I grew up in a small dusty town in the middle of an African desert. I taught myself everything I know from the web, IRC and forums. I was top of numerous IS and CS classes at university. In my professional career, I've learned the most from colleagues who happened to be overseas. I almost never do video calls.
I make sure to spend a lot of time mentoring via screen share and encourage recordings (many times this is way more useful than an in-person session where the details are forgotten).
High quality learning relationships can be entirely remote and text/screen-share based.
I agree with this. Screen sharing is a very effective way to transfer knowledge — I have had a lot of success by hopping onto a screen share and walking others through things. There is lots of room for questions and they can record/review the meeting too.
However, this requires a culture where impromptu calls are expected and normalized. The more friction there is from scheduling, waiting for people to respond, etc the less likely these kind of fast information transfer sessions are to happen.
Tldr, I think people can learn very effectively in a remote environment, it just requires that people put the same kind of time into communicating that they would in an office.
I make sure to spend a lot of time mentoring via screen share and encourage recordings (many times this is way more useful than an in-person session where the details are forgotten).
High quality learning relationships can be entirely remote and text/screen-share based.