Why blended learning is the future of workplace learning

Blended learning is one of the most powerful approaches to workplace education available today because it combines both online digital media and traditional learning methods to deliver a more effective and engaging solution for learners.

Here are a few reasons why blended learning is the new workplace learning solution:

It’s more efficient

When your instructors can incorporate digital solutions into their teaching programs then they have more tools in their arsenal. However, not only do they have more educational firepower, they also have a more efficient platform to educate your workforce as well.

In traditional learning environments, slower learners typically hold back the pace of the class. This means that you need to spend extra time educating a few people while others are forced to wait.

Blended learning, on the other hand, allows you to customize the experience so that those who are faster can complete various parts of the training while others are still coming up to speed.

The experience can be personalized.

You really can’t personalize the traditional learning model very much. The classroom approach has more of a one-size-fits-all methodology and that’s one reason why some students find themselves less engaged when they attend this type of training.

Blended learning allows you to serve up content that’s optimized for each individual learner. Some students may pick up on the material faster by being exposed to an online chat room, for example. Others might respond the best by watching streaming videos. You can still take the traditional approach and give lectures in a blended environment, and at the same time customize the experience so that your team is more invested in it.

It saves you money.

Traditional models come with a lot of expenses. The instructors need to spend more time in the classroom, the materials need to be updated regularly, and you usually need to spend money renting out the space to train your learners.

Blended learning, on the other hand, allows you to spend much less on trainers and materials. Learners can study the material from anywhere that they have online access and it’s usually quite fast and easy to update digital content.

It’s flexible.

There’s not a lot of flexibility in a traditional corporate learning environment. The lecture cannot be paused or replayed when the learners are having trouble with a particular concept, for example.

However, in a blended learning environment you can incorporate a wide variety of multimedia options into the lecture to keep your learners engaged. This also gives them the ability to approach the material from multiple angles.

Making adjustments as you go is easy: if you need to pause the program and switch gears, you can do it easily when you are using online blended learning solutions.

Your employees are already accustomed to learning online.

We now have a workforce that has spent the past decade growing learning online. We search for facts on Wikipedia and we study languages by watching YouTube videos. We take online quizzes to see what Friends character we are, and we interact with people all over the world using our mobile devices.

It just makes sense to capitalize on this by delivering content in a way that your learners are used to it. This familiarity will help your learners stay focused on the material and prevent boredom from creeping in.

It’s far easier to track.

While there are some metrics that you can track in a traditional learning model, a blended learning environment gives you access to tools that can track many more important data points.

There are tons of online tools available to evaluate learner performance and this information is extremely important if you want to make the most of your training.

Using online tools you can now track things like:

• 
  The time it takes employees to respond to individual questions
  

The time it takes employees to respond to individual questions

• 
  Reading comprehension
  

Reading comprehension

• 
  Keystroke accuracy
  

Keystroke accuracy

• 
  Vocal inflection and quality on customer calls
  

Vocal inflection and quality on customer calls

…and much more.

All of these tracking solutions have a duel benefit as well: they keep the learners engaged. Engagement is a critical component to delivering high-quality training, and performance tracking simply helps keep your learners “in the game.”

The very nature of work itself has changed quite a bit over the past few years, and as we continue to integrate more tech solutions into our organizations it’s becoming more important than ever that we keep our training methods up to date and relevant.

Here are a few tips to help you implement your next Blended Learning teaching experience.

Decide early on how interactive you want your program.

Some blended learning programs still rely heavily on instructor-led classrooms, while others are 85% or more online. Before you set out to create your program, you should decide how much of it you want to be delivered over the Internet or via multimedia. 

Make feedback a priority.

Feedback is critical in a blended learning environment. If you want to optimize your program for results, then you should be looking for opportunities to improve it wherever you can. This might mean something as simply as improving the video narration to help keep the video modules interesting.

Make it collaborative. 

We are social animals and this means we are hard-wired to learn in a group environment. Online resources make this easy to implement: you can use forums, chat rooms, webinars, and a wide variety of additional options to inspire your learners to collaborate as they go through the material. 

If you’re interested in learning more about blended learning solutions for your organization, have a look at the Go1 Marketplace.

You’ll find thousands of free and paid solutions to help you deliver an outstanding learning experience for your teams.