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Blended learning creates a heady brew

Beverley Head, Information Age

23/10/2007 23:46:46

Every so often, an e-mail with an embedded e-learning module pops up on the screen of Bankers Trust's call centre employees. Lasting just a couple of minutes, these "think-breaks" are intended to pep up staff and help capture and spread the knowledge of experienced call centre operators.

Mickey Clark is the chief executive officer of The Learning Group which developed these "nano-learning" systems which he describes as "tiny little things strung together in campaigns".

According to Clark, nano-learning is just the latest in a series of online learning tools being harnessed by organisations to encourage continual professional development, and as a vehicle to share employee experience and expertise.

Learning and development is a constant for just about every profession - six months after graduating even technologists can find their skills a little hoary and requiring a refresh. Besides keeping employee skills up to date, organisations face mounting regulatory and legislative burdens; compliance demands they keep their people fully aware of the rules and their obligations.

Meanwhile younger workers, comfortable learning online and hungry for the flexibility it permits, are entering the workforce.

The combined effect of these factors is a migration to what are described as blended learning environments which embrace some traditional teaching methods - the so called talk-and-chalk - but supplement them with online learning, with podcasts, with nano-learning modules and immersive learning experiences such as using Second Life as a training venue or offering scenario-based learning modules which encourage participants to learn by online role play.

In 2006 $US10.6 billion was spent on e-learning systems according to IDC. Demand is such that by 2011 e-learning spending is expected to more than treble to $32.2bn. Even traditional educational institutions such as schools, TAFEs and universities are moving to blended learning where traditional classroom teaching is meshed with online learning.

At the University of Sydney for example, more than half of all units of study taught last year featured e-learning components.

According to Mickey Clark, one of the challenges associated with this shift is ensuring information technology and communications infrastructures can cope. While static e-learning modules can sit happily on a network server until accessed by a worker, organisations wanting to push information out to employees, including rich information such as video, need to consider carefully how to do that and the storage and bandwidth implications for corporate networks.

That might go some way to explaining why hosted learning management systems have risen in popularity over the last couple of years.

There are even more changes ahead. According to Clark: "A lot of companies are starting to use podcasts. We think that over the next two years there will be interactive podcasts where you listen to someone on a PC and make a comment. It's only going to be a year or two until i-pods have that level of interactivity - Apple's already talking about that.

"A lot happened over the last two or three years. Most large organisations have installed a learning management system ...but those are mainly equipped to handle modules which may be an hour or two long. The technologies to support nano-learning are push and subscription based rather than pull technologies."

Arndria Seymour is the learning and development manager for Allianz Australia - the fifth largest general insurance company in the country. Over the last five years the organisation has been on a journey which has steered it away from traditional classroom learning toward a blended learning environment which mixes online and face-to-face teaching.

According to Seymour: "One of the key drivers is that our industry is highly regulated and it's almost impossible to rely on a traditional classroom for training."

Privacy and financial services industry reform forces the company to ensure its staff and industry partners are abreast of current regulations. At the same time competition in the market leads to rapid product refresh, and e-learning systems mean that new products or company policies can be quickly explained to staff.

Not that Allianz has done away with classrooms entirely - according to Seymour the ability to provide blended learning - mixing e-learning and classroom learning offers significant benefits.

"In some instances we have completely replaced classroom training, for example for our product and compliance training. In terms of our personal and professional development we use a blended approach to training.

"By blended, I mean a combination of e-learning and on the job components as a pre or post learning and classroom for the cementing of the learning using group discussion, fishbowl activities and role plays.

"There will always be a need for classroom training, however there is no comparison in term of costs. "

She said that while setup costs were significant with e-learning platforms, those costs were quickly recouped when rolled out on a large scale. Classroom training is resource hungry; "You cannot just arrange for a class of 15 participants within 10 minutes, yet with 'e' I can make content available to all 3300 Allianz employees within a matter of minutes, inclusive of e-mailing them the details."

Besides these 3300 employees, Allianz has a network of a further 9000 brokers and authorised representatives that it needs to keep abreast of both product developments and regulatory changes. According to Seymour it would be "prohibitively expensive" to train all those people using conventional methods.

When Allianz began exploring e-learning in 2001 Seymour acknowledges she faced a challenge shifting the mindsets of some executives who thought e-learning was going to prove expensive and of questionable benefit. By 2002, however, the firm had a learning management system it called eCampus up and running and benefits were starting to flow.

Five years on, the company has increased its annual investment in e-learning fourfold, and "when the regulator knocks on the door we can easily demonstrate our compliance with training requirements because the e-learning system keeps extensive records of each staff member's training activities", says Seymour.

At the same time the time taken to roll out a product to the market has reduced. Providing e-learning about new products meant that "Within six to eight weeks of a new product being created we can hit the switch to go live," she says, whereas previously "we would have needed months to do the training".

Flexible learning has also helped the company in terms of talent retention, particularly Generation Y which as a rule demand flexibility, and do not warm to traditional sage-on-stage learning methods.

"Generation X and Y are faster adapters to this medium of learning than Veterans or Baby Boomers. The flexibility and autonomy that e-learning offers these generations in important. These learners are in total control of when, where and how much they learn at any point in time. The idea of sitting in a classroom being talked at for eight hours is far less appealing to them."

Regarding Allianz's use of Web 2.0 style tools Seymour notes that: "Some of our competitors are already using wikis and blogs in their training activities. Second Life is technology that we have previewed but not taken our finding any further as yet.

Having said that, we have been considering the use of virtual classroom as a further extension of our learning infrastructure for our internal and external training activities. This will require a further cultural shift in thinking and we are not organisationally ready for this shift; however, it is coming."

We'd best all learn to get used to it.