Call of the Wild’s Blended Learning Approach to People Development

June 8, 2008 - PRLog -- Call of the Wild (http://www.corporate-training-events.co.uk/programme/index.htm) are currently delivering a graduate leadership development programme for Barclays Finance using blended learning, the programme consists of 6 key elements:

1.   Pre and post course visits
2.   On-line development academy
3.   Experiential learning
4.   Team profiling
5.   Coaching
6.   Action Learning

Using this methodology means that time away from the business is reduced to a minimum, as delegates are able to work through a body of leadership and team theory, before the experiential phase. They are therefore able to work with the facilitation team to maximise and consolidate any learning via group discussion, action learning sets and experiential learning.

Our philosophy regarding blended learning is summarised below:

(1) Programmed learning
Traditional eLlearning is not a lot different from the old programmed learning, first available in book form and later on cd-rom. Programmed learning has a basic form. It presents learning in tiny chunks, tests for acquisition of one chunk and then moves on the next. Typically, a ‘fact’ is presented and then the reader is asked to select from alternative statements about the ‘fact’. The correct answer is ‘rewarded’ and the reader proceeds onward. An incorrect answer results in an explanation and a representation of the alternatives.
The problem with such programmed learning is that it bores most people within a few minutes. Why? Only about 20% of people learn in this ‘serial’ manner. The rest find it dull, slow and often intellectually patronising. They give up fairly quickly.
Of course, traditional eLearning has advantages over the programmed learning of the early days. It is more colourful, can incorporate video and moving ‘cartoons’, can test for acquisition more easily and can give (limited) feedback in more visually attractive ways. However, it is essentially a technologically updated form of programmed learning and seems unable to escape this.

(2) The main value of trainers
While trainers do in fact spend some 60% of their time in face-to-face training, transmitting knowledge, this is neither an effective use of their time, nor the trainer’s main value. In fact, we know that ‘lecturing’ - which still forms part of most face-to-face training - has fairly minimal results. Research indicates a rule of thumb that 6 weeks after a lecture, the audience remembers 6% of what was said.
The major value of trainers lies in their facilitation of a learning group when it comes to knowledge transfer, as in enabling people to discuss a ‘fact’, understand it, ask questions, disagree and explore the subject. More than this, the value of the human trainer lies in managing practice and giving one-to-one feedback. Traditional eLearning is very poor at this. In fact, such feedback is impossible for traditional eLearning and thus it cannot replace the trainer.

Combining the two-the best of both worlds!
Blended learning is therefore an attempt to combine the claimed strengths of eLearning and the human trainer and overcome the weaknesses of both.The aim is for knowledge to be pre-delivered by eLearning so that the trainer can spend his or her (limited) time on the inter-personal aspects of their role. If it works, then 60% of the trainer’s time is either saved or used for more in-depth feedback and facilitation. Indeed, studies we have carried out for clients indicate that blended learning can realise savings of between 30% and 50% of a company’s training costs. With all training budgets under pressure, this can make all the difference between delivering quality management training and not. But ...

Will it work?
While blended learning appears to overcome both its component’s individual weaknesses, the drawbacks to traditional eLearning remain and indeed others are created.
Traditional eLearning is still suitable for only 20% of the population so that 80% of a trainer’s target population will either resist doing the pre-work or do it poorly. Getting pre-work completion prior to a training programme is the trainer’s constant nightmare. This is usually because participants give themselves the excuse that ‘they do not have time’ but ...
... If 80% are actively put off by the nature of the pre-work, then the problem is massively compounded.
If pre-work is not completed properly, then the trainer is forced to supply the knowledge that the pre-work should have already delivered. This cannot work. Firstly, if the trainer is relying on pre-work to be completed, they are unlikely to be prepared to deliver a lecture and secondly, if the length of the programme is predicated on pre-work, there will be not time to both deliver the knowledge and fulfil the original objectives of the face-to-face training.

According to statistics only 1 in 5 participants will have found the pre-work (delivered by traditional eLearning) approachable and acceptable. Thus, 4 in 5 will have completed the pre-work either poorly or not at all. Moreover, there can be incipient ‘rebellion’ caused in some of the participants who will arrive at the programme in a poor frame of mind. (1 in 5 will have completed the pre-work properly and thus be bored by the trainer’s attempt to repeat the knowledge delivery.)

Essentially, boredom arises -  caused by the pre-work being unsuitable for most participants’ learning preferences and by some having to sit through an unprepared lecture on what they know already. Instead of curing the trainer’s problems, blended learning based on traditional eLearning makes them a lot worse.

Trainers are human
Management is not a science. As Peter Drucker says;
“Managers draw on all the knowledge’s and insights of the humanities and the social sciences – on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on ethics – as well as the physical sciences. But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results …”

Essentially, management is a human activity and there are few theories or ‘facts and figures’, which all managers either accept or live by. Despite traditional eLearning pretence that there are key 'facts' that can be taught in chunks, management is interpreted by human beings who essentially manage with only one resource - themselves. Learning is more about debate, disagreement and exploration - and this is especially true of learning about management.

What’s more, in training they are not only managing but also enabling the participants in their programmes to become better managers - better exponents of a liberal art that has no fixed rules, theories or even routines. Trainers thus interpret their material in their own way and the truth is that the better they are at doing this, the better trainers they are. This causes two major problems with blended learning.

Content
Firstly, trainers frequently do not agree with the content of a programmed learning (traditional eLearning) element - either in whole, part or emphasis. However, the content of such programmes is fixed and it has to be used as a whole whether the trainer likes it or not. Of course, eLearning can be customised for a specific organisation (or even trainer) but this is remarkably expensive. (Even if it can be afforded, updates and changes are rarely made because of further expense.)

Secondly, trainers (good ones anyway) like to customise their work to the specific needs of the time, the participants and the organisational culture. They need to be able to call upon a range of possibleLearning inputs - one that are under their control - rather than be restricted by one pre-set pattern. They like to raise debate, encourage disagreement and thus discussion. To force a trainer (at this level) to teach one specific way because that is what the programmed texts demands is to materially reduce the value of the trainer - and probably to increase trainer attrition or turnover.

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Call of the Wild offer Team Building and Management Training and Development and Leadership Training Programmes from our location in the Brecon Beacons and from raining venues throughout the UK. We also offer Corporate Events and Fun days - all using our unique approach through the natural environment.

Website: www.corporate-training-events.co.uk/program