38 Teaching Minds
to train their employees in such things, because of some regulation or other, ask for it, and e-learning companies willingly build it.
Unfortunately, as my mother would have attested to, were she still around, I was born with off-the-scale honesty. I can’t build e-learning I know won’t work any more than I was able, when I was 5, to let my mother walk out of a store without paying (by mistake) without be- coming hysterical.
So, now Lam hysterical about fraudulent education and fraudulent e-learning—namely, courses that claim to teach subjects that alter the very nature of a person. Of course, such courses don’t say that is what they are trying to do, but it is pretty much the basis of courses about safe driving or drugs or sexual behavior, or how not to violate the law.
How is training about compliance an attempt to alter basic behavior?
Recently I was presented with an opportunity to teach integrity and compliance to the employees of a large company that bids on RFPs. The bidding process is part of a legal process and the company wants its employees to stay within the guidelines.
Fair enough. Makes sense.
Except, when you look at the guidelines, they include an array of rules spelled out in a complex document, typically a signed legal contract for potential bidders. To know those rules, one would have to read the contract. In effect, the company wants to train people to read, and pay careful attention to, the contract. The company wants to do this by putting employees in fictitious situations in which some- one has not read the contract and this failure to read causes serious difficulties for the company when the employee violates a rule he didn’t know about.
Much of e-learning is like this. You are the manager of a large project, which needs to finish on time, and is over budget. Do you:
steal money
lie about the time you have spent
tell the company it can keep the damn project
carefully explain to your superiors the problems that exist and let them decide
Do people learn from stuff like this? Of course not. But everyone feels better after producing it. At least I assume they do.
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