My brother makes these courses for a living. If you think they’re boring, imagine having to make them.
I’m with you. Much rather have something written which I can go ahead and read at my own pace.
A while back, due to a spell of injury-induced unemployment, I tried to sign up for basic computing course, figuring if I was stuck sitting on my arse, may as well at least get a certificate out of it, as I had been asked for something along those lines from a job.
Anyway, it turned out to consist of unskippable videos where not only was it all narrated, but every single section included having to watch an animation of the cursor s…l…o…w…l…y move from the bottom middle of the screen to the relevant towards the relevant button every single time it said to click on something. It was a good 10 seconds after the droning voice had said to click on ‘Save’ or whatever that the cursor made it there, and it would happen multiple times per slide- you had to then actually click to progress to the next segment, but you couldn’t move the cursor until the animation had finished, and it was already on the right button. As soon as you clicked, the infernal cursor respawned mid bottom of the screen.
I was about ready to gnaw off my own arm after the first hour, and grew to hate that cursor with a passion. I did not complete the course.
This reminds me of way back in the old days when I was at university. I was taking a Shakespeare course, and was tasked with reading a bunch of his play. Just reading was a major slog, so I came up with a solution. The uni library had listening booths and LP recordings of play performances. I set the playback to 78 (us old timers know what that means) and read along. It was a useful way to get through the material more quickly, and the performances helped with understanding the meaning, even though they sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks (another old timer reference).
I have to do about dozen of these things every year, and it’s the same dozen videos every single year. It’s like that old worn out filmstrip that a substitute teacher keeps showing you over and over again because the teacher didn’t leave any instructions.
Sometimes there’s a button you can press that will give you a transcript of the entire training, so you can just let the video play while you do something else then come back and just check the transcript for the answers to the idiotic “were you paying attention?” test at the end.
If you’re really lucky it’s one of the kind where there’s a quiz at the beginning that will let you skip sections of the training if you get the answers right. Some quick Googling takes care of that.
This week, I had to do mandatory “harassment in the workplace” training, and my god, you’d have to be an idiot to get most of their questions wrong, even if you were generally in favor of harassment in the workplace.
Some questions were about specific things in the regulations, like, “How many days do you have to complete a given action?” with possible answers of 1, 3, 7,14.
But most were things like, "A co-worker’s husband has entered the workplace and started yelling at her. Another worker comes to you to report the situation. Do you:
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Tell that bitch to mind her own business
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Go to the other office and help the husband beat up his wife
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Call security, document the incident, offer support to the other worker, and bar the husband from the workplace."
It’s #2, right?
More fun is those “training videos” like that which restart the slide’s video when you get fed up waiting for the thing to finish and click in advance. “Justifiable homicide” just might increase in the search rankings thanks to those.
Yesterday I had to take a mandatory “identify the phishing scam” because my company sends out fake emails that try to catch you in a phishing scam.
Right before I went on vacation, like 4:00 on a Friday, they sent this email that said something like “if you are continuing to work from home you need to fill this out ASAP.” Like a dumbass I clicked on it, and SURPRISE! Now you have to take a training!
Turns out my boss and other co-worker did the same thing. 
No, it’s almost always the longest answer.
I also listened the the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recording of every play as we were assigned them (at normal speed, though!). It’s amazing how much more you understand when hearing the language as opposed to reading it. I’d go back later to read for the footnotes and so forth. But to get a real feel for the play, hearing it was so effective.
I retired last year, and one of the best things about being retired is that I never have to sit through online training again.
Two things I hated:
We had several mandatory quarterly compliance trainings to sit through (sexual harassment, anti money laundering, etc). The “best” was one that guided us through the pitfalls to make sure we didn’t accidentally offer bribes. My job didn’t involve even having an expense account – I’m not likely to be wining and dining the president of Deutsche Bank.
We obviously bought these training packages from some outsourced developer, but “customized” to look like us. So we had “real life” scenarios involving actors, dressed unlike real employees, in offices unlike our real offices, speaking a mad-lib style script that had some of our corporate lingo dropped in the appropriate slots.