What Is Blended Learning?

Despite all the benefits of distance education, not all concepts can be learned online. There is a necessity for practical tasks that must be accomplished on-site for maximum effect. Some workplaces, such as medical facilities and manufacturing plants, require regular physical presence, but they still may benefit from distance education facilities, improving performance and freeing their workers’ time. Blended learning is what applies here.

A blended learning definition includes combining online and offline approaches based on the current educational necessities. It requires clear organization based on the company’s goals and the implementation of learning management software, such as CleverLMS. Let’s explore how it works and elaborate the algorithm of its implementation.

Online and offline learning from the modern perspective

Offline learning can be substituted by technology-aided distance learning in most cases, but not in all. I believe that it’s wrong to limit people from learning online, as some companies require them strictly to attend physically as much as possible. So, let’s just count several situations when the on-site presence is necessary by definition:

Practical tasks, including manufacturing processes for plants, medical activities for healthcare, and scientific research for scholarly institutions, cannot fully be performed remotely. If employees need to increase their skills in car manufacturing, for example, they must visit offline activities regularly.

On-site activities such as driving, delivery, or customer consulting require physical presence, too, as they should be done directly in the workplace.

Blended learning is the emerging concept of the smart combination of both methods. It’s the solution for companies where employees’ physical presence is required, as it’s not the reason to ignore distance learning advancements. So, how exactly it works, and which steps are required to implement it? Let’s see.

Essential strategies and their benefits

Blended learning meaning is more than simply merging distance and ordinary education. It’s a new concept for both, based on both approaches’ benefits. As you’ll see, it requires some smart company analysis and relies on constant performance tracking. See the essence of blended learning in the diagram below.

There are objectives that one must follow to improve the company’s learning paths. As here we’re talking about corporate education, we’ll focus on employee skills perfection and business performance increasing, although similar strategies apply to educational facilities too.

So, here is the list of the blended learning strategies that are crucial here:

Clearly define the learning objectives for each lesson or module, separately for the in-person and online components. Connect them with the desired outcomes, such as increasing the company’s productivity.

Design a curriculum that integrates the online and offline components without flaws. Connect it with objectives and use the blended learning flexibility to choose the best-fit time for educational activities.

Use various activities to engage learners and reach desired outcomes. They include online lectures, online discussions, regular meetings, personal tasks, surveys, on-site practical tasks, and hands-on activities.

Use personalization, allowing learners to work at their own pace while ensuring that their productivity increases.

Use collaboration through group projects, discussions, and online forums. Employees can freely share their knowledge and insights, so they’ll see that their opinion is important, and you’ll obtain a bunch of new ideas to increase your productivity.

Use synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (self-paced) activities to connect different learning schedules. Self-paced activities are good for enriching the theoretical background and evoking insights and discussions, while real-time practices are the best to give practical experience.

Feedback is crucial here, so encourage regular employee reporting that includes their personal experience and expectations.

Evaluate and adapt blended learning regularly, using its flexibility and tracking options based on learner feedback, performance data, and teacher observations.

Numerous benefits of blended learning include:

Personalization enables making personal learning plans for each employee based on their skills requirements and personal preferences, including them in learning objectives.
Efficiency of blended learning is easy to monitor and regulate, as it is based on clear and trackable learning objectives.
Flexibility enables the management to choose learning hours and allocate offline educational activities when it’ll be convenient for learners and educators.
Educational technology advances may be implemented to improve the whole process.
Insights based on the learning data enable the management to choose the most efficient educational approach. In addition, organizing an efficient working and educational environment among employees increases their productivity and leads to them generating insights, too.
Cost efficiency is another benefit, as blended learning save costs required for offline classroom education.

Implementation

After you know what it is and how it works, let’s see its practical side. Blended learning solutions, similar to many other concepts, require strategic thinking and goal-setting for the proper implementation. Let’s elaborate on a general algorithm for that.

Assess your company’s current performance. Which employees’ skills and activities lead to its profits and how? If you’ll improve them, how it’ll increase the performance and earnings?

Identify your learning objectives to achieve the required goals. Ask which skills your employees must perfect and which improvements you’ll obtain from that.

Communicate to your colleagues all identified objectives and ensure that they’ll understand what they need to learn and why. It’s essential to create an innovative working environment where each employee will understand their role and be motivated.

Create a strategic plan based on the chosen approach. Include all

Choose the learning management software (LMS) for accomplishing your goals and organize everything mentioned above.

Blended learning disadvantages are actually implementation flaws, which may arise if you’ll not follow some required points properly. For example, a lack of clear learning objectives will lead to unclear and inefficient results as well. A lack of motivation and communication is no less dangerous, leading to disengagement and reduced satisfaction and efficiency. In addition, blended learning relies heavily on technological advances, so ensure that your personnel is familiar with LMSs and isn’t hesitant to use all their features.

Using clear strategies and an implementation plan enables you to eliminate these disadvantages. Now, let’s familiarize ourselves with the software that may be helpful here to avoid such flaws.

Blended learning apps

EdTech apps, such as CleverLMS and other learning management systems, provide a bunch of options to optimize and automate all educational processes. Let’s overview the required functionality for efficient blended learning tools based on the CleverLMS features.

Course builder + online knowledge base includes the toolset for
Event planning is especially important here to set goals and plan both online and on-site educational activities. In addition, blended learning requires regular meetings to be in touch with all learners, understand their progress, and obtain feedback.

Educational Learning Management Systems CleverLMS

Progress tracking is important to make blended education quantitative and trackable. It includes learning path monitoring and reporting, which show learners’ results and help adjust the educational process.

Motivation and gamification tools include reward point systems and interactivity that motivate learners to continue their education.
Communication instruments include the ability to send and receive messages and leave comments on all learning materials.

Thus, blended learning platforms must provide tools for tracking, task setting, and event planning, in addition to regular course-building and data-sharing instruments. As they unite online and offline activities, their features should be connected with offline events and make them easier to organize.

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Conclusion: Future perspectives

As online education develops, ignoring its opportunities and limiting employees in using them are unwise. In cases when a physical presence of learners is necessary, we may combine online and offline education using the benefits of both.

Online blended learning is an especially good solution for businesses that cannot make all their working processes online, such as manufacturing companies. To implement it, it’s essential to assess the company’s needs, formulate learning objectives, and create a motivated and active environment at work. Flaws are possible only as implementation problems, while benefits include high flexibility, personalization, and increased efficiency.

BY VERONIKA SINITSA

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