For team managers who are also performing their role as trainers, using blending-learning for on-the-job training can be as simple as creating a quiz.
For a particular vocational (work skills) training project, Blended Learning was eventually selected by the management as the mode of learning because they hoped to bring in "technology" to address some training related problems along with additional benefits. The project served as a demonstration for the management to understand the value of a formalise training programme.
Before this Blended Learning style training programme, coaching was the only method for their training. For their very long-serving staff, coaching normally does not work out well. Resistance to changes at work was one underlying reason for the poor reception. And often, the lack of time was given as the excuse for not following through the coaching sessions.
The lesson unit then developed was "Writing Sales Contracts." The lesson has to be able to equip new staff with the right knowledge and steps to write sales contracts. Secondly, it had to re-skill the long-serving staff to handle the changes in writing sales contracts.
The growth of the company in terms of foreign markets served and in the range of products manufactured resulted in it having to negotiate contracts with further-reaching consequences. Old contracts typically covered the sale of one lot of goods and delivered in one shipment. But with the new contracts covering larger volumes, there were multiple lots of goods, delivered in a number of shipments and stretching years.
The ideal goals for the blended learning were established.
1) Reduction in friction between staff and trainers. E-learning sessions will help minimise opportunities for learners to "vent" frustrations on trainers. In this company's situation, the trainers are in-house senior staff.
2) Reduce dependency on trainers. Training is packaged and re-used anytime, even when trainers are busy. Trainers experience fatigue in training repetitively.
3) Draw a clearer line between real work matters and training scenarios. Trainers had found that staff who were too focused on discussing current work problems could not progress in their learning.
The characteristics of the learners were also described.
1) Newly hired staff who had no or different knowledge of sales contract writing.
2) Long-serving staff who believe they have nothing to learn in sales contract writing.
From the discussion with the management, a concept was developed that could address the issues with the different staff experience.
The learning concept had 2 phases; self-learning first and then coaching. (It differs from classical Flipped Classroom because the self-learning phase does not use videos.)
Phase 1: Self-learning
Staff are asked to attempt an online quiz consisting of MCQs (single or multiple correct answers) at their own preferred time. Lunch break, after work and before work hours had been cited as the individual learner's choice of time.
The questions were "embellished" scenarios of "common" mistakes by the company staff and other questions were predictable rookie mistakes. The range of questions covered calculation questions, spot the correct and incorrect details, etc.
Read further for a sample page of the quiz.
Phase 2: Face-to-face Session
The face-to-face session took place only after the learner had completed the online quiz. There was no specified time and duration, but most of the learners found the time to "chat" with the trainer within the next working day.
Sample Quiz
About the Quiz
The quiz was not written like a normal test. Definitely not a summative assessment of the learner's knowledge. It had a combination of simple and complex questions, but always limiting the choices to 2. The purpose of limiting the choices was to ensure the learners did not spend time rejecting unnecessary wrong options.
The quiz had to:
- invoke learner's existing knowledge
- challenge their application of reasoning in the business situation
- gain awareness of real business issues
- reflect on own habits
Reflecting on the Experience
We have seen that as "e-Learning" reduces human interaction, it can serve a practical purpose in filtering out "frustration venting" on trainers. In particular, trainers who are also line managers seen to be responsible for the source of frustrations.We also tried a non-classical method of the Flipped Classroom, where interactive activity, i.e.: quiz, is used.