Staff at David Brown Gears tell us why they prefer blended training to traditional face to face courses

A group of learners at David Brown Gears were getting ready to take their final exam following a training course with Phil Davidson from our Yorkshire Productivity division. Phil had spent time taking the learners through a number of sessions and was on hand to see them over the final hurdle. We took the opportunity to speak to some of the learners and find out what they thought of e-learning, and how it improves on traditional training methods. A full transcription is available below the video.

John Henley: "John Henley, I'm 35 years old, I've worked for David Browns for almost 2 years now."

Keiran Blecher: "My name is Keiran Blecher, I've worked at David Browns for 18 months. I've done previous learning while doing my apprenticeship, being from the younger generation here I prefer using computers to paper based learning anyway.

I personally found that the e-learning aspect compared to traditional learning is a lot easier. It seemed a lot more beneficial having everything saved to a Hard Drive or on to the system rather than being sat having to receive hand outs, put them into folders, carry big bags around with you; Everything's there and it's quite easy for you to access. I just completed the exam and found it really good with the course content that we had, it gave us a great insight into the BIT training that we've been doing and helped a great deal.

I really liked it because it tailored the course to your standard, rather than just a broad standard; it dropped certain learning in if you were struggling, specific to your style of learning. It fitted you by testing you and then dropping extra learning in as and when it suited you."

John Henley: "It's fantastic, you had the 'radar diagrams' that show your weaknesses, and from that weakness it would drop in bits and snippets of work to do, and that would improve you in that area; that really did help."

John Henley: "In a normal classroom situation, it's just being passed out to everyone who's sat in that classroom. When you're doing e-learning you have your own personal netbook, you're doing your own personal reading and you're actually discovering the topics yourself, rather than just being taught as a mass and it being thrown out there."

Keiran Blecher: "Yeah, that's good as well because you can go at your own speed as well, so if say John was in front of you, it doesn't really matter because you're still at your speed (and can take your time) with your own section."

John Henley: "That's right, and our course tutor was accessible by email all the time, and I have emailed him once or twice and got a more or less instantaneous reply so I'd like to say thanks to Phil for that."