BLENDED LEARNING PLATFORM SOLUTIONS | WEB COURSEWORKS
If you’re an association that offers continuing education (CE), a blended learning strategy can help you retain and engage members, improve learning outcomes, and increase revenue. With the right tools, blended learning is an impactful teaching strategy that can support the needs of a diverse group of learners and make learning programs more effective.
As experts in blended learning management, design, and implementation, Web Courseworks provides a customizable LMS platform and streamlined services for a seamless, engaging learning experience for all of your members.
Web Courseworks’ Blended Learning Solutions for Associations
RETAIN MEMBERS
When your learning structure doesn’t account for your learners’ wide-ranging locations and schedules, you’re likely to churn members. With Web Courseworks’ blended learning platform, you can easily design programs that adapt to your members’ various learning needs, styles, schedules, and paces.
As an added retention mechanism, an adaptive learning design allows Web Courseworks’ blended learning platform to recommend future courses to your members based on their past activity with your association.
SCALE WITH YOUR ASSOCIATION
Your software should never hold you back. As your association grows and offers new features, classes, and opportunities, Web Courseworks’ blended learning solution can easily adapt to meet your organization’s needs. Customize the types of blended learning you offer, from asynchronous online activities to live in-person sessions, group work, and individual self-assessments.
DEMONSTRATE VALUE
Show members their learning progress with Web Courseworks’ customizable performance metrics. Whether your program is in-person, virtual, or a combination of the two, your instructional designers, instructors, and content creators can collect, analyze, and share pre- and post-performance data with learners in a single hub. Moreover, when you understand performance and how much learners enjoy courses, you can continue creating courses of value and increasing purchases
Leverage psychometric analysis to best understand your members’ strengths and weaknesses. After completing an activity, they can review instant visual reports on their performance individually and in relation to their peers.
ENGAGE MEMBERS
Web Courseworks’ blended learning platform is built for associations to leverage a range of teaching approaches, including various combinations of instructor-led, self-paced, in-person, and virtual strategies. When learners encounter diverse educational experiences, they’ll feel more engaged and better equipped to translate their learning into practice.
Moreover, following accessibility best practices, our blended learning platform features a responsive design that adapts to device, screen size, platform, and orientation—so that members can learn wherever they are.
STREAMLINE PROCESSES
How often do you find your staff struggling with entering data, implementing assessments, or sending hundreds of emails one-by-one-by-one? Our blended learning platform can automate many of the tedious tasks, from automatic messaging to question banking, randomization, and proctoring, that might otherwise have to be done manually. Moreover, Web Courseworks can help you sync numerous programs in our all-in-one blended learning solution.
INCREASE REVENUE
Not only does our comprehensive reporting functionality help associations better understand and target education methods and mediums to their learners, but it can also help you increase your revenue in the process. Use Web Courseworks’ blended learning platform to target gaps in offerings, appeal to your members’ learning interests and goals, and keep them in your courses.
Blended Learning Platform: Best Practices
What Is Blended Learning?
Blended learning is a teaching framework that combines different types of instruction, including e-learning and in-person, synchronous, and asynchronous learning, to account for different learning styles and strategies and give learners more agency over their learning. Within the overarching framework, blended learning can take a number of different setups—from a primarily face-to-face model to an online one driven by individual learners.
That said, not all blended learning programs are successful. To make the most of your association’s program, you’ll need to leverage the proper tools and develop a strategic plan. Below, we’ve cataloged five best practices to follow when using a blended learning platform and implementing a blended learning design. Remember, when designing a blended learning program, the solution you choose can make a huge difference.
Brand Your Platform
You want your members to associate their quality learning experiences with your organization, not the backend learning hardware and software you use. Choose a solution, like Web Courseworks, that allows you to customize your offerings to your association’s brand. When learners log into their online portal, they should be greeted with your association’s colors, logo, motto, and general style and voice.
Highlight Star Instructors
When marketing your blended learning program, highlighting popular and well-known teachers can help attract new and existing members alike. Your star instructors can be published authors, influencers, media personalities, or even industry experts. In general, they should have clearly established expertise in the field in which they’re teaching and the ability to help recruit sign-ups for their class.
While your blended learning solution will do much of the legwork to engage your members, your star instructors should also be available, either in-person or online, to offer insights and boost member morale.
Use a Cohort Model
While some learners will prefer to work completely asynchronously, there are a number of benefits to implementing a cohort model in your blended learning program. In a cohort model, the learning programs begin and end on specific dates, and cohorts—segments of your membership—complete programs in sync. This model features continuous exposure to learners’ peers.
Not only do cohort programs carry a high perceived value, but they also offer learners opportunities for professional networking and social learning: observing, modeling, and imitating the behaviors, attitudes, and skills of their peers.
Set Rigorous Learning Objectives and Expectations
As with any learning program, your learning objectives and expectations should help guide nearly every decision you make. Because these are so important, make sure they follow SMART goal guidelines. Your objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
Additionally, every objective should have a mastery component that is clearly presented to learners and can be measured and analyzed by instructors. Only after you’ve set the goals for your blended learning program should you determine what activities, knowledge, practice, assessments, and schedule will help students achieve them.
Vary Learning Modalities and Technologies
While lectures and assigned reading can undoubtedly form a piece of a blended learning program, most adult learners also want to have opportunities to apply and practice their newly-gained knowledge and skills. Consider the following ways to give students a range of ways to engage with material:
- In-person courses
- Asynchronous reading
- Teleconferences
- Phone calls
- Blogging and discussion forums
- Personal learning journal
- Peer mentoring/coaching
- Individual and group supervision
- Written and oral exams
- Podcast presentations
One of the benefits of blended learning is that it allows for a multiplicity of learning modalities—so make use of as many as you can!
