The impact online learning is having on the commercial landscape cannot be overestimated.
80% of organisations now offer online learning or training solutions.
And it’s not hard to see why. Online learning can reduce the time needed to acquire new knowledge by between 40-60%.
Why has online learning been so impactful? It’s simple. For any organisation to thrive it simply must adopt and promote continuous learning.
This means that a commitment to professional L&D is paramount.
Let’s not also forget that most people are fickle, demanding of their digital experiences, and have short attention spans.
Learning needs to be streamlined and personalised to exactly what people want.
Is it any wonder that the online learning industry is projected to be worth $370 billion by 2026. 👀
Knowing this, there’s one important question that organisations must answer: how do organisations cement an L&D ethos that promotes knowledge acquisition, professional growth, and commercial success?
It’s simple: they leverage the most appropriate L&D. 🔥
So, let’s examine two of the most popular philosophies: hybrid and blended learning, defining each whilst reviewing the benefits, challenges, and differences of each to help you decide which is best for your workforce.
What is Hybrid Learning?
Hybrid learning is a dynamic learning model that combines the experiences of traditional in-person and online learning models.
Some learners may attend in-person classes while others participate in the learning experience digitally at the same time.
This environment creates two distinctive groups of learners, each with their own participation needs and methods. 🤔
Let’s say, for instance, that you have a global business and want to translate content from UK or US English into multiple global languages. You can save yourself a great deal of time and money by using Localise, a translation platform. But first, you need to upskill employees so they’re able to use the platform. 🙌
How can you do this?
Well, you could host an in-person, peer-to-peer training session at the office, whilst inviting participants from around the globe to attend remotely. This way even those who cannot physically be there can experience the training! ☺️
This is hybrid learning.
What is Blended Learning?
Blended learning is a flexible learning model that supplements face-to-face learning with online activities. Learners attend an in-person experience, followed by subsequent online activities, such as viewing a recording of the meeting (if you choose to record the meeting on any video conferencing platform), followed by a series of subsequent learning activities.
So, using our example of upskilling employees to use Localise, blended learning supplements the knowledge acquisition aspect of the learning experience with quizzes, discussions, or pre-recorded lectures at a future time.
This evolving learning experience helps people to acquire knowledge at their own pace when they need it. ☺️
This is blended learning.
The core differentiator between hybrid and blended learning is that hybrid learning gives people the choice of acquiring the knowledge they need in-person, and in one big chunk while blended learning leverages both in-person and online learning over time to promote a flexible learning experience, tailored to the pace people learn. 👌
The Benefits of Hybrid Learning
There’s no doubt that there are some attributes of hybrid and blended learning overlap. However, understanding the unique benefits of each will allow your business to decide which is the better option to maximise the learning experience for everyone.
Below is a brief overview explaining the core benefits of hybrid learning:
Flexibility
The primary benefit of hybrid learning is the flexibility it offers learners.
You can opt for in-person or remote attendance, meaning that regardless of work priorities, learners can accommodate learning into their schedule. 📅
Inclusivity
Hybrid learning promotes inclusivity by bridging the gap between different learning styles.
From visual to kinaesthetic, social to auditory, hybrid learning makes it easy to adapt your L&D to maximise people’s knowledge retention. ❤️
Engagement
People who aren’t engaged in the learning process rarely get the most out of it.
Thankfully, hybrid learning fosters active engagement amongst in-person and virtual learners with both instructors and their peers. 🧑💻 🙋
Innovation
Taking advantage of innovations in the L&D space is paramount.
Thirst is trailblazing a path into a new era of AI-fuelled L&D experiences, giving users access to a vital learning experience to strengthen their knowledge and understanding. And, best of all, it offers countless benefits when employed as part of a hybrid learning model. 💻
The Challenges of Hybrid Learning
Like anything else, hybrid learning is not without its challenges.
Understanding and weighing up each of these will help you to decide if the model is right for your organisation.
Below is a brief overview outlining the challenges of hybrid learning:
Successful Collaboration
Let’s face it, collaboration is easier when everyone involved is together in one room.
Broader decision-making stemming from in-depth, free-flowing discussions can be made much more easily. Engagement and inclusion can be cultivated. Sure, virtual conferencing does provide a solution to distance learning, but even now, on the precipice of 2025, there are some people who just prefer in-person communication. 💡
Connecting with Different Social Groups
Hybrid or remote working environments can create social disconnects between groups of learners, with instructors focusing on in-person communication and inadvertently neglecting remote learners.
However, this disadvantage can be offset by fostering inclusivity and making all participants feel valued. Using collaborative platforms, even something as basic as Google Docs, whilst encouraging everyone to participate will offset this challenge.
Technical Difficulties
Building on connection, hybrid and remote learning can still be fraught with technical difficulties.
A poor Wi-Fi connection can disrupt the learning experience, nullifying any potential benefits. Recording important learner experiences for future review and reflection should be encouraged. 🤯
The Benefits of Blended Learning
Personalisation
Blended learning offers the best of both worlds, bolstering an in-person learning experience with a virtual one, whilst allowing learners to acquire new knowledge at their own pace.
This model is one of the most effective ways to secure knowledge retention. 🎓
Face-to-Face Interaction
Access to instructors is vital to some learning styles.
Don’t forget, as helpful as a virtual training session can be, some learners may have questions.
Then there’s learning styles. Auditory learners may be able to digest and remember exactly what they need, but kinaesthetic or collaborative learners who prefer engagement may benefit from face-to-face interaction with instructors when they need it. 🙋
Cost-Effectiveness
Organisations have departmental budgets and L&D is no different.
It’s safe to assume that every organisation can’t afford to pay for employees to attend mountains of courses, conferences, or seminars every year!
With its combination of online and in-person actions, blended learning saves organisations the expense of paying for all the L&D expenses of one, ten, or one hundred employees every year. 💰
The Challenges of Blended Learning
As you expect, blended learning is not without its challenges. Before you put your money where your mouth is, it’s important to understand what these challenges are.
Below is a brief overview outlining the challenges of blended learning:
Motivating Learners
Some learners need a strict setting to truly acquire, digest, and understand source material.
If left to undertake and complete L&D at their own pace, they may not feel suitably motivated to get up to speed as quickly as an organisation may want.
This issue can be compounded by uninspiring course design and an absence of deadlines. 👍
Remaining Consistent
This challenge directly follows on from motivating learners.
Many of us start a learning process with the intention and desire to see it through but fall short with motivation starts to wane. Additional commitments or priority tasks may take centre stage and before you know it, commitment and consistency have evolved into complacency and unwillingness.
Varying Learning Speeds
People learn at different speeds. That’s just the truth of it.
The learning style doesn’t really matter. This can pose an issue when leveraging blended learning.
The result?
Some learners get up to speed very fast, others take a little longer.
This results in a disjointed team, one that puts unnecessary professional strain on more knowledgeable people.
Delivering the Experience
The people spearheading L&D in your organisation are equally as important as the course content.
Dispassion, poor investment in the right online and offline resources, or an instructor who doesn’t communicate with sufficient gravitas will drastically hinder the learning experience.
Of course, the same is true for hybrid learning, but given that blended learning demands consistency, the learning experience is paramount. 📗 ✅
The Main Differences Between Hybrid and Blended Learning
It’s not uncommon for people to use hybrid and blended learning interchangeably, however, understanding the distinctions between each will allow you to better decide which one is best suited to your organisation.
Now, we’ve already alluded to the differences between hybrid and blended learning earlier in this blog article, but for simplicity, let’s get to the crux of the differences so you can make the right decision over which model you wish to employ.
In a nutshell, hybrid learning focuses on how to teach learners. Online content is used independently to replace in-person teaching. Flexible and versatile, hybrid learning gives learners the opportunity to acquire necessary knowledge by accommodating learning time into their schedule. 🙌
Conversely, blended learning focuses on what learning methods are ideal to maximise retention.
For instance, in-person L&D meetings combined with online engagement at a time best suited to learners. This promotes a unified learner experience while promoting support.
The objectives of each learning model also differ. Hybrid learning focuses on providing equal learning opportunities, regardless of whether the experience is virtual or in-person. Blended learning focuses on integrating technology to diversify the learning experience.
Also, the learning environments of each are complementary, yet different.
Hybrid learning promotes separate in-person and online learning. Blended learning tends to focus on integrating experiences, so they work together as part of a well-rounded experience. 🖥️ 🙋
The last core difference between hybrid and blended learning is attendance.
Hybrid learning typically demands mandatory in-person and remote attendance. Blended learning is a bit more flexible. A learner’s presence is required at the start of the process, but as learning evolves, learners have more autonomy to meet their L&D objectives.
Hybrid vs. Blended Learning: Which Is Right for Your Workforce?
So, here’s the big question…
Is hybrid or blended learning the best choice for your workforce?
The short answer is that it depends on your needs.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Both have their benefits.
And let’s not forget different people learn in different ways.
A great learning solution for an IT department may not be quite so great if you’re looking to upskill a team of personal trainers! 😲
However, what’s true is that choosing the right learning process could well make or break the success of your L&D initiatives.
The good news is that there are a handful of simple questions to answer to help you decide between hybrid or blended learning. These are:
- What do you hope that those attending L&D will achieve?
- How much time do you have to implement hybrid or blended L&D?
- What’s my budget?
- Are there knowledge gaps that must be comprehensively filled asap?
- What type of learning will resonate best with the team(s)
- Will your workforce respond better to ongoing L&D at their own pace?
- Do you have a digital infrastructure that’ll support hybrid or blended learning?
Answer these questions and you’ll understand whether or not hybrid or blended learning is best to integrate into your organisation.
Which One is Right for Your Organisation?
It’s clear that whilst both hybrid and blended learning are different, they have clear benefits to workforces, or more specifically, how people learn, prosper, and add real value to the organisation.
Ultimately, you must remember that whether you choose to implement hybrid or blending learning, it should align, not only with the people but, the short-and-long-term goals of your organisation. 🤔
But, if pushed to surmise the differences between hybrid and blended learning in a single concise statement, hybrid learning is the better option if your goal is to disseminate information widely and achieve an immediate impact, whereas blended learning often aligns better with more strategic, long-term goals and a personalised learning experience.
What’s undeniable though, is choosing between adopting a hybrid or blended learning model will have a profound impact on your organisation’s performance and employee happiness. 🏆
Got 2 Minutes?
If your organisation is struggling with disengaged learners, Thirst has the solution. 🔥
Thirst is an AI-powered learning platform that helps L&D teams of all sizes boost learner engagement and create experiences tailored to today’s learners.
Take a guided tour today and see Thirst in action.
For more e-learning insights, resources and information, discover the Thirst blog.
You may also enjoy:
What is Adaptive Learning: A Beginner’s Guide | 13 Of The Best Coaching Models to Use | 24 Examples of Employee Strengths and How to Develop Them
