Face-to-face or distance training: how to guarantee the rise in skills?

When training its employees, the question arises of the modality, of how: face-to-face or remote? We will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches with the aim of: pedagogical effectiveness, In other words, each hour spent in training has an impact on the employee's practices in their professional context.

Setting the course through a competency diagnosis

Before choosing one or the other modality, it is essential to analyze the real needs of employees. A sales manager, for example, might notice that his teams have excellent product knowledge but are flawed in their negotiation technique.

What is the status of your learners? What actions do they find it difficult to perform in their daily lives? It seems obvious, but these steps are often underestimated or carried out superficially. To do this, you can rely on the recommendations of evaluation science, docimology, in our dedicated article.

Armed with the answers to these questions, you can then design tailor-made training to address this key competency in a concrete and practical way, rather than wasting resources on generic modules that are less relevant.

Distance learning so that everyone can move at their own pace

For a long time, distance learning was seen as a top-down format, reserved for theoretical learning. That is no longer true today thanks to numerous technological innovations that have taken place in recent years: AI or gamification personalize learning and engage learners. The distance is now just as effective only face-to-face, as long as it is well designed.

Some examples of high-impact remote formats:

• Of practical cases to be analyzed with automatic correction
• Of AI chatbots that answer learners' questions on a given topic
• Of experience sharing videos featuring peers

Face-to-face to act on the ground and build relationships

Investing in Face-to-face, it means prioritizing face-to-face interaction, where the trainer can immediately answer questions and adapt his speech to the reactions of the learners. This format also allows learners To exchange spontaneously with each other, to perform professional actions or to manipulate tools.

The costs of a face-to-face device and the restrictions on the use of time remain a disadvantage, but don't forget about informal on-the-job peer training.

Some examples of face-to-face formats that make a difference:

• Of Group role-playing that reproduce work situations
• ofthe peer mentoring to perform a business task
• Of Challenges To be solved in a group

Situation: the key to pedagogical effectiveness

Cognitive science identifies an essential ingredient for each of these formats to take learners from theory to practice: they are situations, close to the professional reality of learners. We detailed their potential in our article Interactive simulation: an apprenticeship in which you are the hero that we invite you to read.

Good news, The simulation lends itself to both face-to-face and remote! To succeed in a scenario, it is essential to accurately reproduce the work context. This can be translated into the use of realistic scenarios or case studies specific to the learners' industry or profession.

Precise and tailored feedback must also be given to the learner when they perform an action: this is what will allow them to reinforce or correct their practices. We explain the art of feedback in more detail in our article. Learning by trial and error: unleash the potential of feedback on our blog.

Educational AI: to create scenarios en masse

The development of scenarios requires both in-depth business knowledge and a master's degree in pedagogy : two skills that few people master simultaneously. Even if you have such a 5-legged sheep in your business, the process of creating a scenario can be time-consuming.

That's where our Educational AI intervenes: based on your raw documents, it allows you to create high-impact e-learning 10x faster and to increase the learning transfer of your learners. To give you a good overview of what this can mean, we invite you to consult this detailed example for boost the effectiveness of distance learning for sales forces, also available on our blog.