Creating a Premium Blend?: 20 Questions and a Case Study

"As we continue to experiment with these different delivery modalities in order to create our own premium blends, we will be able to learn from our blended successes. Of course, other organizations’ attempts that fell short of success are also lessons learned, or they may even be effective learning solutions for our audiences. Good luck to you in your quest to design and develop your own premium blends of learning!"

Hot or Not? — you may have seen some of the many Web sites that offer virtual passers-by the opportunity to rate people, animals, and things according to highly subjective levels of desirability. While it’s a silly way to waste time, we often seem to play at the same game in technology. The evaluations are sometimes just as subjective and superficial. Ideas, technologies and trends are thought to be hot (or not), sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong reasons.

Depending on the reader’s age, it really isn’t difficult to recall dozens, maybe even hundreds, of innovations some people thought were hot at the time: the BetaMax videotape format, teaching machines, VideoDisc, LaserDisc, CD-I, the :CueCat, Microsoft’s Bob and Apple’s Lisa, the NetPC, “push” technology, eBook devices, the “paperless office” and the “cashless society,” or cold fusion (the physics version, not the software).

On the other hand, there have also been a number of cases in which being tagged “hot” did not turn out to be the kiss of death. Among these is “blended learning,” which seems to be a hot topic for the right reasons.

For example, in June 2004, the eLearning Guild published a Guild Research Report titled, The Trends in Blended Learning. Among the findings that underscore the success of blended learning were such items as, “... a significant majority (85%) of our respondents’ organizations uses blended learning for the creation and/or delivery of educational content,” and, “... the majority of respondents reported that in their experience blended learning was more effective than non-blended methods (74%).” But to me, the most significant finding was the conclusion that, “... improving learning experiences is more often a rationale for blended learning than is the desire to reduce delivery and development costs.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we only had to think about how to put together the most effective instruction blend?

It would be glorious to spend 100% of the time designing instruction. Unfortunately most of us must also manage the learning project, design the instruction, develop the delivery media, and sometimes, if there is an instructor-led component, we teach as well. To the client (whether internal or external), what usually matters most is how quickly you can launch your course, how many people can take the course, how long will it take them to complete it, and how much will it cost.

Since this is the case, designers need to be both efficient and effective with allotted resources and scheduled timeframes. That’s why it’s important to learn from the successes and the mistakes of others in the industry. It is also important to leverage the tools and strategies used to design and develop learning in successful projects.

However, at the same time it is important to remember that audiences, performance challenges, organizational cultures, and technological infrastructures are very different from one project to the next. Each effort may require a different approach to the design of instruction, blended or not. That’s why it is critical to be cautious about “magic bullets” for learning or “one-size-fits-all” solutions for performance improvement challenges. No matter what your instructional design challenge is, it is so important for you to know when to say, “Just because a particular strategy or delivery modality was successful elsewhere, we’ve tested it within our corporate culture, with our audience, etc. and it didn’t work, so let’s move on and try something else.”

I have written this article to shed some light on questions such as:

• What is blended learning?
• Is blended learning really as new and cutting edge as some articles and white papers would have us believe?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of some of the delivery modalities?
• Does blended learning really work?
• What is a solid approach to designing a premium blend for any corporate culture, audience, content, and technological infrastructure?
• Does blended learning make our jobs as instructional designers easier or more difficult?

I will conclude by relating my answers to the way in which the Educational Services department within Canon U.S.A., Inc. approached its first blended learning solution.

What is blended learning?

This is a loaded question, and I’m not sure there will ever be a standard definition of blended learning, but in the context of this article I will approach it as a learning design that combines at least two delivery modalities that may also

include multiple instructional strategies. There are also many different names and ideas about delivery modalities. Here are my working definitions for four of the most popular ones:

1. Asynchronous Web-based training (WBT) provides a tutorial type course consisting of several self-paced modules accessed through the Internet. WBT activities include simulations, games, animations, assessments and reading.
2. Instructor-led training (ILT) refers to an instructor-led event in a physical classroom. ILT activities could include reading, writing, lecture, assessments, role-plays, games, etc.
3. Asynchronous online learning (AOL) refers to discussion threads, which may be monitored by an instructor, or by a subject matter expert (SME). AOL activities could include reading, writing, simulations, animations, assessments, etc.
4. Synchronous online learning (SOL refers to classes that are conducted by an instructor through a virtual classroom (e.g., Elluminate, Centra, and other virtual classroom technologies). SOL activities include reading, writing, simulations, animations, assessments, etc.

You will notice that the activities under all four types are practically identical. The main differences in activities have to do with interfaces, and with the amount and type of interaction with other learners, instructors, and SMEs.

Is blended learning really a new concept?

Actually the concept of blended learning shouldn’t be new to anyone. Since the days of the one-room schoolhouse, we have combined “instructional activities,” including: reading, lecture, group work, and writing (even if it was on slate tablets). What makes blended learning different today is that now we can combine instructional activities with a wider variety of delivery modalities.

The inconsistent definitions and confusion around delivery modalities is exactly why many professionals in education and training are unsure about what blended learning is, and whether it should be part of their curriculum. Selecting from the choices available today of instructional activities, delivery modalities, learning theories, and so on, can be overwhelming.

It seems that as we add more technology-driven options to our toolboxes, the concept of blended learning has begun to explode. In order to create a premium blend for a particular situation, it is important to determine the delivery modalities’ strengths and weaknesses, and to pair them with instructional activities that match the audiences, performance challenges, corporate culture and technological challenges.

Getting to know the delivery modalities

The idea behind blended learning is that it should be possible for instructional designers to create a combination that leverages the advantages of each delivery modality while neutralizing the disadvantages. (See Table 1 for the advantages.) The challenge is deciding on the delivery modalities needed for the optimum combination.

 

 

Each delivery modality has one or more advantages over the others, given a particular situation. Important factors in determining which delivery modality is the best fit include:

• Content
• Instructional strategies
• The skills of the designer team
• The budget
• Time to market
• Time frame
• Technological infrastructure
• The audience location, skill set, access to the Internet, access to computer equipment, etc.

Later in this article I present 20 questions that should be asked when selecting and combining delivery modalities, but first let’s look at a critically important question.

Does blended learning really work?

Like any other new instructional strategy or theory, blended learning will not be deemed a success until there is enough research that cites specific statistics proving that with a particular audience, budget, content type, etc., a particular blend of delivery modalities will create the most effective instruction. Currently there are very few specific statistics available on blended learning, so for now the title of this section must remain a question. However, the research that does exist shows that through blended learning the potential for knowledge retention and improved job-performance increases.

What evidence do we have now? We would like to be able to cite results that meet the Gold Standard of research: peer reviewed empirical studies, involving large groups of learners that cite hard numbers to disprove well-crafted neutral hypotheses. So far, there aren’t any. The few studies that cite hard numbers have typically collected Level 1 data (subjective learner reaction, not learning results) from small groups of learners.

Most of what is available cites anecdotal evidence, such as case studies, learner comments, and managerial reviews. Unfortunately these studies do not give us what we need for building a systematic understanding of blended learning and its design. On the other hand, they do address possibilities, indicate some promising directions, and provide some guidelines for reducing risk and increasing the possibility of success.

Until we have experimental research results that meet the Gold Standard, we will need to design our own observational studies and surveys as part of the development effort. As instructional designers continue to leverage the advantages of the different delivery modalities with all types of content, audiences, etc. in order to determine their own premium blends, we will all benefit as we are able to read about their successes and leverage what makes sense for our performance challenges.

As with the traditional instructional design process, it seems design of blended learning is also more of an art than a science. Sometimes I really wonder about our understanding of instructional design — for example I recently saw a request for a software application that would enable a designer to select the right delivery modalities for a particular audience, corporate culture, etc. There are too many variables and intangibles in our business to create an application that can design learning, blended or not.

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