Instructional design online training, elearning corporate education, instructional design training online, instructional design online learning. They’re all just words until you provide some context.

 

You’ve probably heard them all and chances are you understand their meaning, but that doesn’t mean your understanding is the same as someone else’s.

 

So, in the spirit of common understanding, here are some thoughts on the words we throw around in corporate online training.

Instructional Design Online Training

 

Instructional design for online training is the process of determine the methodology and tactics that will be most effective in teaching an elearning course. It takes into account the learning objectives,
audience, delivery method, source material and even the budget, and provides a framework within which the program will be built.

 

Of course, online training refers to training that is delivered online,
typically through the Internet, but it could be through a corporate network. In different contexts you may hear the same thing described as instructional design training online.

 

As a side note, you also hear computer-based training, or CBT, from time to time. Strictly speaking, in CBT the program isn’t presented online; rather it’s delivered on some kind of fixed media like a DVD, flash drive, or in the old days, a CD-ROM. Most often when we hear people talk about CBT they were around before the Internet
when we used CBT to describe any training delivered electronically.
Training or Learning?

Every once in a while we’ll run into someone who is passionately opposed to the use of the word “training” when talking about educating people. “You train animals; you educate people” is the phrase they commonly use.

 

We don’t really have a dog in this fight, but we do enjoy silly puns.

 

We’re fine with the notion of training people, but if you see it differently, who are we to resist.

But what we’re a little more invested in is the idea that there’s a difference between “training” and “learning”.

 

In our view, instructional design online training connotes passive students being led by someone to gain knowledge. On the other hand, instructional design online learning connotes students
actively participating in the process to gain knowledge by seeking it out. And the implication here is that the instructor is intentionally stimulating students to want to learn, rather than just presenting the
information and hoping they will absorb it.

At the end of the day, it’s semantics, and we don’t believe it’s critical that we all share the same opinion on every word we use to describe the processes involved in corporate education.

 

Instructional design online training, instructional design training online, instructional design online learning, training, education, learning…the words are less important than the common goal of improving knowledge, skill and performance by better equipping our workforce to perform their jobs.