Blended Learning?

Pretty much all it means is combining different forms of learning (a teaspoon of this a smidgen of that):

• Live Training
• Virtual Live Sessions
• Recorded Training  - what in our team we call "on-demand" training
• User Guided and Manuals

There's been a lot of discussion recently about blended learning.  I'm surprised that its such a big deal now since we've been doing this for so long, just not in a formalized manner.

We have one person that travels and does live Workshops, to attend these workshops there's a list of pre-requisite classes.  This makes everyone at the workshop be more on the same page with knowledge regarding the software, so that less time is spent getting everyone up to speed on the basics.

We have a library of on-demand sessions that are recordings of previous live sessions through Webex, and sessions that were created through Captivate as Flash lessons.  We also have user guides and one page training tips.  This isn't even counting all of the training available through the vendor.

Does this mean we're done with a blended learning approach.  Not really.  In what I've been reading regarding blended learning we're missing a key item.  The "contract" between learner and facilitation team.  This would state, this is the learning that's available to you and spell it all out, and these are the goals that would be accomplished if you take these classes.  You can say we have in informal contract.  Take this training and you'll learn our software.  But it seems we need to get more specific than that. It would mean creating the recipe for the learning cake. 

Goals and Objectives... time to begin!