I recently had the opportunity reconnect with my fellow Cornelsen Akademie Certified Online Educator Alumnus – wow! that is a mouthful – Dr. Yvonne Koster. Yvonne is Project Manager for Blended Learning in the human resources section at a major German comprehensive insurance company that employs approx. 1,500 people. Yvonne is a real people person, not only face to face; but also in her virtual presences. Her profession means she has to implement lifelong learning throughout a large organisation: all of those people have to be constantly trained in a wide variety of skills. The company has opted for blended delivery to accomplish this most efficiently. Yvonne Koster mainly works in the areas of blended learning for office applications, insurance-specific issues and technical applications.
As project manager, she has to assure that motivation for the programs is generated throughout the company. A major and crucial question when designing blended learning programs is how to actively market the programs within the organisation. In her experience, as well as in mine, it is essential that blended learning programs be consciously marketed – not only from the top – but at all levels of the organisation. This means that every participant has to realise what concrete benefit is being offered and how their participation is going to provide them with real value.
As I mainly focus on blended learning for train-the–trainer and language learning environments, it was particularly interesting to hear how she applies blended methodology in other target fields. Yvonne is responsible for making sure that the blended learning blend is as pragmatic and effective as it can be and that the training is rewarding for a wide range of participants – not an easy task! She is convinced that:
“One day, multi-medial learning will seem as ‘normal’ for people as writing an e-mail is to most people these days“.
I have to agree. From my experience, once people become acquainted with the technologies and a sense of community is established, things really begin to take off. The more a trusting learning atmosphere prevails, the less noticeable the technologies are. I am not sure if this observation is particular to train-the-trainer and language learning; both areas place heavy emphasis on socialized learning and communication skills.
Many times athe creation of a trusting atmosphere is prerequisite for students to feel comfortable enough to venture to actually use newly acquired language or teaching methodology. In a blended learning context, I am not quite sure how important the idea of ‘trust’ is when learning how to use software or learning about the institution of new company policy, for example.
What do you think? What has your experience taught you?
Trust never hurts, but is it always absolutely necessary in every learning environment?