When it comes to the education of our kids, there is a common belief that large classroom sizes do not work. The rule of thumb is that the smaller the class room size, the better the education – for more customised and individualised tuition and support.
Here are some statistics from ACARA that show the teacher student ratios in Australia.
The same principle holds for Adult Learning.
Large classes are impersonal and hard for the student to engage, to get value and to learn.
When it comes to ‘older’/traditional forms of outplacement, career transition support, especially with middle management employees, it’s been common practice to squeeze employees into larger impersonal workshops conducted in a classroom setting at an outplacement office.
But just like the kids find, adults don’t learn all that well in that set up.
Importantly, they also have a higher need for ‘subtle’ help – due to embarrassment (they might not have needed had to look for a job for a while and do not have contemporary job search skills); or due to stigma; or other reasons.
I’ve recently spoken with at least 20 people who lost their jobs – all of whom were given the opportunity to take up outplacement – but chose not to – due to it being in a workshop/classroom situation.
While 6 in 10 took up the offer, a disturbing 9 in 10 dropped out just after 1 workshop/classroom experience.
Instead, we have found the take up of online course work – covering career transition and coaching – is close to 85 percent… but importantly, 80 percent of people continue to complete their e-learning online modules.
Just because you’ve done something in the past, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do now or in the future.
A newer paradigm is worth considering!
The huge growth of e-learning – whether its Udemy, MOOCs, CPDLive or YouTube all are proof that people want to learn in their own time, conveniently.
And that includes career transition support and outplacement.
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