WBT or ILT?

Nineteen-year-old Mike deftly maneuvers his mouse with the fluidity of a seasoned pro. He’s just finished a PowerPoint presentation on an Interactive Marketing Plan (IMP) that he has been asked to create for a fictitious Japanese electronics company that is planning to launch a new product line in his home state California. The presentation is to be uploaded on the World Wide Web and submitted for assessment to his instructor at Manchester Metropolitan University, which is several miles away.

Welcome to anytime, anywhere Web-Based Training (WBT). Video conferencing and satellite unlinking have made it possible for students in Mongolia to swap information with their peers in Switzerland while their instructor might be working somewhere in Honolulu.

Educationists the world over are very excited about this new medium, which holds vast potential in at least four critical areas: preparatory courses for board and entrance exams; professional degree/diploma courses; courses designed for business professionals and the self-employed; and modules for in-house corporate training.

Although Instructor-Led Training (ILT) may still offer all the benefits of a “live” instructor who is in the classroom to troubleshoot students’ queries, WBL has emerged as a more convenient, modern-day tool for busy, working professionals who want to follow a flexible learning schedule.

If ILT relies heavily on the teaching style and knowledge base of an instructor, then WBL offers cutting-edge technology that makes learning a more exciting experience for the student. And, with the development of multiplatform technologies and capabilities, WBT has in fact become more interactive than ILT.

Where ILT does score is with “peer learning.” But even here, with the synchronous WBT model, an instructor is able to “broadcast” his or her lectures through a teleconferencing facility or a Web-based audio system while a group of students are logged on to the lecture from a local studio. The students, wearing headsets, sit at their terminals and are connected to the instructor via a phone line. The instructor’s image is available over a video link, so that even if a student raises his or hand, the instructor, who might be sitting miles away, will see it. The students also have the option of connecting with their peers through the chat window.

Other ways of sustaining this peer element with WBT is to hand out projects to groups of three or four so that students are not completely overwhelmed by the novelty of the situation. This has helped plug the normally high dropout rate seen in correspondence courses (50 to 60 percent); WBT programs have a low dropout rate of 10 to 15 percent.

The strongest argument in favor of distance learning programs, of course, is their cost-effectiveness. WBT may be front loaded—there is a lot of investment in the development of the technology tools—but once this hump is crossed, the actual deployment of the program is easy. In contrast, ILT is back loaded. Another way to establish the cost-saving aspect of WBT is to quickly compile the average or cumulative time spent to complete an online program—a very easy task for a central computer—and compare this with the time away from work needed to complete an equivalent classroom course.

In many countries, a WBT program costs just one-third of the cost of an on-campus program. With bandwidth expansion and satellite unlinking, delivery is only going to get better with time. Because WBT requires very little physical infrastructure (in terms of schools and libraries), it holds tremendous potential for literacy drives in developing countries.

Does this mean that WBT will one day completely replace ILT? Rest assured that this will never happen. ILT will remain dominant for teaching students in primary grades, when children require individual attention by their teachers. However, most adult learning will shift to the WBT domain. This will happen not just because WBT is more economical, but also because WBT is a more exciting and convenient learning tool. And, in welcoming WBT, we’re looking at a future that has already arrived.

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