Ruchira Bharadwaja:

How should organizations gear up to make people learn virtually and how digital learning should be structured so that we also know that people do not have the same learning styles?

 

Yogi Sriram:

See, one cannot recreate a classroom in a computer for sure. The ability to analyze and  deconstruct a particular problem. The ability to work with peers around you which is the typical Harvard business school type of learning. The ability to debate the physical presence of people around you to really look at the problem from different angles is something which is very difficult to recreate in the digital platform.

In fact it is said that 90% of our learning about each other is through nonverbal communication. What you can see of me right now is my head and part of my tee shirt and my hand going up and down. But of course my train track and stuff but what are you doing? And see of me is some of my body language and stuff that you're missing out.

So this is very very important in learning. Having said that, the good side about digital learning and the good side about e-learning is that you can reinforce and strengthen theory a lot.

Theory is from the word theatre. The players in the theatre, who are actors. So therefore knowing the theory is extremely important. So digital learning can be extremely useful in reinforcing one's theory. In India it's taboo to raise your hand and says teacher I don't understand or I don't agree. The good news is that when you're looking at digital learning especially if it's an interactive platform there is a lot one can do in terms of challenging assumptions and learning new things. Now the three four stages in terms of digital platforms. One is their stage which is even before LMS learning management system where courses are just loaded on the computer but could be useful. They may not be as engaging as interactive the platform but could be useful in theory. Then there is the LMS platform where you have dropdown menus and then you can from, Coursera or whatever, choose whether you want to get into decision making or whether they want to get into Kepner Tregoe or whatever technique you want to in detail. Now there are the LXPs  which are learning management platforms which are interactive and which also suggest to you about what new things you should learn.

So in my view learning through wired learning digitally is a very very interesting way