Blended & Unbound

As a non-traditional teacher, training staff & student staff, finding pedagogical (well, andragogical) techniques and theories that are effective, well researched and move outside of the traditional lecture style workshop can be difficult.

Adult learners' learning in a workplace setting is an additional layer to consider. Inherently, their learning has an experiential quality—often, they will learn on the job. However, there is quite a bit of policy, procedure, and best practices they need to learn in advance of starting their roles.

Reading Blended Learning Pedagogy in Higher Education by Feng Su has offered some valuable insight into approaches to teaching and learning in a workplace training setting, especially considering that staff often don’t approach learning in the workplace the same way they would traditional academic pursuits.

Effectively, blended learning is the “integration of thoughtfully selected and complementary face-to-face and online approaches and technologies” (Su, 2020, p. 1)

Blended learning offers a seemingly limitless combination of options toggling between synchronous, asynchronous, in-person, and online, helping meet a diverse learner population where they are at versus expecting them to conform to rigid traditional teaching structures.

This offers me a unique reframing of workplace training. Student staff can complete modules on their own time, participate in in-person workshops, work on learning projects together, and build in structured experiential learning throughout the first couple of weeks of work.

While this naturally has its own set of challenges, it seems most of those challenges are based more on the individual’s approach to learning, the digital literacy of the learners, and the teacher's community-building efforts.

Thinking about what combination of blended learning one could consider, I would’ve liked to have seen a deeper exploration of data of blended learning classroom combinations that were effective versus those that weren’t. I’m wondering if there is an asynchronous vs synchronous ratio that works best.

Additionally, how does a teacher build a sense of community amongst the learners that doesn’t feel forced or disingenuous?

The importance of Blended Learning is further bolstered when reading Unbound Learning Venues and Work Design Conducive to Learning in the Digitalized World of Work by Thomas Schröder and Peter Dehnbostel, which, in some ways, continues to expand upon the idea of a blended learning approach when considering how the workforce has changed and the digitization of the world. Our current environment means we must be adaptable and, importantly, build adaptive, flexible learning environments and work towards integrating learning into work.  Unbound learning venues as an approach have a stronger focus on the self-determination of the individual learner, promoting self-growth and building skill-based competencies, ensuring that the learning and growth of the individual learner in the workplace align with the intended development of the organization.

The research does place a greater emphasis on self-regulated learning, which can hamper the need to build a strong learning community within the workplace.

Overall, the need to move away from structured and traditional learning meets the needs of the current workforce and requires innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

As Schröder and Dehnbostel outline: “only through the inclusion of nonformal and formal learning does a path to broader qualification and comprehensive skills open up”

Westerlund 2, a giant cluster of 3,000 stars

References

Peters, M. A., & Heraud, R. (2020). Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2262-4