What is Blended Learning?

In these changing times, training and re-training employees is a crucial element in an organization's ability to attract, retain, and maximize the performance of its employees.

Up until recently organizations have been faced with a choice between on-line learning and instructor-led training. On-line learning offers a range of benefits as an instructional medium, such as self-paced learning, consistency of delivery, verified and proven content, manageability, cost efficiencies, and 24x7 accessibility from any location.

But the successful learning organization understands that the social aspects of traditional classroom training can be an essential element in effective training. This use of "a range of training methods and media to enhance and maximize learning opportunities" is known as blended learning.

At Qualit-e, we don't just recognize the power of social learning … we design it into our products! Using the power of the Internet our customers harness the rich features of the eLearning System to build the solution that's right for them. With Qualit-e, on-line learning is only a part of what eLearning has to offer.

Qualit-e Online Training and Learning Center specializes in professional, business skills training. Soft skills are curious: it's easy to learn the concepts, but a lot harder to perform the skills. They need a very high level of practice - and that practice has to be in a social context, precisely because they are social skills. Qualit-e recognizes the difference between learning the concepts … and actually experiencing and practising those concepts. That's why we design for both theory and practice learning opportunities.

We at Qualit-e Online Training and Learning Center believe in the need for a blended solution so much that we design not simply for on-line learning but for a range of learning experiences. Along with high levels of graphics, audio, scenarios, and interactions that our customers expect from our courseware, we design a range of socialized learning experiences into the eLearning System.

Using virtual classes, lectures and tutorials can be delivered on-line to a widely dispersed community of learners, using full broadcast and interactive audio and video facilities to complement the animated visual presentations. A wide range of features are included, one of those being the participants' ability to 'raise their hands' and be given control of the microphone to make a point or ask a question. Using this feature, a distributed organization can administer blended programs using a 'virtual classroom'.

Learners can also participate in on-line chat sessions that can be scheduled and moderated, or un-moderated if you prefer. Learners register for chats and classes through the eLearning System, at which point these events become part of their individualized learning Plan.

And for asynchronous discussions, the eLearning System also includes discussion threads which can be constrained to a specific learner community. For learners who need the human touch, on-line mentoring is always available. Learners can ask our mentors for clarification on a teaching point, or they may have an idea they want to tease out, or they may just want some advice. Our mentors are here to help. Hi-touch through hi-tech.

Our eLearning resources also include features such as Workplace Exercises, both self-directed and trainer-driven, and for small and large groups. These can be used to help root classroom sessions firmly into a coherent blended program.

Some learners like to work on their own, without any direction at all. Others also like to learn on their own, but in a structured and directed environment. Still others prefer socialized learning - working through concepts and formal principles by experimentation in a primarily social context. And others like to reflect privately on material, whether presented on the electronic or traditional page. So the need for blending is simple enough: people are very different, and if we are to deliver a training solution that works for many people, then those differences must be acknowledged, accommodated and catered for, by ensuring the maximum range and variety of learning opportunities.

There's no doubt that the key underlying concepts can be learned on-line. Few will deny that to be an active listener you need at least to know that there are certain key factors in the skill, such as direct eye contact, open body language, frequent paraphrasing for confirming understanding, open questioning for elaboration, and closed questioning for confirmation and closure. And so it is with the other soft and social skills of negotiation, closing sales, solving problems in a group setting, being assertive and so on.

Using online training materials in this preparatory way - to teach the fundamental concepts, leaving the practice opportunities for the social context - is entirely appropriate and makes a lot of sense. The technique:

It is also possible for the organization to interleave eLearning as a central component of the training experience, with face-to-face tutorials in which the program is introduced and study targets set for each participant. The group thenmeets at pre-defined intervals to reflect on their learning, share their thoughts, and establish their next set of learning goals.

Or, the organization can use eLearning as a reinforcement take-away, where students are given access to eLearning to study following on from the classroom component.

As we have seen, on-line learning is only part of what eLearning offers. True blended training addresses the needs of all learners, designs an appropriately wide range of learning solutions, and blends those learning experiences into a holistic solution.

eLearning doesn't dismiss old teaching methodologies or abandon proven educational philosophies; it enhances them with a rich mix of interactive media and specific material for those contexts.

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