Your Ideal Balance: Match E-Learning and the Classroom with a Proven Way to Change Behavior
By D.L. Karl and Craig Perrin

Organizations have long understood the link between business results and the quality of workplace interactions, both among employees and between employees and their customers. As a result, these organizations continue to invest in classroom training in interpersonal skills. 

Recently, however, a new and urgent need - to increase the impact of training while reducing its cost - has fueled the search for more efficient methods and media. For some, that search arrived at a "blended solution," usually a mix of e-learning, classroom and other methods. A well-conceived blend including e-learning is more accessible, more individualized and sometimes less costly than classroom training alone.

Yet wherever you find a blended approach, you find the lingering challenge of how to combine new and traditional methods to achieve real economies and lasting behavior change at the same time. Although some organizations frame that challenge with clear performance goals, most simply try something and hope it works. This guesswork, inherent in many blended solutions, can frustrate the careful training professional and yield disappointing returns on a training investment.

A Formula for Training Success
Anyone eyeing a blended approach for soft-skills training would do well to consider this central fact: Technology has changed, but human nature has not. People have always acquired social skills through observation, practice and feedback - important ingredients in all effective training, blended or otherwise. So, to ensure the application of new interpersonal skills in the workplace, it's vital that training reflects the well-documented phases of adult learning. Only then can the training professional choose methods, media and technology that promote lasting behavior change.

Consider one model of the phases of adult learning:
1. Commit to learn. To succeed, training requires commitment on the part of both the learner and the manager/supervisor (leader). Leaders show commitment by supporting the value of training, modeling essential skills, coaching and recognizing skill use. For the learner, an effective training experience, whether traditional or high-tech, generates commitment by highlighting both the needs for a skill and the impact of its absence.

2. Assess current performance. Before or early in training, learners need a detailed picture of their current knowledge level and the use of each interpersonal skill. A specialized instrument allows the trainer or supervisor to measure and help learners focus on skill gaps. Later, post-training assessments measure recollection of training content and frequency of skill use in the workplace.

3. Acquire knowledge. During training, learners gain a detailed understanding of skills through presentations, readings, discussions, simulations and observation and analysis of examples.

4. Develop competence. In this critical yet neglected phase, learners gain facility and confidence by rehearsing a skill with other people. Real-time practice with another person, whether face-to-face or voice-to-voice, is essential to soft-skill mastery.

5. Apply new learning. Learners without a plan or consistent reinforcement are unlikely to use new skills. Useful application activities and tools include discussions, public statements of intention, printable online planners and follow-up practice and online reviews. Managers can promote application by coaching, recognizing and modeling the skills.

Finding your ideal balance
For training to succeed, the methods and media for each phase - commit, assess, acquire, develop and apply - must reflect its desired outcome, not the cost or convenience of a given technology.
Often overlooked are the pros and cons of each major approach, classroom or e-learning.

During the Acquire phase, for example, classroom participants learn by interacting with each other and the facilitator. This powerful benefit is lost in an e-learning "equivalent." For the Develop phase, numerous studies confirm that the nuances of direct, real-time interaction promote the best outcome for interpersonal skill practice.

In short, a successful blended solution--one that realizes the payoffs of sustained behavioral change - is a balance of media and methods that achieves the desired outcome for each learning phase. Put another way, the promise of blended learning cannot be realized by inserting technology with no regard to its fit with the desired outcome for each phase of a comprehensive learning process.

Two primary ways are available to balance new and traditional training methods: Classroom-centered and Web-centered. The central learning experience in each, as the names imply, is either traditional classroom or e-learning. Fully implemented, each of these blends can achieve the same learning and performance outcomes.

For the classroom-centered blend, the centerpiece is a live group experience that addresses all five phases of learning. Later, learners meet again for reinforcement via follow-up skills practice and application planning sessions. Learners also may go online to access content reviews, self-assessments and application tools.

A typical classroom-centered blend might include:
* Commit: Live face-to-face or voice-to-voice learning activities
* Assess: Online, paper or downloadable PDF instruments
* Acquire: Live face-to-face or voice-to-voice learning activities
* Develop: Live face-to-face or voice-to-voice learning activities
* Apply: Online, live, paper or downloadable PDF tools and activities

The centerpiece of the Web-centered blend is online knowledge acquisition via rich e-learning activities, including simulations that replicate certain features of a live skill practice. The critical need for real-time skills practice is addressed by the same live follow-up session used in the classroom-centered blend.

A typical Web-centered blend might include:
* Commit: Live face-to-face or voice-to-voice learning activities
* Assess: Online, paper or downloadable PDF instruments
* Acquire: A unified media-rich e-learning experience
* Develop: Live face-to-face or voice-to-voice learning activities
* Apply: Online, live, paper or downloadable PDF tools and activities

Looking to the future
A major part of most blended solutions, e-learning in soft-skills training has improved in recent years. However, research has yet to uncover e-learning as effective as classroom training in promoting long-term application of skills. While some e-learning works well for knowledge acquisition and reinforcement, the heart of soft-skills training remains real-time skill practice with another human being. And even though interactive online technology can facilitate live training for dispersed groups, it masks nuance and frankly the fun of classroom interaction.

The market for e-learning may someday outpace the market for classroom training. Still, if soft-skills e-learning is to surpass the classroom in instructional value, it must change fundamentally by devising new conventions and using media in new ways. In short, it will need a new design language that leverages technology to engage learners and achieve outcomes at least as consistently as face-to-face learning and practice. So, for now, the most effective available blend is an ideal balance of e-learning and live training matched to the desired outcome for each phase of learning.

Reprinted from  Workindex 

D.L. Karl is vice president, product development and Craig Perrin is director of product design for  AchieveGlobal, an international provider of training and consulting in leadership development, sales performance and customer service.