Epic Think Tank
Blended Learning Design
 When
it first arrived, blended learning seemed like a great get-out clause
for those who didn't feel 100% comfortable with the new world of
online learning. Mix and match, duck and dive: 'We're all blended
now, it's just the percentages of online to offline that vary'.
But as the practical realities of deploying blended learning begin
to bite, it becomes clear that combining online and offline delivery
methods in effective learning programmes is a far from simple undertaking.
This 12th Think Tank in our series examines key questions that
face learning and development professionals in every organisation,
public or private:
- Why is blended learning design different?
- What is involved in creating it, and who should be responsible?
- What skills and tools do they need, and how will they get them?
Key points:
- Greater choice in learning delivery methods leads to greater
complexity, putting pressure on designers, trainers and learners
alike
- No one criterion (e.g. learning styles, type of training) can
determine rules for blend composition; factors such as maturity
of e-learners also have to be taken into account
- Speed, scale and sustainability are the key drivers for blended
learning design
- Circumstances will vary the extent to which blends can offer
a 'multiplicity of paths towards a common goal' approach (supporting
individual learning styles) - some blends will of necessity be
strictly sequential
- The L&D function within organisations will organise itself
to acquire the skills and tools needed for blended learning -
building capability in most-used functions, outsourcing in specialist
areas
- Blend creation requires the design team to be strongly focused
on business improvement
The how and who of blend creation
Skills and tools for blended learning
Why is blended learning design different?
As a lot of people are saying nowadays, blending different forms
of learning is something learners have been doing since time immemorial.
Indeed, as one of our delegates from a Higher Education background
reminded us at the beginning of this Think Tank session, 'there
has always been blending with respect to medium, mode and locus
in HE': a typical campus university course might comprise lectures,
seminars, work in small tutorial groups, exchange schemes, individual
reading, and so on.
Nevertheless blended learning, as we currently understand the term,
is a step change from what went before. Adding networked digital
media to the mix - the entire sum of recorded human knowledge available
on your desktop at the touch of a button - adds far greater potential
variation in place and pace than was previously imaginable, let
alone possible.
For this reason, if for no other, blended learning is different;
because with greater complexity comes perplexity… leading to
worry, confusion and even fear.
Not only is the sheer number of possible delivery methods now slightly
baffling (see
table of blend components) but the breadth and diversity of
experiences on offer constitutes a formidable challenge to the imagination
of designers, and also threatens to take many learners well out
of their comfort zones.
Radical new additions to the way that learning can be experienced
include the addition of games-based online learning, and a new emphasis
on the learner to exercise more choice and over the way they learn,
taking more responsibility for the direction of their own learning.
For those who commission and design learning programmes, blended
learning is seen as a liberation from the stranglehold of endless
formulaic two-day courses: 'at last we can get down to designing
learning,' said one delegate.
But for others involved in delivering learning, it is a less positive
move.
One delegate related the following overheard remark, from a trainer
of the old school: 'the ones I hate are the smartarses who have
been on the internet and ask you all sorts of awkward questions'.
Disconcerting as it may be, in time this particular trainer is liable
to find that more and more of his learners are in the 'smartarse'
category - if, that is, blended learning succeeds.
For now, however, most learners sit within that solid lump in the
middle of the adoption bell-curve, seeing change as at best a challenge,
at worst a threat. And others still are probably never going to
want to know. Not everybody likes choice: 'some people like not
only signposts, but whips!'
Just as the learning designer may feel slightly boggled by the
explosion in the number and type of experiences he or she is able
to offer, so the learner too may find it hard to adjust to a new,
changed world, where being trained does not automatically mean an
awayday to some remote facility - and might not even involve being
'trained'. In the UK, especially, where we tend to have a more 'directed'
learning culture than in, say, Scandinavian countries, many will
find this change disconcerting, and even alienating.
This culture shift is a big challenge, and has to be factored in
to the process of blended learning design. A delegate from the financial
sector described how at a previous company he had tried a variety
of different blends, and had come to realise that a critical factor
in the success of programmes was the maturity (or otherwise) of
the participants as e-learners.
So when one speaks glibly of, say, learning styles as being the
key criteria for blend design - or any other single factor - one
might be taking too crude an approach.
It seems almost too obvious to need stating that with blended learning,
the issue of the choice of delivery methods becomes a central one;
but it is easy to miss how large a change this really is - a change
from designing courses to designing learning. 'Pick and pix welding'
is clearly not the way forward. So how should learning be designed
in this new, multi-channel world?
What is involved in creating blended learning programmes - and
whose responsibility is it going to be to make these complex new
decisions?
top
The how and who of blend creation
Key drivers for blend creation identified by our delegates were
speed, scale and sustainability.
But a potential fork in the road emerges over the question of whether
a blended programme should be less directed than a traditional
course of learning. Is the point of blending to offer multiple paths
to a common goal - or to sequence different delivery methods in
a particular way that provides the most effective results for the
greatest number of learners, at the lowest possible cost?
The former option is an attractive one to those who believe that
the whole point of blending is to offer alternative ways to access
the content which will cater for different learning styles. However,
is such an approach really practical when faced with a challenge
such as putting a globally dispersed workforce through compliance
training on a limited budget against tight time scales?
Learning styles are popular with the training community. Many like
the idea of putting a 'test your own learning style' button on a
learning portal. But you don't have a learning style in the same
way that you have a star sign: the whole thing is a lot more complex
than that. It was pointed out that they were really originally intended
as guidance for the instructional designer, and the idea that the
organisation should 'pander' to the individual's learning style
received pretty short shrift from our delegates. It was thought
to set an unrealistic expectation for the work situation - where
we are often, in the course of our working lives, called upon to
take in new information in a way and a context that doesn't necessarily
suit us at all.
Then there is the question of cost. Providing 'redundancy' in content
(i.e. duplication of the same content across different delivery
channels) is seen as a good thing by writers such as Don Morrison;
however even Morrison has to admit that this is expensive. Moreover,
Morrison cites as current best practice in blending the IBM 4-tier
Learning Model - a model that is highly proscriptive in sequencing
different combinations of delivery method as it moves through four
discrete stages from knowledge awareness to mastery.
In a sense, e-learning pulled the ROI genie out of the bottle,
and it is not going back in any time soon - as tacitly acknowledged
by the inclusion of 'scale' in our list of drivers. Due to the front-loaded
costs associated with e-learning, people have got used to the idea
that any sizeable programme of learning will have a business case.
Blended learning must operate with the same expectation of technology's
providing new ways to screw down cost - while also delivering greater
effectiveness and more sustainable learning.
This does not necessarily square with an agenda that sees blended
learning as a way of putting 'the extrinsic motivational factors
of face-to-face training' (i.e. fun) back into the mix. However,
one of the more grown-up aspects of blended learning is its very
flexibility. It need not pretend to offer a one-size-fits-all solution
for every type of organisational learning under the sun (unlike
some of the more grandiose models proposed by e-learning gurus around
the turn of the century).
In learning, the driver is not always short-term cost savings.
With certain blended initiatives in leader development, for instance,
it just might be the case that, in the words of one of our delegates:
'you're going to have to accept that it won't necessarily by faster,
or even cheaper - but it's going to be deeper.
As the discussion turned to who is to do the actual blend design,
it seemed clear that whoever this was would need a clear focus on
business improvement (or in a public sector context, alignment with
organisational objectives) to be able to handle this inherent flexibility.
Complex decisions are made easier by establishing clear priorities
for the results desired.
top
Skills and tools for blended learning
There are two facets to the question of who should have responsibility
for the blend:
- Inhouse or outsource?
- What capabilities need to be built?
One answer to the first question is to keep the solutioneering
inhouse and use external suppliers to perform specific functions
such as content production, mentoring or workbook printing for which
it makes no sense to develop organisational capability.
It's not quite that simple however. If we consult our list
of learning components we see that many online elements, such
as collaborative learning for instance, or knowledge management,
have an overarching role to play within blended learning as mechanisms
that bring various other components together.
Since the rise of the internet, e-learning has had within it the
concept of different online learning 'modes' (synchronous, asynchronous,
collaborative, just-in-time performance support, etc.) and a complementarity
of such forms. Blended learning grew out of this model. Few e-learning
companies are narrowly focused on just one component of online learning
- and many have come from face-to-face training backgrounds.
While the identification of a need for blended learning probably
came first from the client community, the knowledge about how best
to combine different means of learning may well exist to a larger
extent within the supplier community - along with knowledge of instructional
design, media mix, learning psychology, etc. these are black arts
unknown within many training departments.
So the less simple answer to our first question is that organisations
will look to build capability in the areas of blend creation they
most frequently use, while seeking 'strategic partner' relationships
with specialists who can bring knowledge, tools and skills to help
with blended learning design.
Turning to the second question of what capabilities need to be
built inhouse, delegates were at pains to stress the importance
of alignment with organisational objectives for inhouse teams. One
delegate described how, in building his learning team, he has deliberately
'blended' learning specialists with people from the business to
get the best possible mix of the right skills with the right perspectives.
Even better is for individuals to have experience of both worlds,
accomplished by the time-honoured expedient of 'moving people about'
through exchanges and secondments.
It was also felt that attractive opportunities exist for inter-company
collaboration over types of training that are otherwise duplicated
time and time again - compliance training in areas such as health
and safety, for instance; or Chip and Pin in the retail sector.
Learning and development is often a competitive differentiator nowadays
in the corporate sphere (just look at the number of TV ads - Orange,
British Gas, Carphone Warehouse - currently featuring training as
part of their selling proposition) however it is not a differentiator
in these 'catalogue standards'.
Summary
Blended learning is different for people who design programmes
of learning. It's different for those 'frontline staff' in the delivery
of organisational training, the training departments… and it's
a big shift for learners.
Blended learning also involves a shifting of the decision-making
process some way upstream. The significant move for professionals
within organisational learning deprartments is from designing a
course to designing a programme of discrete but linked learner experiences
that fulfil a particular learning objective. A more complicated
thing - perhaps a harder thing to do.
The focus of debate in blended learning has now moved to finding
robust tools and methodologies for blending - the fundamentals of
which will be a logical decision-making process informed we hope,
to some degree, by discussions such as this one.
John Helmer, December 2003
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