Education versus Training
Some stray thoughts, in no particular order, gathered over time, on the differences between education and training, from the lens of custom content creation for diverse companies across the world.
Education (even vocational education) is far transfer; training is near transfer. Hence the obsession of training with application (“I don’t care what they learn; I’m only interested in how they do their jobs better”), with reducing time to competence (the Holy Grail of training), with rapid development (they need everybody to be more competent now).
Education emphasizes first principles; training emphasizes application.
Education focuses on building the mind; training on building skills.
Education is a social act (or at least started off as; for-profits and educational publishers might prove otherwise); training is a cost center, notwithstanding all the talk about Return on Investment. While on RoI, measuring the efficacy of both education and training is equally difficult; and is more elusive than we’d like to accept.
Most training is communication; hence the pizzazz. Presentation style is more important than instructional rigor. Education, for the most part (refer the parenthetical point on the social act above), is content-driven. Consequently, the subject matter expert is the most important person in education; is the most dreaded in training.
Most training is company-specific; hence, not easily transferable from one job to another. Most education would be transferable.
Education has to sell the content; training has to sell itself.
The learner for both education and training could be unwilling. But the learner for training is allowed to voice his thoughts and get the training / trainer changed. The onus of making training succeed is on the trainer or the organization; in education the learner takes a higher responsibility. As a corollary, if you don’t do well in education, you fail; if you don’t do well in training, the training failed.
Training gives you the fish; education teaches you to fish.
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4 comments:
A very nice writeup on our traditional education system viz-a-viz corporate training system. However, isn't education and training ssupposed to be inter-twined? I mean, can knowledge be ever be complete without application? Similarly, is acquiring a skill possible, without learning the basics? However, I do agree that what you wrote is the REAL scene.
Thanks, Sandipan. Education and training can be intertwined but they are not as a rule so. Application may require knowledge but knowledge can be complete without application. The levels of definition of knowledge and application can be contested though.
Great post, Geetha. Training is a different beast than learning and often requires different tools and approaches. To Michele Martin's recent post about the workplace being largely about web 1.0 vs. web 2.0, I think this difference is at the crux of it. Web 2.0 tools help facilitate learning. Organizations need to train employees to do specific tasks.
Thanks, Cammy. And thanks for dropping in.
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