Essential Principles of Blended Learning

This article encapsulated out philosophy at The Southport School very nicely: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/08/four-essential-principles-of-blended-learning/ How does it relate to corporate training, if at all?

1. EVERY SCHOOL NEEDS A VISION. Yes, every organisation needs a vision and what was said about schools here, strong leadership, give room to try and fail and empowering learners in the workforce should apply within a corporate environment also. However, it seems to me that in many organisations this vision may be token at best. Even those with a relatively flat structure do seem to see top-down instruction as the way forward. That is leadership, but not the only kind there is. Something to ponder.

2. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. With a wide variety of job functions and a wide variety of learning styles this is also true – however there is more to this than technology and software choices. It is vital to find out what the learning goals are for the task at hand. Isn’t this a bit obvious? Yes it is, but is it always done? There’s a lot of dump and pump out there.

3. DON’T LET SOFTWARE DICTATE LEARNING GOALS. We buy an LMS and put it to work. We have standard Office Tools and adapt them to disparate needs. Of course, it does make more sense to try to figure out what the goals are and then locate the appropriate technology – but there is a strong dependence on what we already have, inevitably. So do we end up making training that’s easy to do?

4. SUPPORT TEACHERS AND INCLUDE THEM IN DECISION-MAKING PROCESS. The situation in an organisation is a little different but still the education/training Team do need to have influence as they are the experts in this area. It makes sense to give your education team a strong say in the strategic vision for training within the company.

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