Michael Allen's 2009 e-Learning Annual

4.6. THE BOTTOM LINE

Unlike Ruth Clark, I don't think that learning, "e" or not, is just a sterile thing whose elements can be easily maximized in a laboratory for efficiency and return on investment. Learning involves the context of what is being learned and of individuals who need to be motivated and who need to move at the speed of the real world.

Clark's perspective is that there are ways to make training that works along a "training for dummies" scenario (that is, use this and this and this and hold the mustard), based on a series of sterile, pseudo-scientific "controlled experiments" and someone's pet theories. That kind of training typically doesn't work. More and more, workers just refuse to do it, just as more and more of our kids are ...