Who Needs "Blended Learning"? Some Thoughts on a Political Concept

The paper covers the topic from an e-learning provider’s perspective on the basis of practical experience and discussions with corporate and SME partners. In this paper the author argues that blended learning is superfluous as a pedagogical concept. Its true context is company politics and the conflict between different factions involved in human resource development. Blended learning is a political term describing a non-explicit compromise between those responsible for the costs involved in the implementation of a particular type of e-learning and those interested in a ROI for the costs incurred and control over the learners activities. 1 How do People Learn? People learn in a lot of different ways: by example, by trial and error, by listening, by reading, by writing, by talking, by experimenting. People learn visually, through their bodies, with their senses, while dreaming, driving and while on the job – in almost any thinkable combination. The longer you look at the concept of learning, the longer the list of possible learning methods, learning media and learning spaces gets. Nobody I have met or have heard about learns in only one way with only one method or only one type of media. (This does not mean that they may not feel more comfortable and accustomed to one or the other learning method, media or space.) As far I know learning has never been accomplished otherwise. I do not think that one needs to read a lot of academic material to come to this conclusion. But after spending some time reading well documented work on the subject, I find it hard to come to any other conclusion. People are indiscriminate, as far as learning is concerned. They use almost anything they can get their hands on to figure out how to solve their problems or meet their learning needs – and they combine different methods constantly. If this is true, then all learning is "blended". Seen in this light, the concept "blended learning" is superfluous. E. Tomadaki and P. Scott (Eds.): Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, p. 18-20, 2006. 2 Learning or Teaching? "Blended learning" is not really about learning, it is about teaching or instruction. One of the main dichotomies conjured up in the discussion is that between "elearning" on the on hand and "classroom" or "traditional learning" or "face to face learning" on the other hand. That seems plausible. But when you take a harder closer look at each of the terms mentioned, they are so ambiguous that it is hard to find the dividing line. E-learning for example is often viewed as "technology driven" or "self-paced learning" and is contrasted with classroom based, communicative, teacher driven learning. This is only true for a particular e-learning scenario and is not at all specific to e-learning. E-learning obviously does depend on technology, but it is not necessarily self-paced. E-learning (teaching and learning) can be done for example over the internet with an instructor commenting and motivating individuals or a group. This group can discuss things among themselves and/or with their teacher/instructor. They may use internet and other technologies, e.g. discussion forums, chats, voice over ip, e-mail, and the plain old telephone, just to mention some possibilities. There is nothing inherently self-paced about elearning. And to be frank, having people placed in a classroom does not mean anything communicative is happening. Maybe they are doing self-paced work while sitting together. And sitting in a classroom with a teacher in it does not necessarily mean that the instructional scenario is teacher driven. If indeed "blended teaching" is the combination of different teaching/instructional methods, media and spaces then that only makes sense if the terms one juggles delineate relevant points of reference. I do not think the points most often mentioned do this. And to be frank I do not really see the value of the effort. Good (and bad) teachers combine methods and media. Depending on their scope they use textbooks, newspapers, individual talks, group discussions, motivate self-paced work and many more. Good teachers lecture, converse, comment, coax and cry. A good teacher blends anything she can get her hands on to keep the learning process moving. From this point of view, "blended teaching" is not anything new or actually anything special. 3 E-Learning, ROI and Total Control In my view the term "blended learning" or "hybrid learning" or whatever variation will soon certainly be coined only makes sense when viewed within the context of company training. Several years ago e-learning seemed to be the answer to human resource development's training problems: it promised to be flexible (time and place), re-usable (technical modules that could be combined and used again and again) and relatively inexpensive (when the costs saved for instructors, hotels and travel were considered). Please note: the e-learning scenario considered consisted of CBTs or WBTs (computer or web-based training). People were talking about technology based instruction or "training" (practice) programs without personal interaction or instructor intervention. Who Needs "Blended Learning"? Some Thoughts on a Political Concept 19