Yesterday’s post explained why blended learning is on the rise in the modern-day workplace. Today’s post offers six tips and best practices for effectively implementing blended learning strategies and courses.
1. Analyze Your Learners and Desired Learning Outcomes First
When developing your blended learning courses, first analyze who your learners are and what you want them to learn, and then develop your courses and content around that.
Make sure your learners are interested in what you what them to learn and that your organization has a specific need for the skills or experiences that your learners will gain from the blended courses that you’re developing. Otherwise, your blended strategies and courses will end up serving no real purpose, won’t be effective, and will not yield a high return on your investment.
2. Incorporate the Right Balance of Formal and Informal Learning Time
Each blended learning course may not end up containing exactly 50% in-person and formal learning experiences and 50% informal and remote learning experiences.
However, try to make sure learners spend the appropriate amounts of time they need for individual tasks, experiential learning, collaborative tasks, and tasks that require one-on-one learning with a trainer or instructor, regardless of whether the learning experiences are formal or informal.
And make sure learning time for various content and tasks is also dependent upon what type of material is being covered throughout the entire course.
3. Don’t Forget E-Learning Collaborative Elements
Don’t forget that e-learning platforms can also encourage learner collaboration. On e-learning platforms, learners can collaborate with one another and their instructors.
So, don’t think you always have to wait until learners are in the same place physically at the same time to take advantage of collaborative learning experiences. Also, rely on your e-learning tools for collaborative learning.
4. Use Various Types of Learning Content
Whether learning content is covered in person or virtually, make sure you have learning content that covers each different learning style. And make sure that content is varied enough so that it is engaging, too.
For instance, you wouldn’t want to only include text documents and slide-based presentations, as your learners, whether they’re remote or in person, will get bored and check out.
So, make sure you include a healthy mixture of videos, gamified content, exercises, etc., in both in-person and remote training modules.
5. Offer Regular Feedback and Make It Important
Learners want more feedback regardless of where or how they’re learning. So, whether they’re remote or in person, make sure they receive feedback often. For instance, instructors can provide feedback to groups once they complete exercises together in person. And individual learners can receive scores on quizzes or modules completed virtually in between their in-person modules for feedback.
6. Rely on Data and Learner Feedback
Make sure that you are relying on learner data and learner feedback when developing your blended learning strategies and courses. If you don’t, you’ll end up managing and administering blended learning courses that aren’t yielding a high return on investment or that learners don’t like, aren’t learning anything from, or don’t even engage with in the first place.
If you want your blended learning courses and strategies to yield results, follow the six tips and best practices outlined above.