Call of the Wild launch new blended learning approach to Leadership and Team Development
We at Call of the Wild have been developing and delivering bespoke leadership and team development solutions for our clients including Panasonic, Carphone Warehouse, ICAEW and BMW for over 9 years. We have always prided ourselves on our ability to offer programs that have a real impact in the workplace. For 2008 we have further enhanced our range of services by introducing a blended approach to our development services.
Call of the Wild are delighted to announce the launch of their on line development resource the Call of the Wild development academy. This exciting new product sits alongside our core leadership and team development services and offers a blended learning solution, which aims to maximise the benefit of our programs by supplementing our facilitator-led developmental inputs.
We encourage clients to think of the academy as a body of knowledge, a motivation to explore management, an advice and help centre, a monthly magazine, an intelligent dictionary, a reference tool, a set of challenging thoughts and ideas, a set of guided and unguided learning opportunities, a reward system, and a community for learning about management.
Blended learning is an attempt to combine the claimed strengths of e learning and the human facilitator and overcome the weaknesses of both.
Strengths Weaknesses Trainer Feedback, facilitation Knowledge delivery E-learning Knowledge delivery Feedback, facilitation The aim is for knowledge to be pre-delivered by e learning so that the facilitator can spend his or her (limited) time on the inter-personal aspects of their role. If it works, then 60% of the trainer’s time is either saved or used for more in-depth feedback and facilitation. Indeed, studies we have carried out for clients indicate that blended learning can realise savings of between 30% and 50% of a company’s training costs. With all training budgets under pressure, this can make all the difference between delivering quality management training and not. We have sought to keep away from traditional e learning. All our work is built upon the insights of Professor David A Kolb and his Learning Styles analysis. Thus, we do not have serial chunks of learning that everyone is expected to work through. We strive to capture the interest and to motivate a larger range of people - those who like to experiment, those who like to work fast, those who want to ponder upon an issue or theory, as well as those who like to follow a guided pathway. With the Call of the Wild Development Academy, the trainer can offer people approaches to the pre-work, which will satisfy their learning preferences. He or she can request that specific elements of the Academy are studied and can test for completion – but, at the same time, can allow people to explore around the topic if they wish, to be guided through the material if they wish or indeed just to leap in, complete the requirements and move on. This way, the trainer has a higher chance of walking into the training room to meet participants who (a) have completed the pre-work (b) are expectant rather than bored and perhaps even more important (c) who have questions to ask, points to make and disagreements to air. We would like to discuss this exiting new service at the HR forum in Birmingham in January and therefore are offering the opportunity to begin to explore the Development Academy free of charge for 1 month. Visit www.cotwdevelopmentacademy.com in order to register as a new user and receive your free one-month log in. To discuss our services in more detail or if you have any questions regarding the academy please contact [email protected]