Pure in-person training is often rigid and limited in its possibilities. With blended learning, you complement face-to-face events with online support, bringing flexibility to your training. Discover in the article how not only you as a trainer or coach benefit but especially your participants and your client!

Blended Learning means flexibility at all levels

E-learning has several advantages over traditional in-person learning—and vice versa. More and more trainers and companies do not want to choose between both forms of learning and opt for the symbiosis of both methods: they create a blended learning experience. The mix of online content and offline meetings depends on the specific situation.

The intertwining of online and in-person creates a new kind of flexible learning for all involved:

This "hybrid learning arrangement" combines the effectiveness and flexibility of e-learning with the social aspects of tandem and group learning (…) in seminars or workshops.
From: J. Erpendeck and W. Sauter: Competence Development on the Web – New Blended Learning with Web 2.0 (2007)

The flexibility in blended learning is evident at various levels of further education. I will introduce you to the advantages you as a trainer or coach, your participants, and your client can derive from it in the following paragraphs.

Seven strong advantages of blended learning for trainers:

• You gain flexibility

• You gain a unique selling proposition

• You gain a new source of income

• You gain new customer groups

• You gain measurability

• You gain reusability

• You gain variety of media

Maximum scope for action for trainers

Getting started with blended learning is often associated with a certain effort and an investment of time and money: After all, you are starting with a new training model and putting your energy into a method that you are not yet familiar with. However, once the beginning is made, many trainers and coaches experience a completely new kind of course management.

Flexible transition from in-person content to online support

For example, trainer Normen Ulbrich (im-nu.com) reports on blended learning as a tool that gives him enormous room for maneuver and freedom of action:

In tightly planned in-person events, it often happens that you can no longer discuss content, for example, in favor of an intense discussion. As a blended trainer, you remain relaxed: you can convey this content in the online course! Upload a text or video and briefly explain to your participants what it is about. Connect the new learning unit with a call to action, and you've gained rather than lost content!

Flexible timing in the e-learning component

You can already set up your online support weeks or months in advance. However, this does not mean that all content and their chronological order are set in stone. Many trainers appreciate their own flexibility in course creation and create an initial rough model of the planned online course early on. However, it's likely that, over time, you will discover new content and develop new ideas. This way, you can gradually "feed" your e-learning and make it more nourishing.

Once blended learning has started, you act like a director or conductor: you keep an overview and can quickly and flexibly intervene if a topic turns out to be particularly important for a specific learning group.

With blink.it's software, you can easily make changes here: just change the timing of a learning unit's release, and your participants receive a prompt later (or earlier) than originally planned. This takes you only two minutes and keeps you close to your participants' learning progress. Thus, your online training is always tailored to the needs of the group!

Flexible learning design for participants

Your participant is the most important person in blended learning: their learning success is the goal of your client and, therefore, also your own. In blended learning, they are clearly at the center: through the e-learning component, they can organize their time flexibly and adjust it to their regular working hours.

On the website e-teaching.org of the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media, the authors mention two advantages from the learner's perspective in blended learning:

From the students' perspective, the advantages of a blended learning arrangement can be divided into two categories: flexibility and learning experience. Students appreciate the opportunity to determine the time and place of learning in the virtual learning components. Learning from home is particularly viewed as advantageous.
Source: https://www.e-teaching.org/lehrszenarien/blended%5Flearning

These advantages apply equally to professionals and students: In the online course, learners largely decide on:

• the time: Usually, the course leader only provides a rough orientation for the exercises and learning impulses, for example, in the next two weeks.

• the place: Whether on the move on the train, at home in the garden, or at their own workspace— in blended learning, the learner decides the place of online training.

• the pace: Each participant decides for themselves whether to repeat an exercise or perhaps even skip it.

• the medium: In flexible blended learning, the learner is also independent of device choice and can complete exercises from their smartphone just as well as from a tablet or PC.

This flexibility only applies to the e-learning component of blended learning. However, the in-person events are important for motivating the learner, building a personal connection, and preparing them for the online support.

Bonus: Training in training through high flexibility

Another aspect and benefit of blended learning for your participant: For some learners, a high degree of self-responsibility is unusual and new. Thus, blended learning is not only goal-oriented for your training topic but also fosters additional soft skills of your participant: you strengthen their independence, time management, and also digital competencies with blended learning or e-learning.

Your client as a flexible participant in blended learning

Clearly—when the employee benefits from blended learning, it automatically also benefits your client. However, there are at least two more advantages of blended learning that are particularly valuable for the associated company and the HR and executive level.

Use these advantages as arguments to sell your blended learning:

1. Argument: Flexible topic adjustment

Through blended learning, further education is extended in time. Thus, your training shifts from a one-day input to a multi-week or even multi-month accompaniment in daily work.

This not only increases the transfer performance of the participants but also the chance to integrate topics that arise on short notice into the further education. For example, if there is a communication difficulty between employees, managers can exchange ideas in blended learning about ways to resolve conflicts within the team and find solutions with experts.

2. Argument: The boss is on board

Secondly, your client gains new participation opportunities in blended learning. HR developers or other individuals in the company who are very interested in further education but cannot participate actively due to time constraints can suddenly gain concrete insights. Tell your client during the sales conversation that you will invite them to the online course just like all participants and that they can decide flexibly whether and to what extent they want to view your content and the discussions of the participants.

With this argument, you alleviate the concerns of many clients about not being able to see real results from further education: with blended learning, they not only receive a digital evaluation of the course results but can also participate flexibly.

The boss is on board! With blended learning, supervisors and HR developers can flexibly decide to what extent they want to participate in the online course or monitor the learning progress of the participants.

By the way: The method of actively involving supervisors in blended learning can also be found on card 8 of our rocket pack. The rocket pack is an internally developed card game for trainers and coaches that showcases 40 proven methods for e-learning and blended learning across 40 cards. Numerous trainers are already using it successfully and are inspired by the accompanying online material for their own courses.