If you are in the first camp, you have probably had your fingers burned by implementing elaborate and expensive eLearning systems that guaranteed increased learning availability and ROI. As true as this may be, people quickly realised that eLearning was not the solution to training troubles, but just one of a suite of options. The problem comes when trying to select the right option for your training needs among the bewildering array of delivery channels, and to make this applicable across a wide range of learning styles, needs and geographical locations.

If, however, you are in the second camp, you may or may not have done more than register interest, for although the idea is certainly reasonable and logical – that the most appropriate training medium be used for the type of learning content to be delivered – this is not always easy in practice. How do you determine how learners would learn best and whether they are ready for a new learning experience? How do you balance time and budget constraints with making all training available on every medium, if you decide it should be the employees themselves who decide how they learn? Moreover, how do you convince senior management to invest in all these new learning devices when the classroom has done perfectly well for the last 2,000 years?

We can perhaps look to the further and higher education fields for guidance on these issues, since organisations such as Learn Direct and the Open University have been using a blended approach to learning for many years. If the ideal scenario is to have a pre-classroom module to enable everyone the chance to be prepared for their training and make sure they are on the same level when starting, plus follow-up modules available in different formats and locations, then a fairly rigorous design process is needed. Instructional design plays a big part in this, but so does understanding the different strengths of each delivery method and how to facilitate take-up of each when there may be a learning gap in how to use them.

This is where the higher and further education fields have a jump-start on the corporate sector, having become experts in facilitating learning from any location and providing the learner with the easiest and best way for him to access it. Due to the distributed nature of their learner base, they have also mastered the online medium as a way to coach and mentor students away from the classroom, or indeed, make classrooms virtual. Understanding what kind of skills this needs on the part of the trainer or mentor and developing them in-house is what is needed by many corporations.

This brings us to another of the big obstacles in radically redesigning the way training is delivered: organisational culture. If you work for one of Global Fortune 2000 companies, you may have the kind of open-minded, technically-savvy kind of staff who lap up new and more efficient ways of doing things, especially if it means they make more money by having new product information quicker while in the field. Working for a public sector organisation with perhaps an older workforce is a different matter altogether. In either situation, though, a carefully thought-out change management and internal marketing programme needs to be devised, guided by the right team of people who will secure buy-in from all parties. Combining this with fully understanding the readiness of learners and selecting the right project for a pilot will increase your chances of success.

The fact that a Blended Learning programme requires a higher degree of self-managed learning than traditional classroom-based, however, means that getting everyone on board is only the first step. Making sure that they complete all the modules is another uphill struggle, which can be helped by having the right promotion, support and encouragement in place and ensuring that people know where they can go to access the learning.
Making learning accessible to all by the fastest means possible, encouraging employees to operate outside of their comfort zone and extend their skills in the knowledge economy and connecting learning content repositories to knowledge management systems and processes all have tremendous benefits to the bottom line and competitive positioning of an organisation. If you can do all this while linking learning to work practices, keeping line managers happy and contributing to flexible learning and working needs, you will have mastered the blended approach. Sounds good doesn’t it …?