Blended Learning v2.0: Multi-Sensory Solutions

David James Clarke IV - 12/28/05

Turn back the clock six years to the turn of the new century—everybody was a “paper millionaire,” Google was a college experiment, and e-learning was poised to take over the world.

Turn back the clock six years to the turn of the new century— everybody was a “paper millionaire,” Google was a college experiment, and e-learning was poised to take over the world. We all thought that the traditional classroom was on the edge of extinction, and blended learning v1.0 was the future.

Now, fast-forward to today—we find ourselves in a training conundrum where blended learning hasn’t lived up to expectations and traditional classroom learning is getting long in the tooth.

What is the answer? The future of learning is a hybrid of past and present learning techniques that interleaves the strengths of the traditional classroom (teachers and experience) and modern e-learning (multi-sensory learning objects and on-demand delivery).

Traditional Classroom Strengths
Traditional classroom training has been around for thousands of years. Computer-based training (CBT) via the Internet (aka, e-learning) has only been around for 15 years—a tiny “blip” on the radar of learning.

The traditional classroom has been successful for two simple reasons: teachers and experience. Teachers are the heart and soul of traditional classroom learning. In fact, teachers are the heart and soul of any learning experience. What do teachers offer that is so special? Tutoring and accountability.

Teachers are subject-matter experts (SMEs). They provide collaborative context so students can become engaged in the subject matter and learn interactively. In addition, teachers are exception managers. They respond to questions and provide specific guidance where and when appropriate. In this role, teachers also must monitor, assess and report on each learner’s progress. This level of accountability is a key strength of the traditional classroom, and it has been difficult to replicate on the Web.

A student’s experience in the classroom is just as important as the teacher. “Metcalfe’s Law” offers a perfect example of the classroom benefit of collaborative experience: The value of a network equals approximately the square of the number of users of the system. The classroom version of this law, “The Borg Effect,” states that the universe of content available in a given classroom equals the square of the number of student experiences.