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Evaluating Training Effectivenes

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    1 min read

    Blended learning - more cons than pros?

    By Pacific Blue on Thu, Nov 14,2024

    Blended learning has been around for a while now. Plenty of organisations claim to use it. Some actually do. Not so many learners claim to like it. But there are some who actually do.

    However, in this post we'll focus on the reasons a blended approach might not be popular because this can offer some clues about to how to change or refine the approach.

    The objections take a variety of angles:

    For some, it's just a fad. A new name for something we've always done. Long before computer technology there were alternatives or complements to classroom teaching. People listened to cassettes, worked through self-study packs, went to seminars or had one-to-one coaching. What's suddenly so new?

    Others worry that it's just about choice. It's not about really providing a coherent mix of learning. They point to the duplication of content that happens in many organisations. Just the same old stuff being churned out in a variety of flavours.

    What about the work involved? Another common and very valid objection. Aiming for a coherent blend of learning provided through a variety of delivery mediums and instructional techniques is hard. It will take some careful thought and planning. Why bother some might ask, if only a handful of learners fully engage with all the elements.

    It's just a marketing ploy. A ploy dreamt up by e-learning vendors and/or management.  A ploy to get more e-learning in through the back door allowing them to slash the classroom training budget. 

    It gives e-learning a bad name. The people who develop blended learning would much rather be using classroom training throughout. They deliberately put all the boring bits of the blend into e-learning and save the fun bits for the classroom training.

    It's frequently not necessary. Short training programmes or knowledge that can be covered in a day or two simply doesn't require the complexity of a blended approach. To provide it in these circumstances is just overkill.

    As you see, the reasons people don't like blended learning are many and varied. And all those reasons, to a greater or lesser extent have validity.

    Topics: Instructional Design Blended learning
    2 min read

    Blended Learning: is it just about choice?

    By Pacific Blue on Thu, Oct 6,2022

    A current societal obsession is the need for choice. More choice, we are told,  is automatically better. Sometimes true but not necessarily always. 

    In the case of blended learning this is sometimes distilled into a focus on simply providing a variety of delivery mediums. This focus is often driven by the belief that because some learners learn better through different mediums, the same piece of content or learning must, therefore, be available in all possible mediums. 

    A noble approach. But one that will keep you duplicating content for ever and a day. And which usually  ends up being an unsustainable burden. An unfortunate one, too.  Because there's a whole body of research which has established that, broadly speaking, as long as the learning is instructionally sound, the delivery medium makes little difference to the overall learning outcome.

    This research was carried out before people were really taking account of any accessibility needs, so that is one factor that could definitely change the overall picture.

    But in most cases, the ability to choose from a menu of delivery mediums will probably not make that much difference to the learning outcome.

    Better to be thinking about providing a well-thought through programme of learning that gets results. A programme that looks at what needs to be taught and identifies the most pragmatic medium for delivery for  a particular part of that programme.

    For example, core elements of a given piece of learning might benefit from classroom delivery, but beyond that other delivery channels might be better. For a refresher session, a virtual classroom or webinar-style session might be the perfect delivery medium. For complex skills where only a subset of the total  is used each time, short, highly-focused videos available at the point of need might be a suitable option.

    Working all this out isn’t necessarily easy, which is why we have developed our Frequency, Complexity and Shelf-Life Matrix to help take some of the guesswork out of these decisions.

    The key point. It is learning needs, aligned with the complexity, frequency and longevity of content that should guide the blend of delivery channels you choose.

     

    If you are grappling with instructional design for a particular delivery medium or creating an effective blend, take a look at our in-house and publicly scheduled instructional design training.

    Topics: Instructional Design Blended learning