Why Skills Practice Beats eLearning: A Wake-Up Call for L&D Professionals

Many L&D teams continue to resort to eLearning for their upskilling and reskilling needs. It’s scalable. It’s consistent. It’s easy to deploy.

But there’s a catch.

eLearning—especially when it's passive and content-heavy—is not enough. If we want to build real capability in our organizations, we must move beyond content consumption and invest in skills practice.

In short: eLearning is not doing. And doing is what changes behavior, builds fluency, and creates value.

The Illusion of Learning

Traditional eLearning is often structured like a digital textbook. It scaffolds information, reinforces it with short quizzes, and moves learners from one topic to the next in a linear fashion. For example, in a course on project management, learners might move from budgeting to resourcing to scheduling to closing—ticking boxes and passing knowledge checks along the way.

How eLearning would typically be used to teach project management

On the surface, this looks like progress. People complete the learning. Learners gleaned some good points. L&D reports that “everyone took the training.”

But here's the problem: knowing isn’t the same as doing.

Without application, that knowledge sits idle. It fades. Or worse—it gives people a false sense of confidence. They’ve passed the quiz, but they haven’t tested their judgment in a dynamic situation. They haven’t made a decision under pressure. They haven’t seen how one choice can ripple across a project—or a team.

And in today’s volatile, AI-augmented world, that gap between knowing and doing can be the difference between mediocrity and mastery.

What Skills Practice Does Differently

Now consider an alternative: skills practice. This approach places learners directly into realistic scenarios where they must make decisions and experience the consequences of those decisions.

Take project management again. Instead of simply learning that "resource allocation is important," a learner might be asked to decide whether to divert a key team member from one task to another—and then watch as the timeline slips, morale drops, or another deadline is saved. In this skills practice, the learner quickly realizes that project management is not a checklist—it’s a system.

How Skills Practice teaches project management

In this system, every decision is interconnected. A trade-off in one area creates tension in another. Learners must balance cost, time, quality, and stakeholder expectations—not in theory, but in context. And when they fail? They learn more deeply. They reflect. They try again.

This is the kind of learning that builds capability, not just knowledge.

The Power of Systems Thinking

Skills practice unlocks what eLearning often cannot: systems thinking.

When people engage in real-time simulations or decision-based scenarios, they begin to see how their choices affect the larger system—how short-term wins can create long-term problems, how a quick fix in one area can cascade into another.

They move from thinking linearly (If I do X, then Y will happen) to thinking systemically (If I do X, then Y might happen, but Z could be impacted—and that, in turn, affects A, B, and C).

This kind of thinking is exactly what modern organizations need: agile, reflective employees who can see the big picture and navigate complexity with confidence.

Skills Practice Builds Thinking Abilities

What makes skills practice so effective is that it naturally develops the Core Abilities:

Critical thinking: Learners must assess information, evaluate trade-offs, and decide what matters most.
Creative thinking: They must generate options, adapt when their plan fails, and try unconventional solutions.
Systems thinking: They must consider unintended consequences, feedback loops, and long-term outcomes.

These abilities are what fuel Value Skills like problem solving, decision making, and collaboration—skills that AI can’t easily replicate, and that organizations desperately need.

What L&D Needs to Do Differently

If you’re in learning and development, it’s time to ask some hard questions:

Are we teaching content or building capability?
Are our learners experiencing the kinds of situations they’ll face on the job—or just reading about them?
Are we helping people connect knowledge to action, theory to consequence?

To move the needle, we need to:

Shift from “knowing” to “doing.” Stop measuring completions and start measuring application.
Invest in immersive practice. Use simulations, scenario-based learning, and problem-based activities that mimic real decision-making.
Teach thinking, not just tasks. Build the Core Abilities that help people navigate ambiguity and make better choices—especially when the path isn’t clear.
Reframe failure as feedback. Create safe environments where people can get it wrong, reflect, and try again. That’s where the learning really happens.

Final Thought: Practice Is the New Learning

The future of L&D is not more content. It’s better experiences. Experiences that challenge learners to think, decide, adapt, and grow.

In the age of AI, the organizations that thrive won’t be those with the best training libraries. They’ll be the ones with the most capable people—people who’ve had the chance to practice the skills that matter.

So, let’s stop confusing exposure with expertise. Let’s start giving people the opportunity to do the work before they have to do the work.

That’s not just better learning. That’s better performance.