Classroom Training Isn’t Dying. It’s Being Misunderstood.
- Kketan Amarnath Waghmare
- Jan 13
- 2 min read
Every few months, the same question resurfaces—usually right after someone introduces a smarter LMS, a new AI-powered platform, or a slicker learning video.
If everything can now be learned online, what’s the point of the classroom?
Let me answer that with one moment from a shipboard training session.
Everyone in the room had already completed the POSH online module.
Videos watched. Scenarios clicked. Quiz passed. Box ticked.
So I didn’t start with policy.
I asked a simple question.
“If you like someone onboard, will you ask that person out?”
The room froze.
Stares. Nervous laughs. Shy, uncertain smiles.
“I don’t know…”
“Maybe…”
“Wouldn’t that be harassment?”
People were trying to say the right thing—trying to be safe, sound aware, and look engaged—because this was, after all, a POSH session.
But no one was sure.
And that uncertainty was the lesson.
We stayed with it.
We spoke about context.
About hierarchy on ships.
About living and working in the same space.
About how a question feels different when the person asking also influences your appraisal, your contract, or your next posting.
Then I asked something else.
“If you’re not a perpetrator—and you believe you never would be—why do you need to know POSH?”
Silence.
When I said, “Because you could be a potential perpetrator without intending to be,” something shifted.
Not defensiveness.
Awareness.
That pause—that realisation—is what classroom training creates.
An online module can communicate information.
But it doesn’t sit in uncertainty.
It doesn’t slow thinking.
It doesn’t let understanding unfold.
That’s why classroom training hasn’t been replaced.
It’s just been misunderstood.
Classrooms aren’t for content delivery anymore.
They’re for sense-making.
For leadership, hospitality, people skills—and yes, POSH—learning still happens best in rooms, not just modules.
So no, classroom training isn’t going anywhere.
It’s simply being reserved for the conversations that actually change behaviour.
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