On Line Courses

Seems I can’t get away from on-line courses. The kind your employer makes you take.

At work, we’re getting a new sales aid. We’re currently using Salesforce and will be switching to ConnectWise. I’ve been assigned twenty classes to take. Twenty SALES classes. Oh, the agony!

I’ve already taken six of the courses and each time I start a class, the same thing happens. My eyes glaze over and I nod off to sleep. Not helpful when you’re tested at the end, let me tell you. And yes, I’m not only tested, I must pass at 80% or better. Considering there are 10 (or fewer) questions to each class, that’s crappy. If I don’t pass (which happened in one case already), I must take the class again. If I thought it was boring the first time around, you can imagine what I thought the second time.

So now I try to take notes. I’m usually a horrid note taker (and I tend to miss important stuff as I’m writing – but hey, if I’m asleep I’m missing it already), but it helps keep me awake and hopefully hit on key points that are used in the tests. It didn’t help as well as I thought. My 70% failure only went up to 80% passing. Which means instead of getting 3 questions wrong WITHOUT notes, I got 2 wrong WITH notes (see what I mean about note taking?).

I am not a sales person, but I work in sales. In fact, I support the sales department (with my brilliant Access and Excel Skills). I don’t do “sales” stuff. I don’t sell anything & I don’t take orders. I report data (which really isn’t all that different than when I was a cost accountant – I just reported different data). So far only one class I’ve taken has hit on anything I do. It was the one class I actually stayed awake for.

Still, I hate on-line classes. You know why? Because you don’t learn anything! At least in college, you had homework assignments that repeated what you learned in class. Sure, I passed these on-line classes, but I don’t think I could tell you what it was I learned. It never had enough time to sink in. If anything, they will only help me when we get the software and I can say “Yes, I remember seeing that icon, but I have absolutely no idea what it does!”

So, have you had to take on-line courses for work? Do you enjoy them? Hate them like I do? I’m curious. Am I the only one who feels this way about them?