Considering and Implementing Blended Learning: Rethinking Learning Approaches

Last Updated on

April 14, 2022

‍Written by myskillcamp's Training Partner, Upskill

The health crisis we’ve had to cope with has forced us to rethink our way of learning. Finding new approaches has been necessary and digitalisation is now an evidence, even for lifelong learning. Today, plenty of tools and digital solutions help us to provide high quality distance learning and to make face-to-face training far more engaging. Digital technology is a must for both learning styles.

But will digitalisation still be a key theme after the pandemic? What is the real impact on the sector? Unow, an actor in digital corporate learning, has recently conducted a survey on many companies in order to gather their perception of the evolution of corporate learning. 91% of the respondents think that the lockdown and the pandemic will have a long-term impact on digitalisation in learning. For most companies, there’s no turning back. On the contrary, it’s important to continue and integrate digitalisation in the evolution of their workers, for example through blended learning (19% of the respondents).

ISTF also conducted such a survey which reports that 89% of the companies want to continue using distance learning or blended learning, even after the health crisis. A trend confirmed by a study carried out by the CNFPT which reveals that while only 6% of the provided in-company training were blended-learning training before the Covid-19 crisis, this rate increases to reach 74% in 2020.

Even if digital training is more and more successful, face-to-face training remains an interesting option since many learners and teachers still think that some approaches cannot be replaced by fully digital programs.

At Upskill, we also believe that digital learning cannot be used for any topic. It could for example be far more difficult to talk about and experiment non-verbal communication during a digital training session than by face-to-face learning.

Blended learning, a mix of digital and face-to-face learning, is thus a good compromise if you want to take advantage of both methods.

How to implement blended learning

At Upskill, we base the creation of each blended course on the same method, inspired by Constructive alignment.

Creating a reassuring environment

First of all, creating good blending courses needs a positive and reassuring environment as it can be difficult for some people to become acquainted with a digital platform or to have to learn on one’s own.

The 3 conditions for such an environment are :

Ensuring that every student feels responsible for their own learning,
Ensuring that every student becomes autonomous,
Working by learning objectives.

Establishing clear objectives

Establishing clear goals and objectives is an important part of the job, even before setting up the method to reach them.

In order to identify these objectives, we invite you to refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy. This classification includes six levels of learning, each level being built on a foundation of the previous ones.

Choosing the right method

Obviously, the chosen method and the learning activities are highly dependent on the learning objective.

We start with defining what it is intended students should learn (our objectives), and align teaching activities to those objectives. Depending on the chosen activities, we’ll be able to determine which method best suits : digital or face-to-face learning. That’s often where blended learning appears particularly appropriate since it allows you to mix digital and face-to-face activities.

8 évènements d’apprentissage de Pulmay & Leclerq (2008) will help you to validate the definition of your learning activities.

Assessing

Always remember that assessing your learning program will help you to improve and optimise. Also bear in mind that the best assessment is the one that evaluates each level of your educational programs. Don’t hesitate to refer to the new version of the Kirkpatrick Model.

Following these 4 steps will help you ensure that your blended learning program is efficient, qualitative and offers the advantages of both digital and face-to-face learning.

To read more about why Blended Learning works, check out this blog.

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