double take

During the early years of e-learning, the combined use of distance education with face-to-face instruction was prevalent. At that period, computer-based training was incapable of stimulating the learner to improve his own abilities, by experimenting freely and effectively learning. We did not know how to explore the new media as a tool to promote meaningful interactive activities or collaboration. Times have changed. Now we have the resources to build great educational projects, but often we still do not take advantage of the pallet of tools at our disposal. The consequence is a renewed obsession for promoting blended solutions, which now are many times unnecessary. Some e-learning developers warn that blended training should not be used to cover-up for poor e-learning design. We risk losing the advantages of distance education:

• Flexibility and scalability
• Individualization
• Low-cost

The question is: when do we need to offer a blended solution? One will say: “Every time! Then we can invite an expert-friend-of-mine to give a 2 hours long PowerPoint presentation with endless bullet points, sound effects, meaningless animation and call it real time interaction”. Give me a coffee-break!

Blended solutions are ideal for learning attitudinal skills (change of opinion, behavior). In these cases, we may have to use of simulations, conduct discussions and other methods for attitudinal skills training. For instance, let us consider a community program about risk behavior, prevention and health. It is uncertain that the computer-based training will work and provoke awareness and behavior change on issues such as risk behavior, stigma, prejudice etc.