The term blended learning seems to have been around for ever. It's one of those concepts that appears highly attractive and it's something that various people and organisations have flirted with on and off for a long time, but to me, it never really seems to have taken hold. (By the way, I'd love to be proved wrong on this one - so if you are a person or organisation seriously using blended learning, I'd love to hear about it).
Also, I suspect it's one of those terms that means different things to different people. For what it's worth, I've always thought of it as a way of bringing together e-learning and classroom training.
Perhaps part of the problem with my version of blended learning is that it aims to bring together two very different approaches to learning. Maybe it's too much to expect people with a definite preference for either e-learning or classroom training to suddenly be okay with learning from both approaches.
The blended learning experience
This is certainly borne out by our own experience of running blended learning programmes. Typically, we would give delegates an e-learning module as the first stage of the programme, followed by a classroom workshop. It would not be unusual to find that 75% of delegates attending the workshop hadn't even glanced at the e-learning module, despite repeated reminders and prods. No need to comment on the frustration felt by the trainer and the 25% who had taken the trouble to work through the module in advance!
So is blended learning a lost cause, confined to the instructional design text books with no real hope of becoming a serious contender?
If you'd asked me that 12 months ago, I would almost certainly have said yes. Today, I'm much more positive. I think blended learning has been granted a new lease of life.
Web conferencing to the rescue?
Why? I think it's all down to web conferencing. While this has been around for a while, a combination of recession, a desire to cut down on carbon footprint and an increasing number of people actually experiencing web conferencing makes it a technology that's suddenly taking off.
So what is it about web conferencing that gives me cause for hope? I think it's a winning combination of the positives of the virtual world and the familiarity of the real world . More specifically, no need for the expense of travel, accommodation classrooms or big chunks of time out of the office, while still maintaining the familiarity of fixed learning times and the comfort of other live human beings to share with you as you learn.
Clearly, there are adjustments for participants to make, but blending formal learning sessions over the web with time in the classroom makes much more sense to me than throwing together two very disparate approaches like self-paced e-learning and classroom workshops.
Savings to be made
For the 'bottom liners' in the audience, there's good news too. There are some serious cost savings to be made whether you are using this kind of approach yourselves or asking a supplier to deliver in this mode.
This is a hot topic right now, so we have just written a white paper on the subject. If you would like to download and read more on new-look blended learning, you can do so here:
http://info.pacificblue.co.uk/blended-learning-white-paper
