Using eLearning as a delivery medium for corporate training is common now. Corporates have lapped it up seeing crucial benefits in costs and time savings. Early adopters have experimented with various media formats & delivery options and realized that blended learning works best. Any advent of instructional technology hasn’t meant the elimination of what pedagogical methods existed at the time. The new technology has typically been co-opted and added to the blend. This should happen naturally with game-based, mobile and eLearning too.
Training companies are now adopting eLearning for survival & growth. Bersin & Associates in a report earlier this year said about 40% of training organizations have an LMS. For training companies considering offering eLearning solutions, Blended Learning is the best bet too – albeit for a slightly different reason.
We have had several meetings earlier this month with prospective customers (training companies) about how we could help them with their eLearning initiatives. Some of these training companies are very new to the world of eLearning. Their interest in eLearning is due to several reasons, of which the most common ones are how to reduce costs and reduce time away from job. Their clients have slashed travel budgets, while managers in client organizations are not willing to let their employees go for training – as they are already managing with less manpower. Such factors are pushing training companies to look for alternatives to long classroom training programs.
eLearning fits in very well here – to the extent the content and program objectives allow.
However, from the training companies’ perspective, there is this big decision to be made – How much to let go (to eLearning)?
Training Companies would ideally want to hang on to all of their classroom training as that’s their core competency – something they really excel in and have relied on to satisfy & retain clients for years. Balancing market demand and the desire to retain the core competence leads to ‘blended learning’ emerging as a natural choice. It gives them the flexibility to customize programs to suit their clients’ budgets and time availability. We believe by doing blended learning well (and sooner than their competitors) training companies can further their competitive advantage.
