Here are 4 tips to help you spring into blended learning:
1. Create something new.
One of the challenges that learning leaders face is “to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new,” according to Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown in A New Culture of Learning. Learners enjoy—and need—both structure and freedom. Blended learning allows you combine structure and freedom to customize a training program for your organization’s specific needs, whether that’s adding more games, social learning, discussion-based activities or face-to-face components.
2. Make your learners care.
Often the formal online course portion of a blended learning program gets a bad reputation for being boring. It doesn’t have to be this way! Here’s a tip from the eLearning Brothers: “Often what makes content boring is that there isn’t inherent relevance or connection between it and the learner. You can establish that connection by helping them get emotional about the content in a productive way (like with humor, music or stories).” Blended learning is an opportunity to combine all kinds of different learning avenues, like video, music, narratives and more.
3. Allow them to experience training.
Use scenarios as part of your blended learning program to put employees in a particular situation and get them engaged in the training. Scenarios are another solution to making lifeless online training more personal, active and effective. Check out this example of a cool zombie-themed scenario: Engage Your Learners with a Zombie e-Learning Scenario.
4. Choose software that saves you time.
If you use the best tools, you can quickly create a blended learning environment that will start benefiting your organization—right away. First, you’ll need an authoring tool that lets you create training courses the most efficient way, without sacrificing quality or interactivity. For example, Lectora® Inspire now comes with eLearning Brothers Lectora Template Library, Cutout People Library and Interaction Builder. You can try it for 30 days to see how easy it is to quickly create professional e-Learning courses!
Want to read more about blended learning? Here’s an article on the Lectora e-Learning Blog: 5 Best Practices for Blended Learning.
