Computer Based Training

A significant proportion of the Leadership Development training that I am doing at the moment is Computer Based Training (CBT). My immediate reaction to CBT is negative. It strikes me as a very dull way of learning. My preferred learning styles are more traditional:

• Give me a book to read and I’ll read it and learn from it.
• Put me in a team of people working through a problem and I’ll learn.
• Put me in a traditional lecture with a good speaker and I’ll learn.

CBT doesn’t do any of these three things. I’ve done a number of CBT courses and they always go something like this:

• Picture on screen that is there for purely aesthetic reasons.
• Words on screen that are read by a voice that is not great. It’s easily understood, but it has no character.
• Every few seconds you are expected to press some form of “Next” button.

It’s quite a lot like having a dull presenter read you through a bulleted PowerPoint presentation.

Every now and then they try to spice it up by adding in a little quiz.

Knowing that I had at least 4 hours of CBT ahead of me I was determined to break through this problem and learn something. I wasn’t going to sleep walk through.

The answer was surprisingly simple in the end.

I envisioned the CBT as a dull speaker in a traditional lecture. I have a method for dealing with this situation – I take lots of notes normally in the form of mind maps. I’ll never refer to these notes ever again, but the very act of taking the notes keeps my brain awake and helps me to learn.

I discovered that being left handed was a significant advantage especially as I have grown up using my right hand for the mouse. This orientation meant that I could take notes with one hand while clicking “next” with the other.

tags: CBT, Learning