Corporate Strategy and Learning Center

We are in a time where organizations are offering up robust training programs to their workforces. No longer do learners have a flat, one-instance training event. L&D departments are designing full-scale programs with stages of training for their learners. These programs direct a learner through their learning journey over the course of several weeks or even months. That journey involves multiple stops where the learner will interact with a variety of training deliverables in different formats, such as instructor-led, eLearning, virtual instructor-led, social learning, and self-paced asynchronous learning.

These comprehensive, blended training programs allow learners to engage with the content in a variety of ways. This variety is a bonus for learners and organizations—it enhances learning and content retention and drives the learner toward achieving the training’s business goals. But, these complex programs can create some chaos for the learner if they aren’t organized and structured in a way that the learner can easily navigate them. This is where a learning map comes into play.

With the influx of more blended programs for the learners in our organizations, Learning & Development is challenged to design training programs that are more complex and could possibly take more time to develop. With a variety of deliverables in play, those who manage L&D teams and efforts are wise to keep their eyes on the horizon to strategically design programs that service their client’s needs while also taking advantage of efficient ways to develop those comprehensive programs. Repurposing elements—or objects—from and within existing learning deliverables is one way to work toward this efficiency.

The major types of modern training each have their advocates among learning professionals, and we believe there is a time and place for eLearning, instructor-led training, virtual ILT, and on-the-job training, along with their many sub-genres. That’s why a blended learning curriculum that incorporates several training formats into an integrated whole is often the best instructional design strategy.

Blended learning leverages the strengths of each delivery type to align with how people acquire and apply knowledge and skills. A blended program is often the most efficient and effective way to deliver learning, particularly to large and geographically dispersed populations, and while there is complexity to conceptualizing and implementing a cohesive blended program, the benefits usually make the effort worthwhile. Most crucially, from a learning budget standpoint, by reducing face-to-face time but still retaining a degree of instructor involvement, blended learning allows for considerable cost savings without eliminating the advantages of personalized interaction.

Here are some examples of how different learning components can work together to form an effective blended strategy.