Blended learning report shows where work needs to be done

It's not often that anyone researches blended learning. After all, blending is not remotely sexy, even though it now seems to be the strategy of choice for most employers around the world. Well, a month or two ago, e-learning developer Kineo and global training providers The Oxford Group helped us all out by gathering information to show how blended learning is being used, what benefits are being obtained and what problems are being experienced.

Blended Learning: Current Use, Challenges and Best Practices summarises the responses from more than a hundred different organisations. The bottom line appears to be that 'blended learning is well-established but not necessarily well blended�.

How well established? Well, 86% of respondents were blending frequently or sometimes, with an average of 4.8 different ingredients per blend. Of these, 54% are reporting improvements in business performance and 38% believe that blending leads to more effective learning than simply using a single ingredient. Not dazzling benefits, but encouraging, considering blends are still quite primitive.

Respondents highlighted the danger of having a team of designers working in their silos on each different learning element. One imagines that the most likely manifestation of this problem is face-to-face people in one corner and e-learning in the other. There is no way that we will achieve better designs for learning until the responsibility is integrated under a single designer who understands not just face-to-face learning or e-learning but the whole range of possibilities, including all other forms of collaborative activities and learning content. Go to the face-to-face and e-learning silos and you will get - surprise, surprise - unimaginative blends of face-to-face and e-learning. This will achieve some efficiencies, but completely underplays the potential of blended learning to cross over from the formal, to all types of social and experiential learning.

To be fair, the respondents to the survey have picked up on the problem, recognising that you 'can't assume that good face-to-face trainers or e-learning designers will have the skills to design and map a truly blended solution'. Some 57% admitted that 'they have no or only few people in the organisation with the appropriate skills.' As someone who spends much of their time trying to fill this gap, I am encouraged to see that this need is at long last being recognised.

The report also reports on the winners and losers in terms of blended learning ingredients. Some 25% are reducing the face-to-face element, whether classroom or one-to-one coaching. This is an understandable efficiency saving, although care needs to be taken not to deny a face-to-face experience on those occasions in which it really delivers results.

We will see more emphasis placed on learning resources (44%), webinars (38%) and self-paced e-learning (36%), all of which should yield benefits in terms of efficiencies, as long as they are implemented with skill and care. I personally would like to see a greater emphasis on collaborative online learning using simply tools such as forums, wikis and blogs. For longer programmes, this can supply the glue which holds the programme together.

So, thanks to Kineo and the Oxford Group for shedding some light on what is happening out there. Blended learning is now practically ubiquitous; now we need to see L&D departments organised to reflect this fact, and capability building programmes to ensure that all participants get the big picture.

Classrooms are not the problem but they are also not the solution

In July, the Learning and Performance Institute published an initial report summarising the results of some 983 self-assessments carried out in the previous six months against their Capability Map.

To quote from the Executive Summary:

'Two things stand out from the data collected over the first six months of use of the LPI Capability Map  First, the Learning and Development profession has broad and deep roots in the traditional training model - in particular, in the creation of training materials for delivery in a face-to-face environment.

This should not come as a surprise. Until recently this was the entirety of L&D, and in many organisations classroom training is still the primary medium for improving employee skills and knowledge. While the classroom has its place, L&D's model has to change to deal with the 21st Century's fast pace of change.

The second - and concerning - thing to stand out from these data is that the L&D profession does not appear to be expanding its skills base to do this.'

As the writer says, this should not come as any surprise. It should also not be that surprising if they find very similar results in another two or three years. I have long resigned myself to the fact that L&D is one of the most conservative professions going and is finding it very hard to believe that its role as provider of classroom courses is becoming less and less relevant.

However, I sort of understand why. In the hands of a good facilitator, the classroom can be a very productive place of learning, at least in small doses. L&D knows how to deliver classroom experiences that are well received by learners, even if they do not make much of an impact back on the job. Both the emergence of new and powerful learning technologies and the increased recognition of the importance of on-demand, informal and experiential learning, are unsettling in the extreme to a profession that likes to act as an agent of change but doesn't like doing the changing.

At their best, classrooms provide an opportunity for extended periods of practical experimentation, discussion, reflection and knowledge sharing, away from the demands of the day-to-day job. But, as everyone knows by now, they are also relatively expensive, inflexible, unscalable, not to mention ineffective (at least when used in isolation).

There's no doubt that L&D is shifting, in some cases because new L&D managers have got the message and are making change happen, and in other cases because of pressure from the business. But this process is being held back by a widespread deficiency of skills and confidence among the profession as a whole. It doesn't help that much of the training that is available for trainers only reinforces the old model and slows up change. Yet without a radical re-skilling, it will become harder and harder for L&D to maintain its credibility.