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 By
Patricia Leonard, Executive
Vice-President, U.S. Management Education , American Management
Association
Blended learning is a natural move on the part of AMA to
continue to provide the best in learning for today’s
executives and managers, supplementing classroom instruction
with Web-based support.
Consider what is happening in today’s working and
learning environment and the challenges executives and classroom
participants are facing. Change is growing at a relentless
pace; knowledge acquisition requirements are increasing
exponentially. Unless the information and skill gaps caused
by today’s fast-changing world are closed, executives
know that their organizations can’t compete effectively.
The solution rests in effective, efficient, measurable
training. Blended learning is proving to be just that. It
combines the proven effectiveness of the live seminar experience
with efficient Web-based “before-the-seminar”
and “after-the-seminar” reinforcement to enable
the learner and his or her organization to measure the success
of the transfer of learning.
Trainers are finding that classroom instruction combined
with Web-based reinforcement in the workplace can support
the effectiveness of training in ways that e-learning simply
cannot. In fact, the February 2002 Thomson Job Impact Study,
“The Next Generation of Corporate Learning,”
found that students who undertook blended learning performed
with 30 percent more accuracy than the e-learning group.
The blended learning group also performed real-world tasks
41 percent faster than those who received e-learning alone.
The level of accuracy was 159 percent greater among the
group that received blended learning than among the control
group.
AMA’s approach to blended learning offers
these benefits:
- Preparing the learner before the seminar begins
with a range of relevant materials. Attendees
can jumpstart their learning by accessing Web-based assessments,
tools, and content.
- Defining and measuring desired learner application
or behavioral change. Pre-training assessments
help both the sender and attendee identify specific skill
shortcomings requiring improvement.
- Developing next-step learning plans for continuous
development. Using the results from the pre-assessment,
learning plans are developed jointly to ensure that the
sender and attendee are on the same page about training
needs and plans for further skill development.
- Reinforcing seminar learning with additional
online tools and resources. Tools are available
from the Web to support “best practices” from
the classroom and ensure a continuous learning experience.
Blended learning seminar attendees also benefit
from interactive classroom instruction that has been found
to:
- Permit real concentration on learning by taking
students away from their office and everyday demands.
- Permit students to apply what they learn to real
world situations by asking questions and looking for connections
to the job with the help of a savvy, experienced instructor.
- Provide an opportunity for students to interact
with each other, learning from those with different backgrounds
and perspectives.
- Solve problems and discover new knowledge—even
practice new skills—in group situations.
Blended learning enables AMA to maintain its hard-earned
reputation for implementing creative learning experiences.
In light of the myriad issues facing today’s executives
and managers, blended learning adds effective, efficient,
measurable delivery to the cutting-edge content that it
has been long known to provide.
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