Blended Learning :
The Ultimate guide (2022)

Identifying the right trainers, organizing the office and training hours... For a company, face-to-face training is often very restricting from an organizational point of view.

It makes learners dependent on their training and encourages them to lose concentration. After a face-to-face session, the training is over: there is no follow-up afterwards. It therefore does not offer the repetitive sessions that are essential for knowledge retention. Hermann Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve shows that after two weeks, 80% of the knowledge acquired is forgotten...

In addition to classroom training, there is digital learning, which allows employees to learn at a distance, making learners active participants in their training. The learners become active players in their training. They decide thier own pace of learning! However, a "virtual classroom" means professional training without a direct exchange with the trainer, which can be a distraction for learners who want a physical exchange to ask questions, or simply to practice their knowledge in a relaxed way. For some, learning and interacting with a trainer who has their own personality, especially when teaching, is also a great way to retain memories.

This is where blended learning comes in: a blended learning approach that combines traditional classroom training (face-to-face) with digital training (distance and face-to-face). This mode of learning responds to the need to save time, which is often the main challenge for companies. By digitalising part of the learning process while keeping the interactive human aspect through physical exchanges, learners have a more engaging approach to their training and spend less time unnecessarily in the classroom.

Wondering what the benefits of blended learning are? Here are 5 points that are likely to give you a fresh look into the design of your professional training courses:

Flexible Training

A blended learning approach offers maximum flexibility in content delivery: complex topics can be presented in the classroom, while other topics can be made available online. With an online feature, you will also be increasing the degree of flexibility and convenience on how and when your employees can participate in the training.

Effective Training

D. Randy Garrison and Heather Kanuka are young academics who studied blended learning in the early 2000s. Their research concluded that “blended learning has the proven potential to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of meaningful learning experiences”.

With a well-planned blended learning strategy, you can provide efficient and fast trqining to a wide audience.And with digital resources such as videos or other recordings and e-books, the potential for reuse is enormous. You can easily get more people up-to-date after the initial training sessions.

 Customized Training

Any training that is not well implemented can create an unrealistic and non-inspiring learning experience. But the good news is that a well-designed blended solution can ensure a seamless transition from classroom to the computer and vice versa. You can design your training to follow up on discussion topics and customise the content to suit the learners' specific work or interests. With the help of the reporting tools such as the Beedeez "statistics" function, the trainer has direct access to the progress of his learners. By tracking the progress of each learner, he can then modify the topics covered in the training room and offer more appropriate content. The trainer can also make additional resources available to employees who need them! On the learner's side, training is more flexible. They can access their training materials at any time and retain the concepts studied more easily, as they progress at their own pace outside the classroom sessions.

Training with a broader scope and a cost-effective format

In most cases, creating a blended learning strategy reduces the amount of time spent in the classroom. By digitising the skills of talented trainers or industry experts, it is possible to reach more people with high quality content at a lower cost. This allows qualified trainers to offer more courses, develop more training content or work on more projects.

A good mix of offline and online sessions could save time and money. Think about travel costs. Consider the cost of renting a meeting venue or the cost of maintaining meeting rooms in the office. The digital aspect offers resources that will always be available to everyone! 

This means that the initial cost is higher than a traditional training course, but once your resources have been created they can be used over and over again and only need occasional updates when topics change. In many situations, people like to access their learning materials via their smartphone, on the go, while travelling, or on a desktop computer, and prepare for the next day on the sofa at night through their tablet.

This way, the concepts learnt during the training are assimilated faster than in traditional training.

Training adapted to all types of learning

Effective blended learning is a tool that can help you meet all styles of learning through a variety of media and techniques. Indeed, blended learning can be applied to any type of vocational training, but also to learning within the school programme!

Blended learning proves that even with the rise of digital learning, face-to-face training has not lost its relevance. Digital learning strengthens, complements and even supports face-to-face training, which offers the support and guidance that is essential in the learning process for many learners.

This is why face-to-face training and distance learning should go well together and not in opposition to each other.

Use cases of Blended Learning in the retail sector

Sales people are the daily representatives of their brand. Sales efficiency and turnover are based on their expertise. Taking care of sales staff is key to good performance and it is by training them effectively that the results improve. students, part-time, seasonal or long-term, Salespeople have very different profiles and yet they all need the same training! Retail is a sector where salespeople rarely stay with the same company for very long. They are often not very committed to their work, so it will take some strategy to motivate them to work for their company.

According to Dentsu Aegis, 40% of French people stated that they could do without in-store shopping if web services were equivalent. The competitive advantage of salespeople is to make the in-store sales experience relevant and useful for every customer. Customers must be able to easily understand the difference between a direct sale and a sale on an e-commerce platform!

With no permanent position and always on the move, retail sales forces are difficult to train. Their availability varies and the training processes they choose are often not adequate. What if Blended Learning became a real asset to train your sales force quickly and efficiently? To guide you, here are a few steps that can help you see things more clearly:

By choosing a Blended Learning approach to sales force training, all you have to do is apply a simple, fast and effective strategy. 

To start off, the digitalization of the practical knowledge is important. This saves you a lot of time. Learners will not waste time on traveling or on long physical courses for knowledge that can be acquired anywhere and at any time.

But to do this, you need to make the content fun to motivate learners to take the training seriously. Set up games to test their understanding of the concepts studied and reward them for it! Give them points, make their online profiles evolve or give them real rewards... There are many ways to inspire and motivate learners. This part will also allow you to track their skills by observing their progress through your digital solution. For everything related to skills and know-how, train them directly on the job! Business experts should guide them in the right direction to ensure they learn the best course. Also in physical training, follow up with learners to offer them personalised content if they feel the need for support or help. Always listen to learners' needs and, at the end of the course, analyse their feedback and progress so that you can modify the course in the most effective way. Now that your training is in place, the sales force is even more motivated, independent and efficient. You have saved a considerable amount of time!

Launching a Blended Learning course helps to promote the employer's brand and create a consistent customer experience across the country.
while creating a desire to learn, thanks to fun and engaging training content.

Employees who enjoy learning are more motivated, which means they can easily put their knowledge into practice!

Onboarding employees with Blended Learning

Today, the process of recruiting and retaining employees has become a key challenge for many businesses. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract and retain employees over a long period of time if they are not adequately supported.

In France, one in five employees leave their company after only three months. 4% of them even decide to leave their job on the first day because of poor integration! And these rapid exits are costly for companies. 

In view of this, it seems obvious that it is essential to offer employees an environment where they can grow and develop.

Organizations that offer onboarding programs that are well monitored, retain approximately 91% of their employees. Conversely, only 30% of employees will choose to stay with a company that has provided them with poor onboarding experience.

Furthermore, a successful onboarding enables employees to acquire skills faster than those who were not well supported from the start.

A successful onboarding is a win-win situation. But it's the quality that counts. So, what are the objectives to achieving this? 

In order to implement a very effective Blended Learning onboarding strategy, you can follow these 5 recommendations:

1. Before the new recruit arrive, offer them all the documents they need to better understand the Company’s operations..This information can be available to them by giving them access to your e-learning solution, for example. 
2. The first day of a new employee will determine their future in the company, it is important to take care of them. Welcome them warmly, show them around the facilities and their new colleagues. Organize a small surprise party or a group activity. There are numerous ways to make them comfortable!
3. Give them something to be proud of! By treating your new employees well and introducing them to the teams they will be working with, you will encourage them to feel a strong sense of belonging. An employee who likes the environment in which they work will be content and productive.
4. Listen to the needs of your employees.Make them grow and develop consistently. Be responsive to their demands and cater for them by being attentive to their feedback. You can offer them a coach to help them get comfortable and find their bearings.
5. Make time to receive feedback from employees. The feedback can help the company to adapt and progress more quickly in order to be more efficient and pleasant. It will also be very helpful to monitor the results and progress of your new hires. This way, it will be easier for you to know if your actions are effective or not and how to act accordingly.
   
   A good onboarding will also be able to address both new hires and existing employees in the company. The objective of a successful integration is twofold. On the one hand, it is important to show empathy towards the employees and to ask the right questions ("who are they?", "where are they going?", "what are their expectations? "What procedures do they have to follow? "However, it is important to keep in mind that the welcome must be effective! Good support should give employees a sense of having made the right choice, a sense of connection and belonging. They will want to be competent and have a reason to be proud of their performance. To this end, induction should be seen as a process that sets clear expectations, build character and allow for a two-way communication.  

And the good news? Efficiency and empathy can go well together and can fully satisfy the needs of the employees and company. All you need to do is to study and develop the perfect custom-made strategy for your company!

Blended learning is increasingly being used in schools on all levels.

The younger generation have been surrounded by new technologies all their lives, they have seen it evolve and are now well adapted to it.

This has made them learners with different expectations from previous generations. They are indeed more interested in relevant, engaging and interactive learning experiences. They may not be as receptive to the traditional, passive approach as their parents were before them.Blended learning can offer deeper and more purposeful learning experiences to effectively engage students. As a result, students and teachers become involved in reflection and develop critical and creative conversations more easily.

Blended Learning from kindergarten to high school

While blended learning can be used in higher education as well as in the school setting (Kindergarten to high school), there are significant differences between the way it works for these two settings.

In classes from kindergarten to high school, students usually have access to a digital tool that is provided by the school. This could be a computer or a tablet. Some institutions ( mostly from higher education onwards) may offer a ''Bring Your Own Device'' (BYOD) strategy in order to minimise the need to purchase additional digital devices..

In the school context, the digital tools and platforms used can allow students to complete and submit certain assignments. Compared to professional trainings, where the students will have a very different time schedule as they will have deadlines to meet in order to make progress in their programme.The time spent in the classroom will obviously be greater than the time spent at a distance. In the Higher Education, there are courses where examinations can be taken through a computer or other devices. 

Benefits of Blended Learning for teachers

In recent years, edtech has expanded and the use of technology in education has become widely recognised. Teachers are progressively moving from formal  activities to the use of blended learning, and there are many advantages to this:

• Teachers can record their lesson on the digital platform and can easily modify  its content to suit various subjects.
• Lesson reports and statistics are usually available through the technology used, and this is the case with Beedeez. it gives them an additional insight into the pace of the class and the success rates of each student.
• Student engagement remain high due to a wide range of activities during lessons, including the use of gamified contents;
• The teacher can guide the educational experience of students in a goal-oriented way (by group or individually).
• Teachers can empower students by teaching them the skills they need to use all the materials involved and by monitoring them as they perform their activities, allowing students in the same class to move at different rates.
  
  In this vein, students can have personalized lessons according to their level while being in the same classroom as the other students.
• In many cases, The grading system is automated, saving teachers a lot of time.
• The sustainability of the digital format reduces the amount of time teachers spend on course design and prevents them from giving their students a large amount of paper material each year.

Cases of use in universities

A number of universities and other higher education institutions around the world use Blended Learning strategies. In France, some institutions are actively using the MOOC system approach, as is the case of INALCO, a foreign language university. This gives  students access to listening and pronunciation exercises during their classes and to return to them whenever they wish. 

In the United States, Boston University also uses Blended Learning in its new "Learn from Anywhere" programme, which offer the same course content for every student. Thus, regardless of their pace or circumstances, they can follow the same courses through various face-to-face and distance learning activities.

The England, Coventry University has also adopted blended learning to improve the employability of young graduates. Their students were not sufficiently prepared for entry into the workforce and could not meet the needs of the companies to which they applied. They therefore provided students with theoretical courses through a digital platform so that face-to-face courses could be used for practice.  Today, they consider that their students graduate a year earlier than they did in the previous years.

How to implement a blended learning solution? Categorise, analyse, test and design... It is important to go step by step in order to have sufficient insights to create a successful solution!

These are 8 steps to designing a Blended Learning course:

1. What are my learners expected to achieve?

What does the learner need to know or do after this specific training?

This step allows you to decide the exact topics to cover in your training.

2. How should I evaluate the different topics?

It is important to evaluate the knowledge and skills acquired by your learners before concluding that your training has worked. Some digital solutions, such as Beedeez, offer features that allow you to evaluate and analyze the development of the skills of your learners. 

3. What structure should I implement?

Think about the learning objectives, topics and evaluation: Is there any structure you can apply to your training to make it easier and enjoyable for the learners?

4.What learning activities are most appropriate? 

The next step is designing the learning activity you want to use either by the topic or the learning objective.

5. Test your plan

The foundation of your course is ready. You have done most of the thinking, now it is time to apply it with a few colleagues to make sure the new training structure is effective.

6. Design the content

After the feedback you received from the contributors in the previous step, it is time to start designing and developing your content. Build the learning activities designed and developed in your learning system, create a scenario for your face-to-face session.

7. Test your content.

Everything needs to be refined based on the feedback received from users. So take the time to test again, but this time with your new content.

8. It's out !

You have learning objectives, structure,activities (distance and face-to-face), and the right content. Your training is now ready to be implemented in your organisation!