How Do Learners Define Blended Learning?Learning, performance, contribution/innovation drive demand
By Peter Cheese 

Over the past year or so, as I have spoken with corporate executives about the concept of "blended learning," I've frequently felt the need to move the discussion beyond learning delivery techniques to the subject of how organizations can better understand the true needs of learners and the role of technology in the overall learning and performance experience.

Try this experiment at your company: Ask your instructional designers to explain to you exactly what it is that is being "blended" when they speak of blended learning. I suspect that eventually someone will get up at a whiteboard and draw you a continuum of training delivery that moves from traditional, physical classroom experience at one end, to solutions at the other end that rely on increasingly sophisticated technologies, to CBT and collaboration tools, to e-learning and performance simulation.

It's really a spectrum of formal training. But from the learner's perspective, blended learning is about a continuous process of job experience, knowledge gathering, guidance, and counseling with reinforcement and performance feedback. So blended learning must be focused primarily on the continuous blend of experiences or behaviors of the learner...not the blend of learning delivery of which an organization is capable.

The exciting thing about technologies today is that they now can enable the delivery of a much more integrated and continuous learning experience, blurring the boundaries between formal training, on-the-job-learning, access to relevant knowledge, and guidance or coaching. As learning professionals with new tools at our disposal, we can now at last treat learners less as students (where we think of them primarily as participants in certain training events) and more as workers or performers, supporting them in a continual process of development and improvement.

Note that this learning continuum, as drawn, avoids the implication that there are opposite extremes to be somehow blended together.

Learn, perform, contribute/innovate

Instead of a training delivery spectrum, the spectrum of learning I have in mind is a continuum that is driven by three fundamental behaviors at the heart of workforce performance (see figure).

1. Learn. "Learning" in this case refers to those behaviors where learning is taking place for a worker outside the domain of actual job performance. This could be in the classroom, or through e-learning on a desktop.

2. Perform. Here, learning is taking place during the performance of the job tasks. The focus thus needs to be on delivering support to workers to enhance their ability to perform more effectively.

3. Contribute/innovate. Finally, people are given an opportunity to learn while contributing to the overall learning of the organization. Workers are enabled to contribute to the organizational base of knowledge, which in turn helps the company as a whole to grow.

Learning, performing, and innovating are each present in the others and enhance the those other behaviors.

The final part of the learn-perform-innovate figure is at the center where, connected to the three learner-centric behaviors are the goal alignment and direction setting that ensure that the learning and performance development of individuals and work groups are synchronized with the overall business objectives. This link in the chain is too often unclear or missing, but it is fundamental to shaping and directing learning programs and understanding the effectiveness of learning and the value it is delivering.

The role of technology along that spectrum

Once we have in mind this basic continuum of learning and performance behaviors, we can now turn to the role of technology. The most important recent developments in learning and performance technologies have been in the capability of these technologies to be integrated in a way that not only supports the learn-perform-innovate behaviors, but also better supports alignment activities-the management of learning and knowledge content so it can be used in a continuous and blended way throughout the cycle.

The increasing sophistication of employee portals and of human capital management solutions, or employee relationship management systems, is one piece of this puzzle. Historically, companies have not been able to develop the sort of technical backbone for integrated workforce performance support, or to find it in the marketplace. Instead, companies faced an either/or situation when it came to the enabling technology of workforce performance: They could either install an integrated architecture that linked applications with little functional depth; or they could implement more robust applications that were costly and difficult to fully integrate.

Today, vendors are starting to offer more complete solutions. With portals, we can present all the workforce performance support elements to the employee in a more consistent and context-sensitive fashion. Organizations are now using these technologies to drive significant workforce productivity improvements, with clear alignment to overall business goals and objectives.

Role-based, integrated support for call center reps

This past year, we worked with BT, the United Kingdom's largest telecommunications provider, to provide a value-added knowledge management (KM) and content management (CM) solution for its customer service call centers and its 6,700 employees. BT Retail is experiencing increased competition, reduced profits, and rising expenses. Integrating KM/CM and e-learning capabilities via an employee portal into the CRM environment within its call centers was something that BT Retail believed was needed to address cost-saving and efficiency opportunities.

Project leadership worked with the national call center leadership and personnel to develop a role-based portal solution that brings together the critical learning and knowledge to the call center agents at the point of need, and provides direct performance feedback and even virtual coaching. BT estimates the solution will pay back its investment in less than one year.

Specific parts of this solution include:

* Customer service representative (CSR) portal interface. An interface or portal that delivers the learning, performance support, and collaboration functionalities required by the CSR.

* Integrated e-learning/training. Basic and advanced capabilities to deliver a base understanding of new products and services, as well as "good practice" service tactics.

* Knowledge sharing culture and performance management. Defining and rewarding specific behaviors that meet the requirements for obtaining value from the available knowledge systems.

* Structured content architecture. A method for defining how content is captured, categorized, stored, and maintained in a single repository.

* Sustainable governance model. An approach to the roles, responsibilities, metrics, and leadership behaviors needed to support a content and knowledge management environment.
Is technology the only part of the answer in a blended solution? Certainly not. A human hand, voice, and interaction are vital. Companies will do well to keep learner-centric blended learning in mind when pursuing solutions that support the needs of their workers and their company.

Reprinted from e-learning Magazine