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.

However, overall, they miss a key point, which is this. Certain contexts or certain workplace performance needs or certain types of content are, generally speaking, better suited to certain types of delivery medium.

This isn't always immediately obvious - especially to non-learning and development people. And this can lead to problematic mismatches which cause headaches for learners and instructional designers alike. For example, you spend lots of time and budget creating a piece of e-learning covering some simple product updates, which could easily be covered in a short presentation style webinar. 

In this example, learners will suffer because they are being asked to complete some learning that is less than optimal for their needs. Instructional designers will be frustrated because they have spent precious time and resource that could have been better allocated elsewhere.

There are several factors that we need to consider and that should feed into any decision-making about a delivery medium: how much the learning is used; the complexity of the topic or the skill being learnt; and, how much and how often content changes or needs updating.

Systematically weighing all of these factors up doesn't absolutely guarantee the best decision about which delivery medium is best to use but it significantly increases the chances of getting that decision right.

If you want to know more about how to systematically evaluate the best delivery medium for a given piece of e-learning, take a look at these modules from our impact and instructional design programme.

Many of us in L&D still hesitate about AI. The reasons vary enormously. For example:

• “It’s not good enough yet.”
• “It’s going to steal my job.”
• “I’m not technical enough.”

Last week’s post explored the flaw in that last reason. We saw that most of us in L&D already hold a hidden set of technical skills — more than most of us give ourselves credit for.

This week, I want to dig into that idea a bit more, with a personal story and a reminder of another skill that many of us underestimate.

You Don’t Need to Know the Detail to Benefit

I’ve never been particularly strong in or had much of an interest in maths. Yet here I am, building a software tool. Even more surprising, as part of deepening my understanding of how AI works, I became quite fascinated by the elegant mathematics that sits behind GPTs.

Luckily, I don’t need to do the maths to be in awe of it — or to benefit from what it enables. I can use GPTs without knowing the detail of semantic maps, tokens, or probability models. I simply need to know how to make the best use of what that ‘behind the scenes’ math can produce.

And I think that highlights an interesting and important parallel for us in L&D. We don’t have to understand every last underlying detail of the subject matter we turn into courses for our learners.

Instead, we need to filter out irrelevant complexity and translate what remains into a learning experience that is relevant, authentic, and usable. This is the hidden L&D skill that I'd like to focus on here.

The Hidden Skill: Turning Complexity Into Clarity

Plenty of SMEs know their subject in depth. A few are even instinctively good instructional designers. But a key understanding that separates a good instructional designer from many an SME is perspective. We design for the learner, not for the content. We can take a step back in order to

• see it from the learner’s point of view
• strip away the content clutter
• sequence ideas clearly and logically, and
• build authentic practice out of all that.

This, I believe, is one of our greatest professional assets.

From Learning Design to Performance Support

Not everyone reading this will have designed performance support materials or content before. If you haven’t, the good news is that the skills you use to design an effective course are very similar to the ones you’ll need to design useful performance support in the workplace.

And here’s the even better news: performance support is the perfect way to combine those existing skills with the power of AI.

Just as we filter complexity into clarity for learners during the course design process, we can use AI to help us produce, usable workplace performance support scaffolding.

Put those two forces together — L&D’s eye for learner relevance and AI’s knack for simplification — and you have a winning formula for extending learning into the flow of work.

Harnessing AI without Being a Techie

You don’t need to be a techie to make AI work in L&D. What you need is a recognition of the skills you have already — and a willingness to apply them in new contexts.

The maths that underpins GPTs may remain out of reach for me, but the elegance of what it makes possible is not. The same is true for L&D. Our job isn’t to master the inner workings of AI, but to harness its power in ways that help people learn, perform, and succeed at work.

If you’d like to see the personal story that sparked this reflection, take a look at this week’s post from my PerformaGo diary: In Awe of the Math I’ll Never Do 

As a customer, it’s a generally a pleasant experience going to a restaurant.

We order the food we want. It arrives as specified and we get to enjoy it. And if anything is not quite as we’d like it, we can always have a word with the staff.

But what about if you are the chef and his team. Always busy. Always harassed. Always churning out the same predictable product. Frequently dealing with picky customers who don’t like this or that about what you produce.

In theory, the chef should be very much in control of his or her universe. In practice it may not be like that.

Does that chef’s kitchen sound like your L&D function? If not, I’m delighted to hear it. No need to read on.

If yes, then you are currently facing a very unattractive future. Because the orders are only going to increase in volume and the ‘customers’ are only going to get pickier and more demanding.

If your ‘customers’ are telling you what they want and how they want it, fundamentally they don’t value you. In their heads, you don't know anything much about the best approach to learning for their particular need. So they formulate their own plans and just present them to you for implementation.

There could be various reasons for finding yourself in a situation like this.

Perhaps you've inherited it from a predecessor. Perhaps this is all you've ever known and you just assume this is the way it's done. Perhaps you'd love to do things differently but can't see a way to turn things around.

Whatever the causes, this is a terrible situation to find yourself in as part of a learning and development function. And it doesn't have to be this way. The ship can be turned around.

If you are serious about turning your L&D department into the trusted and respected part of your organisation it deserves to be, take a look at our on-demand webinar on this topic: How to amplify learning: the journey from order-taker to trusted expert.

Regardless of the skill, the expertise or the situation, when we compare where we are currently with where we would like to be at some point in the future, the journey from point A to point B often feels pretty daunting.

If you are are looking with dismay at your current e-learning output and thinking about doing something more effective and interesting for your learners, I get that you might feel like you simply don’t have the time to do anything any better.

But here’s the dirty little secret of e-learning development.

It takes pretty much the same amount of time and effort to produce a really dull piece of e-learning as it does to create a really effective and interesting one.

I’d encourage you to re-read that last sentence. Because many people think I have become slightly unhinged when they hear me say something like that.

But here’s the thing that most people don’t realise.

It’s the development bit of e-learning that is the most time consuming. All the pointing and clicking in the authoring tool software is always the biggest and longest part of any project. Typically, I’d say that instructional design represents about 35% of the project time and the development represents the other 65%. 

And here are the two really crucial points. First, the instructional design phase is never that long, anyway. Second, it’s going to take much the same percentage of time, regardless of whether you do it poorly or brilliantly. 

In other words, it’s about how you approach that instructional design phase and the tools and techniques you use while you are in that phase that make the difference, not the total amount of time you spend on it.

Once you’ve made the mindset shift from thinking about your e-learning as predominantly knowledge-presentation to something more task and skills-focused, all you are doing is using different tools and techniques to ensure that the time spent on that instructional design phase produces something much more effective and creative.

Now, a skills and task-focused piece of instructional design might take a little bit longer to implement in your authoring tool. But really not very much. And the payback you will get in terms of improved effectiveness and impact will easily outweigh that small bump in development time. 

So if you think that creating really effective e-learning is out of reach, think again. It’s about designing smarter not longer.

Looking for help with making your instructional design smarter and more effective? Take a look at our impact and instructional design programme.

Forgive me for asking, but does it? Because so much e-learning I see still falls into this category.

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ (however sheepishly) I’ll guess there’s a good chance that you chose your e-learning authoring software on the basis that it was easy to convert existing PowerPoint presentations into something more ‘interactive’.

This is still a major selling point pushed by many software vendors. Import your PowerPoint slides into our gloriously quick and easy-to-use authoring tool and then add some interactivity to those slides. 

Sounds like a miracle, doesn’t it? But guess what? You still have a PowerPoint presentation. It’s just that now it requires the learners to do endless clicking to get through it. 

Now I know that at this point some people get frustrated with me and go, ‘but Andrew it’s all very well you having a go at me for creating a dull piece of PowerPoint-like e-learning but I haven’t got time to do all that instructional design stuff you think I should be doing.’

Well, let’s take a step back from that for a minute.

First, imagine you are the learner. Seriously, would you willingly click your way through what you’ve just produced? Unless you suffer from desperately low self-esteem and think it’s your lot in life to be miserable, then the answer must surely be ‘No’.

Second, this is a bit like saying, ‘I’m a chef but I don't have time to do proper, authentic cooking. I rely entirely on pre-packaged food and a microwave. So if you come and eat here, you’ll just have to put up with second-rate food’.

Bet you wouldn’t willingly book a table at that restaurant, would you?

Finally, do you really expect your colleagues and your learners to respect your skills and professionalism if this is the best you can do? 

Ready to take stock of your e-learning and see if there's some room for improvement? Start with our Discover Your E-Learning Impact Scorecard. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and you get some rapid feedback on your current e-learning design strengths and the areas that could do with some TLC.

This, I believe, is the elephant in the room for most people in a learning and development role. The one thing people will sometimes pay lip service to. But the one thing they never really want to think about beyond an end of course ‘happy sheet’.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the question of quantifying in some form, the impact and effectiveness of the training we design and deliver.

We have a real hard time getting clients to engage with this when we are talking to them about a potential development project. 

After delivering some in-house instructional design, we even encounter resistance to taking part in our own light-touch follow-up programme, which helps evaluate the usefulness of what we deliver. It takes very little time to participate. It is completely free of charge. It is almost always helpful for those who do take part. Yet almost no-one wants to.

A couple of thoughts. If you think evaluating impact tis only about, boiling success down to the last pound or penny of return on investment, I get why you might be very hesitant. There are loads of factors outside learning and development's direct control that can have an impact on the effectiveness of the training provided.

So you could end up on the awards podium (or in the dog-house) when you really don’t deserve to be, just because under a certain set of circumstances, the numbers came out good (or bad).

That is a bit like walking along the high wire with no safety net below. Understandably, not many people are up for that. 

But thinking about impact and effectiveness doesn’t have to be like that. The alternative starting point is that we are not in the business of instantly achieving a prized metric but we are there to support continuous improvement, over the longer term.

This, it seems to me, is a more honest approach and a more achievable one. It acknowledges from the start that a single ‘dose’ of training almost certainly won’t cure any performance problem or performance need.

And it recognises that a more consistent course of ‘treatment’ over a period of time is what likely will. It also recognises that not all ‘patients’ are equal and some might need a longer course of ‘treatment’ than others.

What I’m talking about is a well-designed approach to achieving impact, which starts with a training intervention, follows up after that with learners to see what’s working and what’s not, provides short, simple follow-up interventions, as required and gradually course adjusts to help achieve a good outcome both with current and future learners.

It doesn’t have the big bang impact of a large ROI number but it almost certainly guarantees visible performance improvements over time and will most definitely raise your profile and the respect for learning and development across the organisation.

In reality, it’s not hugely difficult to set up and build in this kind of approach at the beginning of a project. So it begs the question, what’s holding us back?

Want to start taking a holistic approach to looking at the impact and effectiveness of the learning you design and deliver within your organisation? Take a look at the programme we offer.

We've lived with a multitude of technologies for learning for decades now. 

Each new technology that comes along is hailed as the next 'big thing', full of promise. We mostly get sucked in to the hype. Enthusiasm is high. Vast amounts of money are spent on said new technology. Yet the early promise is rarely fulfilled.

Which begs the question, 'Why?' The problem, I believe, lies with us and not the technology.

We lose sight of the fact that a particular technology is never the complete answer to improving the quality of learning. It is (and always will be) just another means to deliver it.

But because technology adds a layer of complexity to the learning design process, we tend to get blinded by the mechanics of using the technology and focus too much on that.

An example  would be someone thinking, "If I get really good at using Storyline, I'll be able to create fantastic e-learning". Sad to say, being really good at using Storyline only results in being really good at using Storyline. That is to say, mastery of lots of features. The ability to use those features quickly and efficiently. The ability to troubleshoot and solve problems when the features don't work as expected.

All of these skills are fantastic to have and would be an asset in any learning and development team. But, unfortunately, mastery of the technology alone does not guarantee an effective piece of learning. 

As well as being really good at using the technology, you need to be smart about how you apply your learning design when using a particular technology.

And here's the conundrum. People who are really good at learning design are often not so hot (or interested in) the technology. Those who are really good with the technology tend not to be so talented with the learning design. Finding someone who is equally talented in both areas is rare. If you have such a person in your team, do whatever you can to hold on to them.

In the end, it'll be the smart application of your learning design that makes the difference between a run-of-the mill piece learning and a really impactful, effective one. So if you don't have a tech and design genius all rolled into one, you'll really need to find ways of getting closer collaboration and understanding between the design and the tech experts.

Want to see how you are faring with your e-learning technology and design? A great place to start is our Discover Your E-Learning Impact Scorecard. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and you'll get some personalised feedback almost instantly.

When it comes to deciding about their own learning, do learners always know best?

It pains me to say this, but there's quite a bit of research evidence to suggest that the honest answer would be 'quite a lot of the time, not'.

This gives us L&D folk quite the dilemma.

After all, we want the best for our learners. We don't want to appear like rigid authoritarians. Yet we also know that our suggestions or ideas can appear counter-intuitive to some learners and project sponsors.

How often have you been asked to provide a specific type of learning solution to a group of learners, only to discover that once you start digging, the requested solution is entirely unsuitable. And then meet significant resistance to changing the original request.

Often, the learners (or those requesting learning on their behalf) are trapped by their own limited experience of prior learning. If all they know, for example, is knowledge presentation e-learning and they are okay with this and haven't experienced any other type of e-learning, they will probably just request what's familiar and comfortable. Even though this might get poor outcomes or results.

If, as another example, they have been told that on-demand videos are the new big thing in learning and that they'll get massively better results from using this medium, they will probably come to you asking for a video solution, utterly convinced this is what will work for them.

All of this, I think, relates to problems with respect and perception. In many organisations, the learning and development function is viewed (rightly or wrongly) as not very effective. This means that people in the wider business don't especially value or respect the learning expertise that may be available.

They look elsewhere for advice, work up their own ideas which are then presented to learning and development as a fait accompli.

This can feel very frustrating and demoralising. After all, it's very unlikely that the very same people would pitch up in the marketing department, telling them how they wanted to see marketing campaigns and materials designed and executed.

The key, ultimately, is what should we do as learning and development folk to deal with this dilemma. First, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves. Are we as expert and professional as we could be? Are we sometimes stumbling along and just getting by? 

If you feel harassed and put upon, it's tempting to blame someone else: lack of resources, unrealistic timelines, a culture that is hostile to formal learning.

All of these factors could be true. But unless we are prepared to think about how to start shifting perceptions and how to keep constantly evolving our skills and expertise, this particular L&D dilemma will not be resolved.

Feeling frustrated and demoralised because your L&D expertise and skills are not valued or trusted? Check out our on-demand webinar on this topic: How to amplify learning impact: the journey from order-taker to trusted expert.

I can’t believe people are still doing this! Forgive the rant below but sometimes it’s good to let off a bit of steam!

I’m talking about some of the basic things people still do (but really shouldn't) when creating e-learning or putting together PowerPoint slides. Here's the first of my top three gripes:

Simultaneous text and audio on an e-learning screen.

Why is this problematic for learners? They’ll be able to read the text faster than the ‘voice’ can read it out loud, so it’s incredibly frustrating for learners. Do they read the text on screen and try to ignore the audio? Or do they sit and listen to the audio and avert their eyes from the screen!

If you want to use a voice, then make whatever is on the screen different but complementary to the audio. By the way, you see this technique on the TV news and documentaries pretty much everyday of the week.

If accessibility provision requires the need for both audio and text versions of the same content, then use subtitles and make sure the audio and/or subtitles can be turned on or off to suit individual requirements.

My second gripe. Walls of words or an endless list of bullet points on PowerPoint slides, which the presenter then proceeds to read out loud. This is really the face-to-face version of the e-learning problem just outlined above.

Use graphics with short labels, to outline the points you want to talk about on each slide. Or a simple flow diagram if you are explaining a process or procedure.

My third and final gripe. Too much of everything on a screen or slide.

Most people crowd their PowerPoint slides or e-learning screens with too much stuff! Even if you are following the suggestions outlined above, most of the time you really want to pare down what you are introducing on any given slide/screen.

If you are creating e-learning that looks like a set of glorified PowerPoint slides, our instructional design training could help break you out of that cycle.

It's a while ago now since most bank transfers (finally) started happening via the faster payments system. We've all got used to the benefit of having money arrive quickly and efficiently into our accounts.

At the time, the banks were boasting about this great leap forward. However, I had a wry smile on my face. That's because when I worked in Sweden for a couple of years at the start of my working life, instant transfers (and instant cheque clearing) was the norm.

At the time I was amazed. Not only by the advanced technology, but by the fact that a supposedly advanced economy like Britain had no such system. Whenever I mentioned this amazing Swedish system to anyone back in Britain they used to furrow their brows and give me a strange look. I'm sure most people thought I was making it up.

You have quite likely had the experience of going abroad on business or for a holiday and coming across a system, process product, gadget or some way of doing things that is so simple and appealing that you can't understand why the whole world doesn't adopt it.

And yet the whole world doesn't. Or if it does it takes forever to catch up - many years in the case of instant bank transfers.

It always leaves me wondering why. Numerous factors surely come into play: ignorance, apathy, vested interests, aversion to change or the risk involved with change. These reasons are not why I'm writing this today.

To me, the important point is this. There is almost always a better way of doing things than the accepted conventional wisdom. This is true in most aspects of life - including the world of learning and development. 

Sometimes it's something as simple as taking a step back and tweaking things a bit. Other times it's seeking out the ignored genius idea that most of the world genuinely doesn't know about but when finally discovered and implemented makes a phenomenal impact.

In the world of learning and development, how much of what we do could be done better? How much of our thinking is still based on outdated theories of learning and knowledge acquisition? How often do we really seek out a radical alternative when the old ways of thinking are clearly no longer working?

Not often enough, I fear. It's all too easy to keep on keeping on and too often the sheer burden of managing the day job stops us from taking a vital step back and finding time to seek out the alternative approaches. But make that time, we really should.