We are in the midst of developping our blended learning strategy and are looking for insight into what other companies are doing.

We have an LMS with several off the shelf licensed courses and have just begun developping online courses internally. We are juggling with the options of using online for our in class programs prework, full programs or follow-up sessions or all....

Does any one have some experience with either format they are to share?

I have a personal preference for using the elearning modules for prework (basic comprehension of material or assessment-type issues). This gives everyone a mutual starting point. I personally like some kind of interaction in the actual workshop...whether that be live, web-ex or whatever. Depending on the complexity of the topic, you may need to reach learners with different learning styles. I like to give people the opportunity to participate. If cost wasn't a factor, I'd say face to face is best...but you can accomplish that with video conferencing as well. It just puts an additional burdon on your facilitator to be able to 'read" the audience.

I think follow up sessions online are wonderful. They can reinforce key learning objectives, force the participants to go through the areas they didn't comprehend, and the LMS is a great way of showing you where you're getting your buy in. They key things to think about here are, obviously, what are the major things you're trying to achieve, and how will you know if you've accomplished them.

Lots of experience with this issue and what made CEOs and learners most happy:

Prework - get all the basic informational and procedural objectives covered (i.e. sales models, techniques to handle objections, how to create a start to start relationship in MSProject....) Push anything that is "info delivery" or "covering a procedure" out of the class. Sets baseline for folks getting into a class (set the firmness of the prerequisite as necessary for your business needs).

Live learning event - essentially, this is a "summary/quick reivew/Q&A" of all the prework followed by labs, roleplays or other performance-of-task activities. No more than 10% of the time spent on "reviewing what you should've known walking in the door", 90% on the "let's try out the techniques/skills, evaluate, debrief, repeat as needed".

Post Event- FAQs, support resources, community, and live Q&A if needed. It's one thing to try out the skills in a controlled lab or class, quite another in a work environment with many more variables. Learners can submit key issues for consideration, and experts and community can assist.

This made CEOs very happy- if you are flying anyone in for an event, you don't want material covered that can be simply read, you want to optimize every dollar spent on training skills that aren't easily taught outside of a live environment. Also, per pre-work, you can cut the class time down in many cases.

This made learners happy- folks who aren't prepared for class generally don't get into the class and hold up progress. Folks who know the information, but have problems applying it see the value in running the live learning event as "Olympic tryouts for your new skills". Glad they get to try it out in a safe environment with valuable feedback (and depending on risk exposure, this can be a big selling point to CEOs). Post-event support shows that the training group is interested in ensuring the skills work in the field, not just the classroom (and generally the scenarios brought to the post-support inquiries improve the in-class training for the next group, so it is a win-win).

Hope this helps. At one Corporate Training Center I worked at, we decreased the cost and time to competency for a Network Administration course to 45% it's orginal design, and all users noted that they highly valued that class time was spent primarily on labs versus covering material which should have been read in preparation for the class. Recently, at a large finance company, we decreased key management training by 20% and several hundred dollars for each participant while giving no ground to our target objectives.