No training event stands alone. For maximum impact, each learning resource, event, and activity should integrate into a larger, more comprehensive experience.

But how do learning professionals, who have a multitude of traditional models in their toolkit, adapt their approaches to support this evolution?

This week, America celebrates Independence Day. We come together at barbecues, on the beach, and with family and friends to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

While the United States of America has officially existed since 1776, the virtual classroom has only provided a viable training option for about 20 years.

In honor of this holiday, we urge you to declare your independence from outdated training and embrace the possibilities of modern blended learning.

Bringing balance to the blend isn’t an uncommon topic for our blog and the idea that we need to match learning objectives to the most appropriate instructional strategies and technologies is the foundation to our campaign approach to designing blended learning.

But there is more to the balancing act than just design. Once the development is complete, it’s the job of the facilitator to guide learners though their journeys.

 Would it surprise you to learn that, on Wikipedia, the following three phrases are equivalent?

Online Learning --------------> eLearning ------------------> Educational Technology 

I agree that these three terms are often used interchangeably — but not always consistently.

Having so many ways of saying the same thing is understandably confusing the people not in the learning and development community. I think it’s also confusing to those of us designing, developing, and delivering content every day.

Learning is a process.

As workplaces rapidly evolve to adapt to changing market dynamics, skill building must change too. Trainers work to support technical and soft-skill improvement within the same program.

How can we balance both? By using learning campaigns.

Virtually There Session Recap

The future of learning is blended. As content becomes more complex, learner attention spans shorten, and new technologies emerge, a combination approach to training offers engagement and impact.

But what stars need to align in order to create an effective blend? Expert Dr. Rebecca Sutherns joined the Virtually There series to share five case studies from her career that defined her personal best practices. Four success factors proved particularly pertinent to our processes.

With plenty of new instructional strategies, techniques, and technologies available to us to create modern learning, it seems creating a comprehensive and instructionally sound blended learning solution should be fairly easy.

But it’s not.

Simply stringing together a bunch of learning assets into the curriculum isn’t enough to encourage individuals to complete the blend. That’s because blended learning is much more than content associated with a common theme. Blended learning should create a purposeful learning journey; a journey in which the traveler recognizes the value of each step along the way.

Has your organization jumped on the blended learning bandwagon, yet? This formal- and informal-learning combination approach to training moves beyond “hot trend” – it offers the opportunity to support learners after structured events end.

We focus quite a bit on the instructional design required for this more comprehensive learning model. It makes sense. Blended programs include many moving parts, and the associated complexity requires thoughtful design. After all, we have to create an environment that supports learner engagement and knowledge retention, and this begins at the proverbial drawing board.

But, facilitation matters, too. Design helps us plan for program success. Solid instruction enables that success.

The design and implementation of blended learning includes many moving parts. We consider the LMS that will host all the content, and the virtual classroom platform on which we will deliver live online components. We consider our learners, and the skills they need to build, and the wisdom they already possess. We also consider where learning will happen – whether in a classroom, on a mobile device, at a learner’s desk, or on-the-job.

One element we often overlook, though? Time. By not thinking through how learning takes place, we limit the potential of our programs.

This post is part of an occasional series “Advice from the Virtual Trenches” where we share real lessons learned when virtual and blended learning didn’t go as planned.

Virtual classrooms have been available to training organizations for over 20 years. As someone who has specialized in this domain during that entire time, I tend to forget that not every organization has adopted virtual training as an acceptable alternative to more traditional approaches.

I was definitely reminded of this recently when we worked with a global organization to implement their first substantive virtual training project.