Epic Think Tank
Blended - or Blanded?
Part 2: What works and what doesn't?
'I had a fear early on,' confessed one delegate, 'that e-learning
was going to be like the bad old days of distance learning - people
shut in a room with a binder'.
In this particular delegate's case, reacting to these fears motivated
the creation of a highly innovative online leadership package, linked
to a collaborative learning website with community features - with
the aim specifically of bringing e-learners together to extend and
continue their learning.
It was clear from listening to other delegates too that the determination
to avoid repeating past mistakes has been a formidable spur to creativity.
Creativity often comes out of ferment. We are living in a time
of enormous change as far as the learning function within organisations
both public and private is concerned. The existence of new learning
technologies is just one of the forces driving these tumultuous
changes. There is also the greater emphasis on 'human capital' as
a key constituent of the value of businesses to factor in; the historical
shift from products to services, and macro technology shifts such
as the virtualisation of processes. In fact technology turns out
to be one of the less problematical elements in this mix.
Perhaps the surprising thing that emerges from discussions such
as this Think Tank dinner is that the argument seems largely to
have been won as far as e-learning is concerned. Nobody wants to
argue the business case anymore; in many respects it is a 'no-brainer'.
There might be room for debating the precise degree of learning
compression that can be expected from e-learning (the academic literature
is somewhat thin on this point) but no-one disputes that substantial
compression does take place.
What occupies our participants' minds more now, it seems, is the
question of making e-learning work on the ground; exploring the
new possibilities inherent in web-enabled learning and harnessing
it, in combination with all the other means at an organisation's
disposal, to real business and learning objectives.
Learning for a changed world
The important differences from what went before, it emerged in our
discussion were:
Keeping the learning going - Implicit in blended learning
is an emphasis on moving away from learning as an event, to a process
entrenched in everyday behaviour. Providing generic learning packages
and hoping that staff would access them of their own accord is an
approach that has been widely seen not to work. Wrapping content
in collaboration and giving it marcoms support, using face-to-face
networking sessions to kick an online learning set off - these types
of approaches have shown much better results.
Bringing learning back to the workplace - Changes in the
way learning is accessed are far from trivial, freeing it from the
tyranny of 'the course', and making it a part of everyday working
life. Support on the floor, from line management and face-to-face
elements at local level, has not only been seen to be a powerful
influence in making e-learning succeed, but also helps to end the
injurious segregation of learning from the workplace.
Personalising and customising the learning - blended learning
has the capability to be a far more flexible and responsive tool
than what went before. As we saw in the bu
example, using e-learning content to cover what is generic, and
adding different versions of the blend at local level, allows for
a great deal of subtlety in making large campaigns successful within
a dispersed and diverse network of outlets. Blended campaigns allow
more learner choice in what methods exactly are used to tackle specific
topics, putting the learner at the centre of the process.
Moving from content to connection - e-learning is not just
about working through online content in private study. It is also
about being connected into communities of other learners and SMEs.
This point has come up in previous Think Tanks (see particularly
'e-learning and collaboration'). Importance for this particular
discussion, however, was the importance of realising that blended
learning is not just about combining online means with offline.
Within online learning itself there are different modes; e-tutoring,
e-mentoring, collaboration, virtual classroom… and even knowledge
management. Designing effective integrated learning programmes means
looking at a dynamic plurality, rather than a straight opposition
of two different delivery methods.
Clearly blended learning is very much a part of the landscape already.
However, in many ways it is still early days for this method of
putting together learning programmes. So what does the future hold,
judging by progress so far?
Next>>
Introduction
Background
Part 1 Old wine in new bottles?
Part 3 The future of blended learning
Afterword
|
