The pandemic has unquestionably transformed the learning and development landscape, giving organisations a taste, albeit out of necessity, of a world in which people are able to learn exclusively online. Virtual classrooms are nothing new in the world of training and development, however, but the extraordinary circumstances of 2020 and 2021 have brought about a re-think. The well-versed trade-offs between virtual and face-to-face are now being discussed with fresh insight in human resources departments and leadership meetings across the globe.

Despite running myAko – the learning management system that had helped a myriad of businesses offer top tier training throughout the course of the pandemic – founder and CEO, Kevin Ashley, maintains an appreciation for face-to-face learning. He notes that trainers are able to read physical body language to calculate the trainees understanding; something typically lost during virtual training, when cameras are often off and focus is frequently drifting.

Kevin aims to provide training courses that find different ways to engage and interact with the individual learner; promoting concepts such as gamification. In this feature, Kevin would be delighted to discuss the pros and cons of both virtual and face-to-face workplace training; emerging technologies that he predicts will play a huge role in the future of online learning; the importance of investing in innovation to keep virtual learning engaging; and the necessity to retain face-to-face communication as newer technologies are introduced.