While Blended Learning has been around for quite some time, there have been a few personal experiences that have turned out to be game changers for me. I am sharing one such experience here in the hope that it may help you create a blend of your own too!
 I have been conducting Corporate Training programs for over a decade and somewhere during this journey a few years ago, a very interesting situation popped up.
There was this particular two-day intervention on Change Management that I was supposed to conduct for a very prestigious client. The content was in place, the client had heard about my expertise and was excited about the program, the dates were set, venue booked and the audience (about 20 Senior Management Professionals) spread across the country had booked their tickets.
 In came the spanner!
 The client suddenly felt that the participants were not “very serious” about learning and would just walk into the training program totally unprepared. He was further apprehensive about the fact that all queries about the intervention coming in from the prospective participants were more related to the after-hours party and none about the content of the intervention!
So, he promptly informed me that I should prepare a “pre-program” module and send it to the participants so that they can come prepared.
That evening when I was penning the points for the “Pre-Program” kit a thought crossed my mind.
 Why are the participants not excited about the program?
Well, I did not have to dive too deep as the answers were quite obvious!
  1. They had just received an email informing them about the topic and contents.
  2. They were probably not sure why they were being called for the program.
  3. I could not find a single reason for myself to be excited about it either! (on putting myself in their shoes)
Incidentally, this was the day when a major cricket match was in action and I was multitasking on the “pre-program” content development while keeping an eye on the TV Screen.
This is when it struck me. Why does it have to be a “Pre-program” kit? Why can’t it be a “Pre-Program Game!”
That little flash turned me into action, and in the next few days I was able to roll out a game designed with the learning content thoroughly ingrained in it.
This caused a lot of action!
And the result….
When the team actually turned up for the training program, they were not only well prepared with the content, they were super-excited about the game too!
The intervention went on to be a grand success and we went ahead and added certain post program online interventions to it too.
This little experience led to an avalanche of thoughts on how simple blends using the “e” world could bring in tremendous results!
 Some of the things I have done and seen wonderful outcomes after this little tryst with blending are:
1. Combination of classroom sessions and live online sessions
As bringing all people together multiple times was a concern for a client, we conducted weekly live online sessions for three weeks, then had a one-day class room based session and continued with live online sessions for a few more weeks. The result was awesome!
2. Live online + Asynchronous content
This works best for a continuous course which involves live discussions with people spread across diverse location and wherein the topic requires a lot of practice to proceed from one sub-topic to another.
3. Classroom session+ Post interventions games + Asynchronous content
Usually the effect of a training program tends to wear off after some time. This mode was very effective in getting the participants to work on refreshers modules and work towards practical application of their learning.
 Currently I am working on a few blends using M-Learning modules and games and I am sure there are many more blends out there to be explored!
 The lesson:
There is a perfect blend for every occasion- may it be a party or a training intervention!
 Cheers!