Epic Think Tank

Blended - or Blanded?

Afterword

So are the blenders out to bland e-learning? It would seem not.

Clearly the issues that underly the growth of blended learning are not trivial ones. In fact they turn out to be utterly fundamental. What we are looking at here is a change issue affecting a huge range of organisations, across many sectors.

In the wider perspective it is about people learning to live with technology as a central part of their working lives.

In the particular arena of organisational learning it is about a formidable clash of cultures.

The type of people who go into HR and training, according to popular cliché, do so because they are 'people' people. The human, the 'touchy-feely' bits of business are their preserve. Just contrast this with the sort of personality profile usually associated with the IT department. Same planet, different world.

And yet the potential gain to be had from bringing these two diverse fields of expertise together is clearly huge. Human Resources is the custodian of the most powerful value-generating resource in day's knowledge-driven organisations. Technology is the gateway to an enhanced connectivity whose huge potential we are only just beginning to explore. What couldn't these two accomplish, in effective combination?

Working out how these parts fit together - defining the composition of the blend - is far from a matter of detail. It is the whole deal.

John Helmer for Epic, November 2002