Blended learning is the thing — training’s big talking point for the mid-noughties. Like sensitivity training, action learning, interactive video, accelerated learning, coaching and mentoring, and e-Learning before it, it has become a bit of a bandwagon.
Yet blended learning is more than just a fad. It’s a recognition that other approaches to training are simply not strong enough to work for all audiences, all of the time. Sometimes only a combination of learning media will do the job.
I’d like to suggest that blended learning is evolving into a new role, as our understanding of learning itself — and the applications of technology to learning — is also evolving. For in addition to previous uses of computers for learning, we now have informal learning. E-Learning producers (designers, developers, managers) may regard informal learning as a threat, but that would be a mistake, as I hope to show. One of the keys to understanding how informal learning changes our work is the realization that blended learning, whatever practitioners may have thought of it in the past, is actually a bridge between formal learning and informal learning.
Bridging that gap is not easy, and requires several steps and adjustments. It is up to e-Learning producers to take these steps. In this article, I will give you my thoughts on four challenges that confront us, and ways to meet them:
- Dealing with the various existing objections to blended learning;
- Incorporating non-formal learning into blended learning, as a transitional step;
- Coming to terms with informal learning; and
- Handling resistance issues.
Objections to blended learning
Because blended learning has become such a commonly used term, some who think of themselves as training cognoscenti regard it with scorn and cynicism. They may speak of it as another panacea to delude the masses, and one that is bound to fade into the background when we eventually realize it doesn’t work. This sounds harsh, and perhaps you doubt that anyone would hold such an opinion. Yet, I once went to a seminar during which the chairperson referred to blended learning as “the ‘B’ word,” something not to be mentioned in polite company.
Since blending is a concept that can arouse such strong passions in some of our colleagues, I’d like to take some time to consider the particular objections that you may hear.
“It’s nothing new”
One of the most common objections to the razzmatazz about blended learning is that it’s nothing new — blending is something we have always done. There is obviously some truth in this, because we can probably all think of some examples of training interventions that have successfully combined a variety of media. But to maintain that this has been in any way the norm is clearly wide of the mark. Most learning, of course, is informal — we don’t even know that it is happening. When it is structured and formalized, it’s most likely to be wholly on-the-job, if not wholly in the classroom, if not wholly online. Blending has been (and still is) very much the exception, not the rule. That’s not surprising because blending is a hassle — it takes more planning and more co-ordination.
“It’s just marketing”
Cynics may also claim that blended learning is just a rebranding exercise, carried out by e-Learning vendors who have hit upon hard times after the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Again, there is something to say for this view. Most companies that claim to be in the blended learning business used to be — you guessed it — e-Learning companies, not classroom trainers. They even tried to make the term blended learning their own, referring to it as a mix of “e-Learning and traditional methods.” This definition still dominates, even though it is unhelpfully restrictive, not to say condescending about the so-called “traditional” methods.
“It keeps the classroom instructors happy”
The e-Learning community may retaliate by claiming that blended learning is in fact a sop to the classroom community, allowing them a piece of the action in a world of learning that is already dominated by the computer. (See Sidebar 1.) This view is hard to justify. Computers are playing an increasing role in learning, but have major limitations as anyone can see. Even the most optimistic forecasts for e-Learning don’t see it replacing the classroom as a mechanism for delivering formal training.
According to my calculations, e-Learning is now bigger than the classroom. Much bigger. Now that got your attention. Let me explain how.
The American Society for Training and Development’s State of the Industry Report 2004 showed e-Learning as 29% of all formal training (up from 8% five years earlier) and the classroom at 63% (down from 80%). Then, it has long been known, and proven by a number of major studies, that most of what people learn at work is not as a consequence of any formally planned interventions. A typical estimate is just 20%. The rest occurs quite naturally as we do our best to cope with the demands of our jobs by hunting down information, asking opinions, comparing alternative solutions, trying things out, and learning from what happens. I’m sure you’ll agree that a fair proportion of this comes through communication with peers and with experts, both within and beyond our immediate working environment.
|
|
Formal |
Informal |
Total |
|
E-Learning |
4% |
24% |
28% |
|
Classroom |
14% |
0% |
14% |
|
Other |
2% |
56% |
58% |
|
|
20% |
80% |
100% |
Now, here’s where we need to make a judgement call, because I’m not aware of any up-todate research. What proportion of this communication would you think is online, through email, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and forums; or through browsing the intranet and searching with Google? How much higher could this rise when blogging extends its reach into the world of work? I’d say a conservative 30%, perhaps even 50%. The remainder is likely to be a mix of face-to-face communication, print and telephone, perhaps even TV and radio. None of this is going to be in a classroom.
Time to total the figures: Let’s say, conservatively, that e-Learning represents 20% of all formal learning (or 4% of the total) and 30% of informal learning (another 24% of the total). That’s 28% overall. If classroom training is 70% of formal training (being generous), then its total contribution is 14%. I know it’s a long time since I passed my Math exams, but I believethe e-Learning contribution is double that of the classroom. (See Table 1.)
So, what does this jiggery pokery tell us? Perhaps it just confirms that there are “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” More importantly, I believe, it emphasises the contribution that networked computers are making to all aspects of our lives, and that includes how we learn. Even without the interventions made by trainers and e-Learning suppliers, we have become empowered by the phenomenal improvements that have occurred in our access to information and expertise. We are becoming ever-more-independent learners, less and less reliant on the formal inventions of learning professionals. That’s what all good teachers and trainers have always wanted, so I believe there’s cause for a modest celebration.
“It’s about control”
Blended learning has also been harshly criticized, if not completely written off, by advocates of new, less formal approaches to learning (you know, those that take advantage of new technologies such as blogs, wikis, and Podcasts) as just another attempt to impose highly-structured and formalized instruction on employees who would prefer to be in much greater control of what they learn, and when and how. They see blended learning as being yet another repackaging of the same tired old ingredients, typically classroom instruction and what used to be called CBT (computer-based training, i.e. interactive, self-study lessons).
Worse than that, perhaps, is the accusation that, where e-Learning is used in the blend, it is restricted to covering the boring knowledge material which trainers hate training and learners hate learning. In his book Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training, Roger Schank laments that, “The part that is assigned to e-Learning is the rote learning part — the facts followed by the answers. That stuff doesn’t stick, and for the most part trainees hate it. When you hear the word ‘blended,’ run.”
This viewpoint of blended learning, while appealingly cynical and superficially fashionable, is off the mark in at least two respects. First, I believe that there remains a place for formalized instruction — and a very valuable one at that. Structure in learning is important when you don’t know what you don’t know, nor (once you realise what you don’t know) do you know how to go about rectifying the situation. You are a dependent learner — dependent on an expert, who has done all this before, to guide you from ignorance to mastery. The more dependent you are, the more you appreciate the structure that goes with formalized instruction, whether that’s in the classroom or online.
Structure is also helpful if you’re an employer and you need to be absolutely sure what knowledge and skills your employees have been exposed to and what they have learned as a result. As valuable as informal learning may be (and at least 75% of all learning is informal by all accounts), it doesn’t show up as a pass or fail on your learning management system. That matters when you’re responsible for training pilots, ensuring compliance to key legislation, or a thousand other critical training challenges.
Bridging the gap
The criticism of blended learning by informal learning enthusiasts falls down in one other important respect — it assumes that blended learning cannot make use of new, relatively informal, methods and media. Now strictly speaking, no learning activity that is set up with an explicit learning objective can be accurately called “informal.” However loosely it may be structured, however discretionary, however unsupervised — if the learning activity is deliberately included in a program to facilitate learning, then educators would like us to call it “non-formal.” That’s fine, this distinction can be conceded — blended learning can be as non-formal as you like. Here’s for non-formality!
It’s true that most blended learning is a combination of formal, you might say traditional, elements — a bit of classroom, a bit of CBT, perhaps some on-job instruction. But there is no reason whatsoever why this should always be the case. By including non-formal elements, blended learning not only becomes more relevant, more embedded in real-work behaviour and therefore more powerful, it also acts as an important bridge from formal to informal learning. (See Figure 1.) It demonstrates the potential for learning in everyday work activity. It encourages independent learning.
Figure 1 By making use of non-formal methods and media, blended learning fills the gap between formal instruction and informal learning
