Shefali Mathur

What is the Difference Between eLearning and eTraining? It’s likely that someone using eTraining and eLearning will tell you how convenient and impactful both these terms are. It’s true that in today’s “always-on” ecosystem, both offer multiple advantages to organizations as well as learners. But what is the difference between eLearning and eTraining? The difference between eLearning and eTraining is pretty much the same as the difference between ‘Training’ and ‘Learning.’ Both ‘training’ and ‘learning’ have 6 letters and caters to the same domain—education. Although these terms are used interchangeably, there’s a subtle difference between the two. Certainly, definitions to that difference differ based on whom you ask. Training is the process of giving knowledge and information, through written words, speech, or other demonstration methods to instruct a trainee. On the other hand, learning is the process of absorbing this information to increase the abilities and skills under different contexts. Learning is a long-term process that focuses on an individual’s ongoing development whereas training is a short-term skills-based process which may or may not involve lower levels of skill acquisition. Training and learning are inextricably associated, but are different features of an educational process, yielding different outcomes individually. While training focuses on educating the masses about performing specific skills or replicating desired behaviours, learning is more on the personal angle of how one absorbs, retains and implements information. Difference Between Training and Learning at workplace Training Learning A regimental process or tool that helps a person to learn and commonly occurs in a workplace. Acquiring skills and knowledge to have them handy from memory to have a sense of future opportunities and problems. Topics might include role-specific compliance topics, company orientation like skill-associated concepts and safety practices to perform some basic job functions. Learning involves problem solving, activities, reading, interaction, change, and being completely aware of the topic you are learning. It is the process of acquiring information and making sense of it. Learning is a process that continues during the employees’ work span while training makes up for a periodical part of it. It is important to note that learning continues even after training sessions. For instance, understanding the delivery process before undergoing the logistics training is important for a good delivery executive. However, the learning process would continue in the form of understanding routes, customers, and package handling (to name a few) from the executive’s end to ensure that the task at hand is completed successfully. What is eLearning? eLearning (or electronic learning) is about providing learning sessions via digital resources. Even though eLearning depends on formalized learning, it’s made available with the help of electronic devices like tablets, computers, and mobile phones or any device that has internet connectivity. eLearning makes things easy for learners to learn anytime and anywhere, with very few restrictions. What is eTraining? eTraining signifies training with an electronic platform. Organizations often use it to educate or teach employees without having the need to assemble them together at a specific location in a given time. This actually saves time, efforts, and organizational strife, ensuring that a huge or even complete workforce can be updated about the latest policies and procedures. Characteristic of eLearning Characteristic of eTraining eLearning is about equipping one to handle not just the current issues but also preparing him or her to come up with smart ways to tackle issues that might emerge tomorrow. eTraining is about reshaping the behaviour of a person by teaching him or her how to do things practically so that they can carry them out on their own. Focuses on acquiring knowledge so that it can be applied in unexpected situations. Focuses on developing certain skills that enable an employee to perform certain tasks, operations, or processes. A continuous learning environment inspires employees to grow and can yield great results for the organization. Continuous training helps employees brush up skills and keep up to date on any changes. How Do eLearning and eTraining Practically Differ in Implementation ● ● ● eTraining needs to be planned and tracked with rigour. The trainers or experts define the training topics, their sequence and the schedule. eLearning, in contrast, is more learner led. Courses on different topics are made available for the employees on demand and they learn at their own pace. eTraining needs to be part of the employees' planned work tasks and tracking the participation and assessment results need to be followed up by the manager. eLearning is more freewheeling and long term and needs the employee to proactively plan and pursue. Results from eTraining assessments can be easily correlated to the current job performance of your employees and need to be quickly fed back into the training plan. You should see results of eTraining on the ground quickly. In contrast, eLearning yields results over a long period. Is Learning the Outcome of Training? Wondering if your training sessions are even helping you achieve the desired results? To help you assess the effectiveness of a learning program, identify your career goals, jot them down, and follow measurable as well as clear learning objectives. A training program that is designed without considering the above factors might not lead to successful learning. In short, just because training exists, it doesn’t mean learning has effectively taken place. Even a few quantifiable measures like the number of participants attending a course, number of times a tutorial video has been played, number of times participants have downloaded a video, or number of participants passing a test, don’t actually correlate to learning. What matters is if a learner is cognitively active or not. Put yourself in a learner’s shoes and imagine what your learner might be actually doing during those training sessions. Are they passively sitting in the room, seeing their screens or randomly scrolling through the courses without any activity than to just click “Next”? If yes, then even you know how boring that could be. So how will it ever inculcate what you want to? Final Thoughts on eLearning vs. eTraining We will leave you with a small situation to think of to help you distinguish between learning and training. Recall a place where you’ve truly experienced an impactful and motivating learning culture. Perhaps, it was your favorite teacher from school, or an inspiring professor from college days, or a workplace that actually prepared you to meet the demands of your role, or a sports coach who taught you new skills to win. No matter what time it was, you might have felt encouraged, supported, mentally challenged, and even had the guts to take risks, which helped you succeed. So the question is simple here—do your training programs at the workplace create an inspiring learning environment? Or do they just exist?