My primary concern when we lost the ability to deliver training face-to-face was that the learner and the trainer would lose the connection that they had with one another that ease of access. The challenge was to recreate scenarios where learners wouldn’t feel isolated and that planned interactions and sessions would give them the same opportunities to work through concepts and have those “a-ha moments” or those flashes of understanding that would bring concepts together for them and support them to mastery of the learning outcomes.
In facilitating discussions and group tasks we have found that with planning these can work just as well in a virtual environment. The effort now is not getting in your car and finding parking but crossing a digital divide – becoming used to being seen on screen. Blended learning does require more autonomy from learners in terms of their using the flipped classroom model to their own advantage. That is that they fully engage with the subject matter before coming to class and that we as an organisation make it “Netflix” easy for them to do this.
The flipped classroom can be a really enriched experience as Learners already have formulated the questions that the material raises (multimedia material of a high standard) and they have their queries and musings ready for group participation. There is a new and different energy to this and key skills required by the trainers to facilitate this. In the old model we used to spend time lecturing and then discussing or questioning. This sometimes meant that the class didn’t have time to reflect on the content before the discussion or when they went to do their assignment they had less opportunity to reflect and interact with others based on the questions they had. It’s like the timing of everything is different now and favours the learner’s journey.
Supporting our trainers in the adoption of new technologies and working with learners to build a community of learning enriched by the use of IT is a primary focus of our work. We are listening to our learners and using their feedback to constantly improve.
Managing Director.
