I’ve done a couple of courses recently. Both were potentially valuable and relevant, appropriate for my job, novel and focussed on topics I didn’t know much about, led by knowledgeable tutors who clearly had wide experience. Despite these positives, I can remember barely anything about them. Why? Maybe because, like so many things since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, they were remote and online.

We’ve all been there, sitting in front of a computer screen, watching a tessellation of equally disengaged faces as the facilitator valiantly struggles through a slide deck, pausing occasionally for the mandatory 14 seconds for a response while the audience squirms in awkward and embarrassed silence. Any questions? Only “when will this purgatory end?”

This is, of course, a manifestation of the format. Exploration of ideas is hard enough in a room full of strangers and online the social norms are much less rehearsed – while the hand raise function allows people to speak, the resulting contributions are often sequential non-sequiters rather than a flowing conversation. The increased need to chair online means all comment is routed via the facilitator rather than the group discussing together. And it’s too easy to appear to be focussed when in fact your attention is wandering, hijacked by so many other feeds competing for your digital attention: email, WhatsApp, the cat.

But I think there is more to it than just the mechanics of Teams or Zoom and the presence of distractions that make online learning so unsatisfying. We attach less meaning to an online course, and we therefore value it less. It’s a more disposable commodity

In his (excellent) book, Alchemy, Rory Sutherland, (vice Chair of marketing and advertising company Ogilvy) discusses creating meaning in a product, and from it value (hence Alchemy: creating something from nothing). Meaning can be created by the imaginative use of packaging or advertising, by association, by pricing, by brand identity, reputation and reliability, by overcoming barriers to market entry (whether artificially created or real) and in many other ways. One of the messages of the book is that this meaning creation does not have to be logical and frequently isn’t. Some of the reasons Red Bull is successful are precisely because it tastes weird, is expensive and comes in a small can. The demand for Verleben goods increases with increased price, going against all accepted economic theory.

He also describes the importance of internal meaning creation. These are the stories we tell ourselves about a product when we buy or use it, and again they need not be rational or true. Internal meaning is the basis of the placebo effect and explains a host of human preferences and contemporary consumerism. It’s why people who criticise the luxury goods market completely miss the point: these goods make their owners feel better for no other reason than because they are expensive.

Think about attending an in person course. It might be held in a nice venue. You might get lunch, or at least a coffee and a biscuit. You may need to travel or even stay overnight. You will certainly need to set aside more time to attend than the duration of the course itself. You are likely to dress smartly to make an impression. You may get to meet some interesting people, perhaps go for a drink or a meal after, discuss the content. All these things create both an external and internal sense of meaning and value in the course which will foster greater engagement in its participants (even if the content and facilitator is exactly the same its online version). By and large, when you attend an in-person event, you are signalling to yourself that it is important and deserves your attention*.

Now think of the last online course you did. Did you bookend it with other work, squeeze it in between other commitments? Did you sit in a shirt and pyjama bottoms (admit it!)? Did you spend time after thinking about it or discussing the ideas with family, colleagues or friends? What does that unconscious signalling tell you about how you valued the course? Might this explain in part why online courses are so awful: because we don’t signal their value to ourselves as we might and it’s therefore okay to be distracted and switch off?

Content and delivery are essential. If the facilitator is just reading out their slides, maybe with some additional content interspersed sparsely amongst the tedium, then there is nothing you can do to resurrect the experience. But assuming the online course itself if exemplary, here are some top tips to create a more meaningful experience.

1. Make time. Leave at least an hour before or after: a replacement for your travel time. Do something different in this time. Read a book. Listen to music. Anything but work. This is legitimate use of your time – you are mentally preparing for your course. If you have study leave, use it to take the whole day, or at least the morning or afternoon.
2. Dress up. If you’d wear a suit and tie for an in-person course, do that. If you’d do your hair or wear make-up, do that. The idea is to simulate the effort your’d take if you were physically in the room with the other participants.
3. Ensure the room you are in is quiet and free of distraction. Mute your notifications and turn off your phone. Clear your desk of anything not immediately relevant to the course. You wouldn’t use your laptop in a face-to-face meeting and you’d feel rude checking your phone. Apply those same standards to an online course.
4. Take notes and review them in the time you’ve set aside after the course, to embed your learning. If you can, discuss them, ideally with someone else who took part. Schedule this in with a post-course call.
5. Reward yourself with a treat afterwards. The more expensive the better. This is the equivalent of the course cost.

These things need not make sense. Why not sit in comfortable joggers? What’s a treat got to do with attending on online course? But that’s the point – meaning creation is subconscious and often illogical, as with Red Bull. 

If you find all the above far too much effort, you should consider whether the course is worth your time at all. Do you really want to attend? If you can’t create meaning or value, then your time may well be better spent doing something else.

As a final thought, perhaps meaning is one of the reasons mandatory training is so hated. No-one would deny that information governance, fire safety, infection prevention and control, safeguarding etc. are not rationally important but even ignoring the repetition (“Janet from admin has been asked by her neighbour to look up her colonoscopy results” – again!) when the compulsory completion of these courses feels like a meaningless exercise in corporate and regulatory risk management rather than something genuinely useful we are bound to resent the completion. 

There are lessons in Alchemy for designers and administrators of mandatory training. They can be offered online for completion late at night, in our underwear, squeezed in between appraisal paperwork and sleep; or they could be offered en-bloc, onsite, in work time, with colleagues, with coffee, with conversation. Which one of those best signals the importance of the course for the organisation? Which will be most meaningful for participants? Which one will have most impact?

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_{*this is why scanner manufacturers prefer show you their new scanner in Europe when there is one down the road  already up and running. With apologies to colleagues in the West Midlands or South Yorkshire, Barcelona or Seville will always feel more consequential than Birmingham or Sheffield (Spanish readers may disagree).}