Blended Learning’s 5 Best Kept Secrets

Throughout our posts, we discuss the importance of knowledge all the time. Whether we’re talking about The Power of Knowledge at the Point of Need, or our Knowledge Intelligence Engine, knowledge is at the heart of the Fuse content methodology.  

However, simply consuming knowledge isn’t enough. Learning is about more than that. If learners are to gain competence to use the knowledge they consume on Fuse, they need to have safe spaces where they can practice and gain expert feedback from managers, SMEs and key stakeholders in the business. 

Blended learning is a key part of this. Fuse offers a holistic learning experience that blends formal training with informal learning on the job, underpinned by access to subject matter expertise, knowledge, and answers that support performance in the flow of work.  

In this post, we’re going to talk about both the blended learning design journey, and the key tools in Fuse that our clients can use to create opportunities to practice and gain feedback.

The Blended Learning Journey

Blended learning programmes should be carefully designed and implemented as a series of different modalities - digital, face to face, and on the job training are all good examples. 

In designing a blended learning journey, it’s important to ask - what outcomes do you want to achieve, and how will you measure the success of those outcomes? Who are the people going on the journey, what is their prior knowledge and expertise and what level is it at? This is going to be different for different levels within your organisation. 

It’s also important to think about assessment. Learning without assessment is just providing people with a series of media. Learners need to be able to show or tell us exactly how they have achieved a particular learning objective or outcome, and they need programme touchpoints with people who can act as coaches. These may be online touchpoints in communities or face to face events. 

Key Tools for Supporting Blended Learning In Fuse

Fuse’s Knowledge Intelligence Engine supports blended learning by giving organisations a range of tools to build out a learning programme across different modalities. You can mix different tools for knowledge consumption, assessment/validation, practice, expert feedback and the capturing of knowledge gained on the job.

We have several tools that our clients can use to create opportunities to practice and gain feedback:

1. Events Management: Using Fuse, learners can create events and embed them within a learning path to create a flipped-classroom approach to learning. As knowledge consumption can be served digitally, we champion using classroom training as an opportunity to practice and get feedback from experts.
2. Comprehension assessments: We support formal and informal assessments for the capturing of knowledge consumption, however, in keeping with our beliefs we enable clients to assess for comprehension through demonstration via our assessment tools. This enables clients to set a task while users can submit written, audio and video answers that demonstrate comprehension. This then provides a link between the digital experience and bringing back real world, on the job experience. This then gets assessed by a manager or coach and learners get actionable feedback
3. Observational assessments: We also enable managers and coaches to observe employees and capture ratings and feedback against a flexible framework. This data is then available within our analytics tool for company/department/team and individual-level insights to demonstrate progression.
4. Coaching: Our 1-2-1 coaching tool enables managers and coaches to give feedback, capture goals and assign learning to users. All goals and objectives are tracked, ensuring that learning is not just an event, but a purposeful part of everyday life for employees 
5. Our community functionality enables clients to bring together groups of users with similar characteristics (same job role, department, lifecycle stage etc.) and pair them with content that is relevant to that context. This means that all social interactions, such as conversations and engagements such as sharing and commenting are built natively around the concept of communities.
   
   This is important, because by doing so we help conversations to be more contextually relevant. A great example would be a conversation where managers share their experiences and tips on a video about having difficult conversations in a Sales Manager community. 

Learning in the enterprise should not be a one-off event, but rather a continuous stream of activities undertaken daily. To help this, Fuse supports blended learning in giving employees access to knowledge in the flow of work to underpin performance on the job. Our Knowledge Intelligence (KI) engine enables the knowledge locked within learning objects to be available at the point of need. 

To learn more about how we’re helping companies access knowledge at the point of need to empower a better blended learning experience, download our ebook Knowledge in the Flow of Work.