My 3.5-Hour Descent into Online Training Hell - Read If You'd Also Like to Be Tortured
Today I had to endure the spine tingling horror of a 3.5 online training to be allowed to supervise a state wide assessment at the school at which I do relief teaching.
I had to listen to 15 minutes of her reading through what was coming up for the next 3 hours - which seemed to necessitate her reading slowly from the slides I was already given. Why couldn't they just give a document to us and say 'please read through the agenda so you are aware of what to expect from the afternoon'.
Thanks to Chat GTP for the image.
Already I was thinking - why didn't you prerecord it, with test questions, just like the Mandatory Reporting training? That way we could all work at our own pace, repeating it if we like. Sigh.
After a short run of explaining the roles, they give you a poll with multiple choice questions. Since they've given you all the slides in advance anyway, if you weren't listening (guilty - have I explained how bored I am?) you can just quickly scan the missed information and have a go at the poll. If you don't get it right, it doesn't matter - they'll just corrected you. Are people idiots or what? Do they really have to ask these stupid comprehension questions?
Twenty minutes into the training I was wondering how humanity has got to this point. I'm not the first person to wonder this, and to wonder at the horror of bureaucracy. Think Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Delegates. Personal. Authorisation. Photographic identification cited. Nominated. Document secure storage confirmation.
Language like this makes me feel squeamish.
45 minutes in I'm horrified to have listened to her READ through how to check the delivery for ten minutes and then be shown a video on the same thing. Why didn't she just show the video?
It also makes me annoyed that people get paid for this rubbish, and after all their pedancy, still stuff it up, like when they provided this image for the History Exam. Poor kids did just not know what to do with that robot. These people had one job. One.
Look, I understand these processes have to be done, otherwise the assessment wouldn't be secure or viable, and leaves things open to mishap such as cheating, missed papers and so on.
I'm just not bureacratically minded, and whilst it might totally be something that excites you, I honestly feel like part of my life has just been zapped from me.
And somehow, I have to endure a day of supervision.
Honestly, you can't pay me enough to find any satisfaction in this role.
Does this kind of admin make you excited? Or do you loathe it as much as I do?
With Love,
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I hate that, too.
haha nice right?
That the educators of education need to be educated themselves on how they can educate others ;)
Presenting is a skills. Not everyone has it
One of my good friends designs online training modules. He works for a NDIS provider and designs their stuff. He's sent me screenshots of some of the random answers he puts in as obvious plants as the WRONG answer, and if I was doing the courses, I'd probably pick those answers, knowing they were wrong, just for the laugh.
I think anyone stupid enough to pick those options in actuality shouldn't have gotten through the recruitment process at all.
I think I will always prefer the classroom method of learning.
Ha good one. There's a delight in putting in the wrong answers as I started to do for a laugh too when I realized they weren't even paying attention. Sigh.
Computer says no
god, the horrors of a dying age. it's somehow all the more terrifying when it involves human beings who seem to have no objection at all to "the normal way things are done".
why did we come here? it all feels so mental.
been feeling a similar thing all day, everything sorta feels pointless here in these last days of our house sit. but reading this cheered me up somehow.
thanks
You know it kinda blows my mind. What is it about humanity that makes us need to do this? How did we get here?
A friend just sent me Kae Tempest, you might have heard of them over there but they are new to me. A lot of their lyrics are resounding with me today. Beautiful.
If you haven't heard it, you might find a little joy in her album The Book of Traps and Lessons.
have not heard of them, will check it out thanks.
the most all encompassing attempt of an explanation is the yuga cycle idea.
IF it is true we literally just came out of the 6000 year dark age stage of consciousness. some of us can just see beyond the confines of our age and feel these conventions are both outdated and anti life even.
it's so stagnant it's palpable. just like all the years of wasted life time in schools. what a kali yuga concept it is, mandatory sitting for hours to be indoctrinated in theory. rather than actively inquiring and learning in practice.
https://www.bibhudevmisra.com/2025/03/four-signs-that-yuga-shift-is-already.html
Ill
If the bureaucrats don't give themselves so much mundane stuff to do, they'd be out of a job wouldn't they?
The worse insult is that they get paid more for it too!!! And they know less.
Lol must really be a boring section.
All your mind will be saying is "can we just get this done like.... fast forward"
Exactly! Like hell!
What's worse than taking an online class? Teaching one.
My husband used to do in person technical training, then one day (before COVID, so we can't blame that) when webinar software became good enough, someone decided they could charge the same amount of money, but don't have to pay for the instructor to travel (with all those expenses). So, they switched to online.
Employers loved this, too, so that their employee didn't have to travel to where the class was, and they could be "available to work."
My husband HATES it. He says that he never knows if anyone is even there since employers are always calling the students away to do work. Everyone has to mute themselves so that their background noise doesn't bother everyone else, so unless someone unmutes to say something, there is no interaction. Even when he asks a question, most of the time no response.
At least my husband gets good reviews like, "Wayne made a boring topic enjoyable." I think that's why he likes to train in person, because he will at least know that when he tells a joke and they laugh that someone is listening.
He doesn't "read the slides" though.
Oh God you know at first online was kinda okay as you could do it from home... Yippee. But then we all got stuck in the hell of it. So dull. I used to teach a little online during COVID and no one ever seemed to listen. Just awful. Your husband though, sounds like I wouldn't mind his classes.
I may be a bit biased, but I have heard my husband teach (he's also a pastor, so he preaches, too), and he is a good teacher. He's had companies ask for him to teach a course, and no one else. So, he must be a good teacher.
He does thrive on interaction, though, so when he does get an in-person course, he's very happy! He says there's nothing like seeing a face, which shows if they are struggling or if they get it. And he loves to see the face when they go from not understanding to finally getting it.
These people are adults learning something for their work, but it's like they are afraid to ask questions (do they think they'll look stupid?). When it's in-person, he can tell by their faces that they need help, and he'll go and offer it. Online, he has no clue what's going on in their heads, since he doesn't see them.
This is a real rant 😂
I could imagine how you tried to be patient, despite how dry and boring it was for you.
I enjoyed reading this article 😊.
Those trainings are really dumb lol they serve little to no purpose besides just checking a dumb box to say they were done. When someone sits there and drones on about it too it makes it worse.
Glad you survived!
I get this. I am taking a conventional pathology course, and it is read to me by a bot. Module after module, an hour here, two hours there, over the course of nearly a year now. It's torture. The final exam to pass is open book, taken from our regular self-assessments, searchable docs. I don't really have to learn a dang thing, This is what passes for learning now - just look it up. Horrible. The test for having your auto insurance discounted - same thing. No way to speed through any of it, you must sit there, for both of these, and hit forward to progress to the next screen. All to learn zilch. Scary.
When you think fast and know a lot about many things it's a fucking insult to be forced to sit through such shit, I agree. It's inhuman. Amd to add insult to injury an AI can do most of the bullshit they're still asking us to do.
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