Virtual lessons from across the pond

The USA has as many domestic flights as the rest of the world put together.  Project meeting with customer?  Flight. Project management training course?  Flight.  Travel budget and carbon footprint?  High.  So it’s no wonder the Americans have been at the forefront of finding project management training alternatives.  But what can we learn – good and bad – from their experience when considering training in the UK?

Project Training Options

The backdrop is good traditional project training such as PRINCE2 is pretty effective: studies show that lecture-based instruction gives an information retention rate of between 5-10%, while interactive and discussion-based activities, such as the average PRINCE2 course, improve it to 40-50%.  Hence the holy grail for Virtual is to keep that, then add the learn-anywhere benefits of eLearning, for the best of both worlds.

Virtual = Efficiency

Since the advent of virtual the big benefit for American companies has been the travel saving – both time and money.  In a much smaller country we are never far from PRINCE2 courses, so the travel saving can be much less.  But if you are posted on customer sites, including overseas, the benefit of doing PRINCE2 training from anywhere is very real.

The time benefit has also been taken up in a different way that is very relevant to us.  With virtual training ‘modules’ typically taking only 3-4 hours it is much easier to schedule PRINCE2 training alongside business-as-usual – no need to draft in someone to cover a week’s absence.

Prevalence of Virtual Learning

So as Virtual learning matures in the US when is it most often used?  As an alternative to PRINCE2 and other popular and specialist classroom project management courses it is proving to be a serious alternative.  Virtual is also increasingly being used for short learning ‘nuggets’ – short sessions that couldn’t be justified as a classroom training session.  As an example, imagine you are a PRINCE2 Practitioner facing a major project change of scope and you want to refresh yourself on best practice first: attending a two hour virtual training session that allows expert tutor led discussion of applying PRINCE2 theory to real-world situations is so much better than just reading the manual.

Conclusion

Amidst the hype some perspective is needed.  The majority of PRINCE2 courses are done face-to-face, something that is unlikely to change much in the future.  Where Virtual is finding its place is to compliment classroom training.  Out-of-hours courses, bite sized learning subscriptions and specialist courses that only run in one location all have a clear case for being better done virtually.

About the Author: This is a guest post from Jamie Simpson on behalf of QA, who are experts in Prince2 training in project management

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