Designing Effective Hybrid Learning Programs
COVID-19 has transformed how businesses operate today. More specifically, it has changed how employees improve their workplace knowledge. Employees working remotely is not new. However, after the pandemic, it has become the new normal. Several of you reading this article right now or people who will read this article later are mostly working from home or partially from the office.
And all of us are provided with relevant tools to collaborate with peers and managers working remotely or from the office.
Engaging and training a hybrid workforce are the primary challenges faced by L&D and HR teams today.
To elaborate a bit, the role of HR and L&D is critical in the following areas:
- Engaging the workforce
- Creating a healthy ecosystem
- Creating a clear career roadmap
- Retaining employees for a longer term
- Helping cope with the new normal
- Creating a good learning pathway for both remote and on-premises employees
Hybrid Multitasking
Considering hybrid multitasking, we are all forced to adapt to new ways of learning. The challenge is how we can engage learners to upskill and reskill, and help them to continue to excel at their jobs.
Transitioning from classroom-only sessions to virtual training and eLearning has not been easy. We must understand that training for hybrid delivery requires new approaches and skills.
Technology must work effectively for people in the office or in remote locations. Many people are averse to using webcams when they work from home, creating a new challenge to connect and engage learners.
How To Utilize The New Dynamics And Create Learning Programs That Help The Learners Get The Best Learning Experience
Learning programs should be dynamic, which means that training needs to be:
- Just-in-time, in the moment of need
- Appropriate and not overly long
- Cater to both the remote working and on-premises employees
- Help organizations upskill and reskill employees seamlessly
- Memorable, with periodic reinforcements
- In tune with the new normal requirements
Solution For The New Era
Given that training has evolved in pandemic and post-pandemic times, what is required is a solution that is a mix of both offline and online training.
What Is Hybrid Learning?
It is a learning methodology in which the best of classroom and online training are combined in a manner that enables the best learning experience as well as improved performance of the employees. It helps employees undertake training irrespective of the location and not be constrained by the time and availability of trainers.
With hybrid learning:
- Deliver synchronous lessons using Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, and other tools
- Maximize learners' learning time
- Increase collaboration with social learning,
- Combine the classroom, virtual training, and eLearning
- Learners can interact with the content in meaningful ways
- Learners can access targeted remedial practice, guided practice, and chatbots
When providing learning, it's imperative that it be easily accessible and run on any device.
- Designing content for mobile-first delivery becomes important, as mobile can be accessed anywhere, anytime
- Bite-sized learning best fits for mobile-first delivery
- Importantly, trainers should be able to create courses swiftly
This is an ideal lifelong learning methodology now and will continue to be in the future for your deskless employees.
In a nutshell, mobile-based learning is adaptive, communicative, collaborative, and productive.
Continuous Learning Is Key In The Hybrid Model
A hybrid learning journey is never complete without the following:
- Well-thought-through social learning strategy
- Effective collaborative model for remote and in-person learning
- Integrating coaching and feedback with the same emphasis as learning
A continuous learning journey is made more profound when a hybrid approach is included because of the various learning strategies that kick in.
Use The Right Tools And Technologies
You should understand how learners consume information and drive the required/curated content in the easiest form for seamless learning delivery.
You can accomplish this by:
- Aligning with your existing learning ecosystems such as your LMS, LXP, or any other system to drive a continuous learning journey
- Adopting a system/new-age learning platform like KREDO to drive a continuous learning journey
Conclusion
To conclude, hybrid learning is here to stay as the world moves towards a hybrid workforce and hybrid workplaces. Hybrid learning incorporates learning elements such as offline, online, and performance support tools that are administered with a deep understanding of today's learner's needs. Hybrid learning encourages the use of various tools and technologies to aid better learning. Continuous learning journeys, games, and microlearning are few but part of an ever-expanding repertoire of learning modalities that are needed in the learning ecosystem.
Tesseract Learning has been recognized as a Top Custom Content Provider and a top eLearning, gamification, microlearning, mobile learning, and onboarding company for three years in a row. We can deliver innovative and effective learning programs based on your business needs with our learning design expertise. Contact me or leave a comment below to learn more about our services and how we can help you.