How do I begin designing a premium blend?
There are probably hundreds if not thousands of instructional design models, but the generic ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) summarizes most of them. Of the five steps in this model, the most critical one is Analysis. After determining that training is needed to improve performance, or to meet another business need, analysis should continue in order to decide what training solution is the right choice for your particular performance challenge, organization’s culture, audience, design team and instructors.
I have seen many discussions in articles and journals that present simple decision tables, based on two to four variables, to support selection of delivery modalities. Although I believe that some of these tables are great tools, they don’t seem to do justice to the complex process of determining what training solution is the right one. In my experience, it’s important to continue to gather information about a number of factors in order to determine your premium blend.
I have developed a series of questions to ask during the analysis phase. Some of these questions relate to organizational issues, such as cost and staffing, and some relate to learning issues, such as transfer to the job, the learners’ existing knowledge, and so on. The answers will guide the designer in selection of one or more delivery modalities. It is not a fore-gone conclusion that these questions will lead to a blended solution in every case.
Questions relating to learning issues
The first ten questions will guide design choices that primarily affect learning and transfer to the job. Some of the choices may ultimately affect cost and project management as well.
1. Difficulty level
What is the difficulty level, and what skills are needed for this audience to become successful with this content? The more difficult or the more skill-based the content is, the more likely it is that hands-on, practice time, expert help, or social learning will be needed. Therefore solutions like ILT, SOL, or a combination of WBT, ILT, and SOL might be necessary. If it is software skills that need to be taught, simulations through a WBT course might work without any other modalities.
2. Learner experience
What is the experience level of your audience? Audience familiarity with the topic may determine the blend. For example if a course is an update to a computer system that the audience is already familiar with, a WBT with software simulation could be a total solution. However, if this is a new or complex skill, or a combination of hardware and software, the combination of WBT, ILT, and possibly AOL or SOL, will be necessary.
3. Content support
What types of delivery modalities are best for which portions of the content and audience, and what is the right blend? Typically WBT is best for the transfer of knowledge, concepts, theory, facts, etc; WBT is also effective for teaching software skills through simulation. WBT also guarantees a consistent message, which may be important in instruction designed to support policies and procedures. But SOLs and AOLs are better in some cases. For example, if a SME is necessary for follow-up sessions and questions from geographically dispersed audiences, SOL or AOL would be the right choice. Depending on the skill of designers and instructors, content that needs to be quickly designed and deployed can also be handled well by SOL or AOL. ILTs are great for social learning, problem solving, and skill practice with real-world scenarios.
4. Practice
Does the content or audience require hands-on practice? If hands-on practice is required for improved performance, a blend with an ILT component or just an ILT could be the solution. If the skill required involves software, this can be emulated very well through a WBT course. If it were felt that a SME would be helpful, a combination of WBT with AOL or SOL would be worth considering.
5. Social learning questions
Would social learning increase the effectiveness of the training? An ILT, or an SOL if designed appropriately with the right technology (e.g. Centra, Elluminate, or other virtual classroom-based synchronous solutions), are really the only modalities in which social learning will occur.
6. Expert availability
Would it be necessary to have subject matter experts (SMEs) available for questions? If SMEs are necessary, an AOL, SOL or ILT, possibly combined with a WBT solution, could be the right blend.
7. Assessment
What levels of assessment will ensure performance improvement? If a course requires comprehension and knowledge a WBT solution will work. If assessment of learner analysis skills is needed, a SOL could be the solution. Finally, if skills must be demonstrated in order to make an assessment, a SOL or ILT or combination of WBT, SOL and ILT may be the right solution.
8. Learning activities
What types of learning activities would be most effective for this audience and content? Determining learning activities is central to the instructional design process. Once the designer determines the types of activities necessary to achieve specified learning objectives, a decision can be made concerning the most appropriate delivery modality for each of the activities.
9. Learner experience with delivery modalities
What experience does the audience have with the delivery modalities available? Even though a particular modality might be a great solution for the content and audience, the designer must consider whether it involves overcoming a learning curve for the audience in order to use it.
10. Learning aids
What types of learning aids would increase the probability of the learning objectives being achieved? Thinking about the learning aids will help to determine the modalities best suited to deliver the training.
Questions relating to organizational issues
Costs, staffing, and other organizational and managerial questions continue to be important, since a solution that costs more than the problem is no solution at all. The next ten questions address the key matters to account for in selection of modalities.
11. Content stability
Will the content that is being covered continually change? If this is the case, spending a lot of time up front developing training is not a good idea. WBT might be the best solution as it is easier to maintain a consistent message and update the content on the fly. An SOL is also a possibility, since you can schedule updates as needed to present the information to a geographically dispersed audience.
12. Time constraints
How much time do you have to design and develop the course? It takes less time and sometimes less money to design and develop SOL training or ILTs than it does to create WBT, depending on the skills of your designers and trainers.
13. Infrastructure
Are there any technology limitations, including bandwidth, the skill set of your tech support group, etc.? If the technical limitations are severe enough, SOL, AOL, or WBT may not be a viable solution even if it makes sense instructionally.
14. Deployment
How geographically dispersed is the audience? SOL, AOL and WBT are all possible cost-efficient ways to quickly deliver training to a dispersed audience. However, a number of factors may rule these out: for example, audience, designer, and trainer experience with these technologies; content difficulty; experience with the content; the need for face-to-face practice; or experience with scenario-based practice in real-world situations with the actual equipment. Sometimes the most effective solution may require an ILT, even for a geographically dispersed audience.
15. Group size and time frame
How many people need to be trained and what is the time frame to complete their training? Depending on the number of people that need to be trained and how quickly, a SOL solution might be needed. However, instructional designers have to be cautious when under pressure to deploy this type of solution. SOL, like any other training modality, may or may not be the single most effective way to train that particular audience and content. The design may need to combine SOL with WBT and AOL in order to create an effective solution. In some cases, it may be better to change the time frames and go with an ILT.
16. Design team skill set
What is the skill set of your designers for all modalities available? The depth of the instructional designers’ skill sets must also be taken into consideration. Just because a designer does a great job with traditional classroom training doesn’t necessarily mean they can design a blended solution.
17. Budget for consultants
Do you have the ability to hire consultants for any portion of this training? If the in-house skill set isn’t what it needs to be in order to deploy a blended learning solution, hiring consultants to fill this gap might be the answer.
18. Total budget
What is the budget that has been allotted for this course? Although budgets should have nothing to do with instructional design considerations, the realty is that they do. Therefore, when designing a blended solution each component’s cost as well as effectiveness must be considered. This is also a good time to think of evaluation, because if you feel you can prove cost savings due to particular training deployments, the budget could possibly be expanded upfront in order to deploy that solution.
19. Instructor skill set
What is the skill set of your trainers? Although SOL is a good solution for some content and some audiences, you must also consider the skill set of the trainers. Not all great classroom trainers can make the transition to a virtual classroom.
20. Total availability
What is the availability of instructors, SMEs, and your audience? You will need instructor and SME resources for ILTs, SOLs, and AOLs. If your audience doesn’t have time for travel or to spend several days in a classroom, SOLs, AOLs and WBT might be a combination that works for them. In some cases, combining alternate solutions with an ILT can cut down the time required in the classroom.
Using the answers
After answering the above 20 questions, a designer will have information on the performance challenge, content, instructional strategies, audience, instructors, SMEs and designers available for this project. These questions along with the table of advantages for delivery modalities, experience with the audience, and the great content available in Learning Solutions Magazine and on the Web on blended learning should give a starting point and enable good decisions on how to begin coming up with premium blends.
In reality the design process is an iterative, not a linear one. Once some initial notes are made on delivery modalities, begin writing learning objectives and then match them to possible delivery modalities (and vice versa), while referring back to the 20 questions. In most cases, an initial set of learning objectives will form before finalizing delivery modality decisions. It is also possible that as the design team answers the 20 questions, new learning objectives may come up for consideration, delivery modalities may change, or certain learning objectives may disappear from the design. It is important to remember that no matter what the research states, you are the expert when it comes to designing a learning solution that works for your organization’s culture, performance challenge, audience, SMEs, designers, and instructors.
As instructional designers, does blended learning make our jobs easier or more difficult?
The bottom line is that, although we now have many more tools that enable us to design incredibly effective learning solutions, blended learning really has made our jobs more difficult. But the good news is that these tools can make our participants more successful in gaining the skills they need to improve their performance, or in gaining the knowledge they need to do their jobs in a way that will improve your organization’s performance.
There will probably never be a totally scientific way of selecting instructional strategies, and therefore there will probably never be a scientific way of deciding what delivery modalities should be combined for best effect. Design will always involve art, or optimization. However, as instructional designers who are dedicated
to creating the most effective instruction, it is worth building the skills to make these determinations.
How the Educational Services (EDS) department within Canon U.S.A., Inc. approached its first blended learning solution.
Our first premium blend contained a mix of WBT and ILT, which allowed EDS to use the classroom time more efficiently and effectively. Why did EDS decide on a blended learning solution? We felt, given the research available to us, that with the right blend of learner centered solutions the potential for knowledge retention and improved job performance increases.
What was the decision process of EDS in selecting this particular course as our first blended learning solution? First, I should provide some history on our current training and what it is that we do. EDS is responsible for training service technicians, who work for dealers that sell our products. Our training focuses on new and updated products that are part of the imaging systems group which includes copiers, printers, multifunctional devices, and software, just to name a few of the products.
Our current curriculum includes 23 WBT courses, 32 self-paced self-study courses (which are paper-based), and 25 instructor-led training courses. We reviewed the benefits of all delivery modalities. Based on feedback from our audience (including their desires for more hands-on time with the devices, less lecture time, and more accessory training), our designers’ skills, our technological infrastructure, and our knowledge of our audience, we decided to start with a blend of WBT and ILT for one of our newest black-and-white multifunctional product launches.
The idea was to move most of the content that would normally be provided in a classroom lecture to a WBT course, which would then become a prerequisite to the classroom instruction. Figure 1 illustrates the content shifts involved.
Figure 1 Canon USA reorganized course content to increase hands-on time as a percentage
of classroom instruction.
With this strategy the WBT portion of the course covers the basic concepts, theory, configurations and specifications of our newest imageRUNNER series. At the same time, the ILT portion of the course would allow for more hands-on with the equipment, in the context of real-world scenarios. This blended approach was going to allow us to give the students what they had been asking for! The first step in the process of determining our premium blend learning solution was the formation of the “Right Blend” Task Force.
The “Right Blend” Task Force
The goal of creating the “Right Blend” Task Force was to bring the right people together to ensure the blended approach delivers the most effective learning experience for our participants, and in turn increases our customer satisfaction. This task force consisted of three of our instructors, two designer/developers and management representatives.
The “Right Blend” Task Force’s objectives were as follows:
- Determine what specific imageRUNNER series 2270/2870/3500/4500 content should be covered through which delivery methodology. We did however give the Task Force some guidelines for the e-Learning and classroom portions of the course. (See Figures 2 and 3 below.)
- Determine how the classroom
portion of this course should be configured and what should be included, for example:
- Pre-assessments — test for retention of online content, get participants on the same page, and reinforce key main concepts.
- Lab Practical Exercises (allowing the technicians more time with hands-on practice in context of real-world scenarios).
- Lab Practical Final Exam
- Final Written Exam
- Finalize the content in both the online and classroom course.
Figure 2 Example of guidelines given to the Task Force for the e-Learning part of the
training.
Figure 3 Guidelines provided to the Task Force for the classroom portion of the course.
In addition, the Task Force was assigned responsibility for several key support tasks. These included:
- Weekly meetings
- Take the online course and provide feedback on content and how information is being presented.
- Attend a train-the-trainer to actually go through the entire classroom course for one final look at the content and how it is presented.
- Champion the blended approach,
that is, knowing and communicating the blend
benefits, which were:
- Increase hands-on instruction during the classroom portion of the course while maintaining a high-quality training program. This will give the Instructors the chance to have a greater impact on the students during the application phase of learning.
- Increase the scope of information being covered in a course (i.e. Accessories). This method will allow us to cover more information and also focus classroom and Instructor resources.
- Focus in on the skills and field knowledge the Instructors can provide in the classroom. Making the courses more efficient and more effective with the same or less time in the classroom.
- Students can work at their own pace during the online portion, spending the time where they need additional time.
- Flexibility of the delivery will give the student more information in a fashion that will fit their schedules.
- More efficient use of field resources, equipment and Instructors. Not printing Technical Reference Manuals (typically 500+ pages) will save regional training center resources.
Results to date
This solution has been deployed now for a couple of months. Here is a sampling of actual feedback we have collected so far:
- “New course format (less lecture more hands on). Provides better training, more prepared to service equipment. Pre-study on e-learning provided a good running start on training.”
- “I like the new format of the classes. Less lecture and more hands on. The e-Learning study guide was a good way to eliminate the lecture time in the class. The practical trouble shooting was a great way to test what we learned and used in each module.”
- “I feel that the new course format is more effective.”
- “This new format is excellent. Most of our time was spent working on machines and this class had much more time spent on accessories.”
- “I liked the way the course was designed with less lecture and more hands on.”
Stay tuned for more details on the success of this program. In a follow-up article that I expect to provide later this year, you will learn how our audience continued to react to this blended course, how successful they were, and what they thought of the improved classroom training with its additional hands-on practice in the context of real-world troubleshooting scenarios and practical exams.
The blend wrap-up
As designers we should now realize that not only are our performance challenges getting more complex but the tools that we have available to build, develop and deliver our courses are also becoming more complex. We’ve also discovered that even though these tools might not necessarily make our jobs any easier, they do have the ability to enable us to create more effective learning solutions.
This is a very exciting time in our industry. 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!
