Epic Think Tank
Blended - or Blanded?
Part 1: Old wine in new bottles - or a real step forward?
It has been claimed that the term 'blended learning' was coined
by the learning community to soften the blow when it began to be
suspected that e-learning was going to result in mass redundancies
of face-to-face trainers.
In fact, one of our delegates readily admitted to using the term
specifically to make classroom trainers feel more comfortable: 'You
can't talk about e-learning only; you need something like blended
learning to market the concept of new technologies'. Which is not
to suggest that the term was being used cynically here, as a way
of 'spinning' e-learning: after all the important issue for organisations
in all this is how new technologies are going to be integrated with
existing processes.
Yet more reassurance for face-to-face trainers is on offer in quotes
like the following, from e-learning guru Jay Cross: 'Blended
is only a revelation for people who had been trying to do everything
with just one tool - the computer. Classroom teachers have been
blending various means of learning - lecture, discussion, practice,
reading, projects, and writing, for example - for aeons' (Jay Cross).
However, does all this playing down of the revolutionary impact
of e-learning mean that what the proponents of blended learning
are seeking to do is not so much to blend learning as to bland
it?
Back in the good old, bad old days…
A resounding 'no' is the answer to this question, to judge from
the views of our delegates. They were at pains to distance the thing
that they currently mean by blended learning from what went on in
the 'bad old days' of corporate training.
'What did we call blended learning before?' joked one; 'pre-course
reading, I think!'. In fact the effective combination of different
methods and media, while it has always been good practice in learning
(as Jay Cross's quote emphasises) has not been a conspicuous feature
of the world of corporate training, which has been perhaps overly
focused on 'the course' and 'the training event'.
Our delegates were highly specific when it came to what they didn't
like about the old ways. The 'sheep-dip' nature of much training
caused frustration, with little ongoing support for the learning
being given: 'Course notes would go on the shelf and no-one ever
looked at them'. Training was too centred around learning as an
event, rather than as a process.
Too often people were sent on courses for not particularly good
reasons, leading to badly motivated learners. One delegate in particular,
with a background in face-to-face training, said that he got out
of conventional training because he was 'fed up with running training
for people who didn't want it'.
Training was seen as a way of dealing with a variety of staff problems,
resulting in too much focus on the remedial, and too many reluctant
participants. This in turn could lead to senior people switching
off from learning altogether, since electing for training would
be tantamount to admitting you had some deficiency in need of correction.
The dawn of blended learning has provided a chance to break with
these practices. For many, including most of our delegates, it is
seen as an opportunity to preserve what was good about the old face-to-face
methods while jettisoning what was bad.
So how is this project (if indeed it is a project) progressing?
What is the current state of blended learning? What is being done
that can be counted as successful - and what has not quite made
the grade?
Next>>
Introduction
Background
Part 2 What works and what doesn't?
Part 3 The future of blended learning
Afterword
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