We’re living in the era of hybrid work and learning. Throughout the years, different innovations and circumstances have upended our processes. Least to say, we’ve all experienced a once-in-a-century event that totally and irrevocably changed the way we do things—and for the better.
It’s not really a surprise that hybrid setups have come to dominate the modern landscape. Afterall, they offer the best of both worlds and have shown—through everyone’s test run from last year—that organizations can adapt to these changes. According to EdWeek, the most prominent model for hybrid learning are virtual schools.
Hybrid Learning
Surely, 2020 was the year for online learning. And it hasn’t stopped its growth since then, continuing well into this year. There were record-breaking milestones achieved by online courses and programs from the previous year—like attaining the highest number of new registrants to tripling user bases over the course of a few months.
Meanwhile, colleges and universities elected different changes to their processes in order to better adapt to the changing needs of today’s students. Among the changes they made was giving a higher emphasis on teaching skills that are equipped for entering the workforce, which means collaborating with other EDU organizations to provide such resources and services.
Another would be providing greater access to people from different backgrounds through programs that address their needs and challenges. Now, many institutions are welcoming their most diverse batch of learners yet—from first-generation college students to full-time employees, and those with families who previously had a difficult time balancing their studies due to structural blockages.
So it’s only natural that partnerships between online courses and traditional education institutions flourished, thereby strengthening the hybrid aspect of learning.
In fact, Stanford University recently launched a program to help ease the transition from high school to college for students from underrepresented communities through online learning.
Besides these changes, EDU organizations are planning to extend the hybrid setup from beyond the classroom into a hybrid campus that alters things from their marketing strategies to virtual advising to more enhanced digital processes. This ensures that every step of the way is data-driven and student-centered.
Hybrid Work
On the other hand, many companies find themselves exploring different modes of working—whether that’s by offering two days of remote work per week or face-to-face days dedicated solely for meetings, to name a few.
You might ask: what does this have to do with learning? Well, since people are spending more time working remotely, this ultimately changes how companies conduct their learning and development initiatives.
Add to this situation are the looming digital skills gap found among the workforce and The Great Resignation. As a response to this, many companies are pushing to provide learning and training to their workers to retain them.
Businesses are keen to find the right program that fits their needs and their employees’ needs best. That means you need to be able to personalize your marketing to address their various needs as well as integrate learning with the work each of the employees are doing.
Some examples of ways to do this include:
- Collaborative Learning
- Watch Party style-training
- App Integration
- Use of Artificial Intelligence for the programs
For sure, education and work will continue to evolve as the latest technologies and circumstances demand it. As education organizations, it’s also your duty to evolve with them in order to fully maximize the opportunities available.
Without pushing outside of the box, we might find ourselves back in inefficient and old-school ways, unable to learn and survive with the progress in the industry.
