Introduction Summary
Blended learning has become popular in corporate training in the last few years. This is because blended learning uses a good combination of online, offline, multimedia, and other instructional designing techniques for a rich learning experience for the learners. It is a comparatively better learning method if you want to develop agile and innovative workforce in your organization.
Introduction
In traditional classroom-based instruction, learning is facilitated by an instructor or trainer and is supported by tutorials, seminars, and personal learning communities. The web-based online learning is independent, flexible, and virtual instruction, which is supported by webinars,
eLearning modules, videos, forums, and online learning communities.
Blended learning is a method of delivery that combines classroom elements with online elements. In blended learning, a portion of the traditional face-to-face classroom instruction is replaced by web-based online learning. It combines the convenience and flexibility of learning at one’s own time, with the advantage of learning from trainers and peer interactions. Thus, learners can participate in instructor-mediated and independent learning, which helps in increased retention. In blended learning, you can consider what parts of learning should occur in person with instructor guidance and what parts of learning can happen online at the learner’s own time.
Blended learning can help employees develop important higher-order job skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, decision making, collaboration, and evaluation. In this blog, we’ll explore how blended learning can help improve the employee performance.
Ways to Use Blended Learning in Employee Training
Here are a few methods on how you can use blended learning in employee training.
Offer Learning Content in a Multitude of Formats
Blended learning provides more flexibility by offering training content in different formats like webinars, videos, eLearning, modules, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, face-to-face training sessions, VILT sessions, PDF documents, and more. Thus, you provide your employees with a wide range of choices and a much greater degree of flexibility. This self-monitoring can help learners spend sufficient time on unfamiliar concepts or difficult content. Blended learning in the workplace involves a good combination of classroom in-person training, virtual sessions, collaborative group activities, and online learning modules. Employees learn independently, visit and revisit learning materials when needed, and apply their knowledge in the job.
By using learning platforms like KREDO, you can add videos and other resources to your courses and share them with your learners. In KREDO, you can embed videos using pre-designed templates, or else upload your videos directly to YouTube or Vimeo and share the external links. This way, you can provide additional learning resources to your employees.
Use Personalized Learning Approach
In this method, you can address the unique needs and learning styles of each employee with the help of data analytics and the latest technologies and tools to create personalized learning paths for each employee. Trainers can provide targeted support on the basis of the individual learning needs of each employee. It helps to improve employee engagement and performance at work.
Personalized learning creates flexible learning opportunities for the learner. It focuses on learner ownership by providing them the choice in deciding the process and the product of their learning. It honors and values the strengths, abilities, and unique talents of learners.
Encourage Collaborative Learning Among Employees
Collaborative learning is another innovative training method in blended learning. In this method, employees work together in groups and solve the tasks or problems given by the facilitator. It helps to develop team building, inter-personal skills, communication skills, and critical thinking skills in employees. You can also facilitate collaborative learning through online platforms such as discussion forums and video conferencing methods.
In collaborative learning, learners actively engage in getting new information in group efforts. They get a chance to understand other’s points of view, which helps to gain a better understanding of the concept. Thus, it helps them to develop active listening skills, thinking abilities, taking and giving constructive feedback.
Make Use of Webcams, Chat Features, Breakout Rooms, and More
When you want to organize virtual instructor-led training (VILT) or virtual classroom training (VCT) sessions, as part of blended learning, you can make use of webcams, chat features, breakout rooms, zoom calls, and many more to simulate the traditional classroom learning experience. Group activities, individual exercises, and peer-to-peer dialogues foster strong participant engagement. Learners are encouraged to ask questions and offer their observations during the sessions.
Learners can use webcams to enhance visual and personal aspects of the classroom. They can use chat box facility for communication across the cohort and the trainer. Breakout rooms is another powerful feature in virtual programs. The facilitator can divide learners into small groups to work on tasks or assignments, and he can visit any virtual room when needed to offer support and guidance. Learners can also share their completed or in-progress tasks with the help of screen sharing with each other in real time. This facilitates discussion and enhances the learning.
By using learning platforms like KREDO, you can conduct online classroom sessions to your learners. You can create an online event using any of the providers of your choice like Microsoft Teams, Zoom Meetings, or Google Meet. Once you create, a link will be generated giving time and duration details. You can share this link with your learners, as part of the course in KREDO. Using the link, learners can attend the online session.
Conclusion
To conclude, blended learning is more flexible, adaptable, and engaging for all types of learners. This approach allows instructors or trainers to cater to the unique needs of their learners in the best possible manner. All that you need is the right technology and training, to offer blended learning programs to your employees.
You can create blended learning programs to support your employees in upskilling and reskilling. You can author your learning materials with minimum efforts on our online learning platform KREDO or build customized eLearning courses on our authoring tool Prodient.io. You can also select the courses of your choice from our library of courses and tell us to refine them as per the needs of your employees and the business. If you wish to know how our services, learning platform, and authoring tool can help your organization in blended learning programs, contact us or write to us at suresh@tesseractlearning.com.