier' subjects. Those who were taking Civics and languages seemed to fall into a middle ground where they neither preferred nor disliked distance learning. For them it seemed to be more clearly a means to an end. The AP students may have offered the most intriguing insight. Although they may as a group be high performing and motivated toward academic success (likely a plus for e-Learners), they expressed displeasure about having to take their class online. Since they were preparing to take the AP exam, in order to obtain college credit for the course, they indicated concern that they might not get all that they felt they needed online. They said that they would have preferred to have a classroom teacher who, they believed could better help them prepare for the AP exam.

So what implications for corporate training may we be able to draw from this admittedly limited anecdotal information? Well, while there seems to be a some perception in the learning field that Millennials and others nearing entry into the workforce may be 'wired' to prefer e-Learning over ILT, that preference seems to be conditional. As indicated by the students who I queried, preference may have a good deal to do with WIIFM (What's In It For Me). By that I mean that if learners see e-Learning or distance learning as a more efficient means to an end, then they may prefer those models, even to the point of demanding in business that they be available as options. This may be encouraging for e-learning and distance learning if leveraged wisely. For example, where a learner needs to master something that's relatively specific, as well as recognized by the student as essential to personal success, then (all other things being equel) the quickest path may be the preferred one. In those cases, short, targeted approaches may be wise, effective, and well received. That said, there continues to appear to be a preference for classroom training when learners, on a number of dimensions, perceive that setting to be more personally advantageous.

So, maybe we need to consider these variables before thinking that, because Millennials seem to have a great deal of technological savvy, they routinely prefer e-learning, distance learning, or online learning over more traditional training methods. Like so much else that we know about learning, whether it be for young adults in school or adults in the workforce, solid audience analyses that support tailoring methods and instructional platforms to our learners continues to make good sense.