Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce [Hardcover]

Roger C. Schank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997

Through the use of entertaining and amusing stories, this work illustrates the research and tools needed to create highly effective new learning systems. It answers such questions as why you can't learn when you're bored to death, and how and why the knowlege gap is growing.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Training Programs Proven by Anderson Consulting and Others to Excite Your Workers! "Everyone wants learning to be their competitive advantage. Roger Schank knows how to design it." -Julie Anixter, Vice President, Training and Learning Systems, Anixter, Inc. The majority of today's corporate training programs are weak, ineffective, costly, and hated by the employees they are supposed to train. Worst of all, they are boring. Visionary educator Roger Schank has a better way, one that has produced exceptional performance increases throughout all levels of employees. In Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce, this world-renowned professor and consultant demonstrates his "learning by doing" programs through actual examples and entertaining case histories. Schank's computer simulation and role-playing scenario methods have helped companies as diverse as Andersen Consulting, Ameritech, AT&T, Target, and Bennigan's to: Save training expense, not to mention the incalculable cost of poorly-trained employees; Use exciting computer-based training to escape "read and memorize" programs of the past; Teach employees to make discoveries on their own, and train themselves; Allow employees to fail in training exercises, and learn from those failures; Broaden training goals and objectives to keep from limiting what is learned; Let Roger Schank's Virtual Learning give you a head start on tomorrow's computerized employee training procedures, raise your staff's product knowledge and excitement to new levels, and get a jump on your competition in today's ultra-competitive marketplace.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill; First Edition edition (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786311487
• ISBN-13: 978-0786311484
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,626,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Fine Starting Point, June 26, 2002

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce (Hardcover)

I have not found any virtual learning book to be fully satisfactory, but this one provides a very fine start. I completely agree with the author's opening premise that organizational learning is adrift and largely bankrupt intellectually (and what is being spent in dollars is largely being spent in a mindless and counter-productive fashion).

The seven core ideas that I drew from it are:

1) Learn by doing. Training must be fully integrated into day-to-day responsibilities and available on the fly.

2) Expert Modeling. Web-developers, multi-media experts, all these folks are *useless* unless there is a cadre of proven subject-matter-experts who can be used to devise the substance of the training in an interactive fashion.

3) Survey before modeling. Apart from having experts integrated into the design team, a larger survey of experts prior to the module design is recommended.

4) Embed failure. The author is a leading proponent of the idea that the best lessons are those that are learned from failing. They are, in a word, memorable.

5) Provide options. Building on the learning that occurs from failure, the author proposes strong emphasis on options menus that allow students to branch in different directions immediately after the failure.

6) Include ambiguity. The author suggests that avoidance of the "school solution" is helpful--there should be no one answer, but degrees of answer.

7) Prototype and test draft module. As obvious as it might seem, the author's experience suggests that too often distance learning modules go straight into production without being tested on real students, something he considers essential.

Missing from the book, which could do with a new edition, is a directory of virtual learning success stories apart from the author's own experience, and of virtual learning tools. I would be especially interested in an appendix with a cross-section of URLs for successful distance learning examples across the various university degree areas as well as in vocational training.

The book did inspire me to conceptualize virtual training and distance learning as a new means of managing corporate knowledge. I am very disenchanted with the years of nonsense coming from those championing "knowledge management" and as my own interests have moved toward collaborative work, external source exploitation, and organizational intelligence, I have come to the conclusion that a good strategy for any organization interested in perpetuating and leveraging its internal knowledge would be to take a distance learning approach that integrates a weekly open source intelligence report on the state of the knowledge segment; a distance learning menu related to that knowledge segment; an expert forum where completion of the distance learning is required before participating; and a virtual library of internal and external sources structured for efficient use. The next step would be to expand the circle and share the burden with other organizations, ultimately creating an information commons for that specific knowledge segment.

This is a good book, and helpful to anyone wishing to reflect on how the future calls for continuous education, learning by doing, and doing by learning.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring glance into the potential of targeted training., May 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce (Hardcover)

Before I read this book, I was becomming sadly disheartened with my profession (training) - knowing that training had the power and potential to be a real driving and competitive force but still watching as the majority of businesses diseminate the same old traditionally facilitated delivery courses that are consistently weak in meeting expectations of both employees and business. Then I picked up Schank's book and my vision was articulated, my hope reborn! Schank specifically discusses the power of the new simulation technology, throwing away stone age mantras of the profession (i.e. different people learn differently) and lays new and relevant foundations. Highly recommend this for any trainer who longs to make a difference in his/her work environment.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Pamphlet and a Sales Brochure, August 7, 2000

By 

Jyrki J.J. Kasvi - See all my reviews

This review is from: Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce (Hardcover)

From a technological perspective this is a book. But judged by the content Virtual Learning is more like a pamphlet Schank has used to publish his set of theses. And just like those nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, Schank's theses question established truths. Instead of the role of faith in salvation, Schank questions truths about how people learn and how they consequently should be trained.

On the other hand, Virtual learning is a sales brochure of the services Roger Schank's company, Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) offers for organisations. For example, the cases offer convincing references of satisfied customers of ILS. A cynical reader might suspect that only the successful projects are included and the lukewarm cases forgotten. Had Schank included two or three cases outside his own business history, the book would make a much better case.

Schank tries to apply his own theses in this book. Instead of providing lists of things to remember he tells stories and presents experiences from the field. He does not give ready-made answers but encourages readers to try things out themselves. Yes, Virtual learning is an antithesis of a traditional coursebook.