When companies blend their classroom learning with other learning modalities such as online learning, instructors oftentimes ask how the online learning will affect their classroom training. If you have additional questions that are not listed below, feel free to contact us.

The online learning modules will cover the "what" and "why" of a particular topic, saving the specific "how" for instructor-led training. The pre-class online learning will allow each student to get up-to-speed on the basics, preparing them for more advanced learning in the classroom. Instructors will now have more informed students on the first day of training so they can allocate more time for practical hands-on learning with exercises, applications and case studies. The result will be the ability to teach to a higher common denominator, because students arrive with the basics in hand.

No, the classroom experience becomes even more valuable. With students coming to class educated and prepared to apply their new knowledge, the classroom time becomes more application focused. In fact, some organizations now spend over 75% of classroom time "applying" what was introduced online. Customer experience indicates that retention rates improve with a blended learning format, and students appreciate the flexibility and review capabilities that online materials deliver.

There are many reasons why companies are blending their learning. The key reasons are more flexible training, a reduction in classroom time, reduced training costs, and improved learning results. With the right blended learning solution in place, instructors can literally turn training from a "Push" to more of a "Pull" system" because they can monitor a student's progress every step of the way. Many trainers have found that reduced classroom hours are replaced with "office hours" giving students one-on-one help with tough concepts or project guidance. Blended learning covers the three key styles of learning: visual (reading), audio (hearing) and kinesthetic (hands-on). Combining online learning with instructor-led training supports all three learning styles, giving students the opportunity to "master" the content. Research shows that retention rates improve with a blending learning model.

Instructors will be able to move to more advanced learning stages of their current classroom materials and have the option to reduce their standard lecture materials since students will learn much of the basics online. Many companies use their existing materials for the initial class, until they can make decisions on what materials they can add or remove. The Quality Group's Professional Services Group can help manage this process (or do it turn-key).

Many instructors focus on "hands-on" projects and case studies in class since students study the basics online. The Quality Group's blended learning experts can help you merge your materials, creating standard templates and documents, such as instructor and student manuals, that can be repurposed by other instructors. We do it every day for companies of all sizes. Once merged, your organization will be equipped with standard and consistent materials that can be used across the various business units. This creates a learning environment with consistency and control, and avoids content overlap and re-creating the wheel when new instructors are brought on board. Read our Case Study on how a leading company, Seagate Technologies, implemented blended learning training across their business units. See step-by-step how it was done.

In most cases, classroom time is reduced, oftentimes up to 50% or more, giving instructors more time for coaching and mentoring. Instructors will also have more time for managing their students, classes and focus on key reporting and gap analysis, allowing them to optimize their classroom learning. Although the classroom time is reduced, students are still getting the basics online, and have the ability to study at their own pace. This combination of learning modalities actually produces better learning outcomes with increased knowledge transfer.

As a matter of fact it should give them a better classroom experience. Because students have varying levels of educational background, some students are familiar with complex materials while others may not even heard of this topic. By offering the basic course modules online, students can study at their own pace and enter the first day of class more confident and eager to apply what they've learned. When not implementing online courses for the basic learning, instructors have to use valuable class time reviewing the basic concepts for a portion of the class.

An e-learning portal is a web-based system that centralizes learning in one place. Administrators and instructors can manage, track, report and analyze all of their students and classes, control all of their ancillary class material.

OpusWorks^® is The Quality Group's number 1 e-learning portal. It is robust but very intuitive and user friendly. Most administrators and instructors can learn the basics in one hour. It takes approximate 2-3 hours of training to learn to use OpusWorks^® fluently. Of course, we have technical support when you or your students have a question or need additional help.

OpusWorks Conductor^® centralizes your training - your students, your classes, and your training materials. You can also get drill-down reporting for gap and trend analysis for ongoing improvements in your training programs.

Yes, OpusWorks Conductor^® enables administrators and instructors to get extensive reporting on students, classes and portal. You can retrieve pre- and post-test scores, certification scores, average test questions missed, average time spent in a course, survey results and much, much more.

Yes, OpusWorks Conductor^® is The Quality Group offers an online content creator and course developer. Administrators and Instructors can easily create their own online courses and then publish them for delivery via Conductor. Take a PowerPoint® document and easily turn it into an interactive Flash® course.

Bersin & Associates, a leading enterprise learning research analyst firm, describes blended learning as a combination of different training "media" (technologies, activities, and types of events) to create an optimum training program for a specific audience. The term "blended" means that traditional instructor-led training is being supplemented with other electronic formats. According to Bersin & Associates, blended learning is the next big thing. They find that blended learning programs are perhaps the highest impact, lowest cost way to drive major corporate initiatives. Blended learning solves the problem of speed, scale, and impact - and leverages e-learning where it's most appropriate.

Complex subjects such as Lean Six Sigma are an excellent fit for a blended learning solution because of the intricate subject matter. With blended learning, students have the opportunity to learn the basics online at their own pace with 24x7 access to courses, reference materials, and work aids. Classroom time is reduced, with more focus on applications, case studies and coaching. The result is better learning outcomes and more productive, profitable corporate process improvement projects.
Bersin & Associates (a leading enterprise learning analyst firm) research indicates that the widest application of blended learning is to support strategic initiatives. Lean Six Sigma is a strategic initiative.

ROI can be achieved from several areas, often the reduction in class time has a related travel and facilities cost reduction. Instructor resources can be trimmed slightly, but better results are achieved from allowing instructors to allocate more time to coaching and mentoring. Completion of more projects, and shorter project cycles times can also weigh in heavily. A Fortune 500 client of The Quality Group delivered $1 mil in financial impact when their first Black Belt project completion cycles went from six months to five with blended learning.

Since most companies opt to run their first class as a pilot, and reduce lecture PowerPoints after that, there is typically 5-10 hours/resource assigned to interface/train with our team, decide what materials we want to populate the e-learning portal with, and set-up custom menus and curriculums. If the organization decides to fully-integrate the e-learning with existing classroom materials, and do the work themselves, it may take 10-15 days. However, our Professional Services group can handle the project for you with our turn-key services.

Our Professional Services Group can help your team map the process, or deliver an end-to-end integration. In most LSS deployments cases, our team will need about 1-day total for the deployment leader and 2-3 days from an SME if we're running the project.

In a large percentage of the cases, students and instructors alike prefer blended learning formats stating "their time is used more wisely." One Fortune 500 customer said, "I thought I was going to get push-back from our engineers with the e-learning materials, but they asked why we hadn't done this sooner."

Many years of successful Lean Six Sigma classroom training have made instructors reluctant to embrace e-learning as a valid modality. Some instructors have felt threatened by self-paced online learning, and have feared it would reduce the perceived value of classroom instruction that they have spent years developing. Instructors also sometimes feel that online learning threatens their livelihood, and that eventually employees could manage their own learning paths. Change management is critical here to get all parties involved early in the decision making process. Instructors need to be supported during the transition and encouraged that students who have taken e-learning modules will come to class better prepared for more advanced learning. Implemented properly, instructors can become your best advocates for blended learning as they realize better learning results and have more time for coaching and mentoring, and understand that e-learning does not threaten instructor-led classes - it enhances it.

Lean is a methodology aimed at the "elimination of waste" in every process. Its goal is to incorporate less human effort, less inventory, less time to develop products, and less space (inventory performance) to become highly responsive to customer demand. Lean is about producing top quality products in the most efficient and economical manner possible. Six Sigma methodology focuses on more multifaceted problems providing businesses with more complex statistical tools (than Lean) to improve the capability of their business processes. It includes reducing or eliminating defects and process variation, while creating stable and predictable processes that lead to better process capability to meet customer requirements. This increase in performance and decrease in process variation leads to defect reduction and vast improvement in profits, employee morale and quality of product. Combined, Lean Six Sigma reduces waste, eliminates non-value-added actions, cuts time and improves processes. Today, many companies are combining Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and tools. They realize that Lean and Six Sigma together achieve quick process improvements and improved product consistencies - Lean focusing on zero waste, with Six Sigma focusing on zero variation. With both Lean and Six Sigma, companies can deliver short-term results - reducing waste through Lean - and long-term changes - through the process improvement methodologies of Six Sigma.

One of the biggest challenges facing a Lean Six Sigma implementation is the cultural change required by the entire company. In order for Lean Six Sigma implementations to attain the highest degree of success, it must become part of the company culture with all employees embracing it. Many organizations that deploy Lean Six Sigma, also look at Change Management as part of their implementation plan. Change Management is an organized, systematic application of the knowledge, tools, and resources of 'change' to provide organizations with a key process to achieve their business strategy. It is a structured methodology for change integration, teaching employees to adapt throughout an organization.
Lean Six Sigma implementations that deliver optimal results require top management drive. Some companies fail to implement Lean Six Sigma properly because of the lack of this drive or leader championship.
Choosing the right projects that will give an organization the best results with the most impact is another challenge. Choosing the right projects, especially the initial projects, can be mission critical. The right projects can pave the way for further projects when they show time and cost savings.

When companies implement the right technology to deploy their Lean Six Sigma training, they are able to drive their projects deeper into their organization with the consistency and control needed for optimal learning results. A good learning system will enable administrators and instructors to manage and track their students, classes, tests, surveys, etc., - all in a central place - and then obtain detailed reporting on each student and/or class to gauge their progress. This will help them deliver optimal learning results, and enable them to make adjustments to their training along the way based on these reports. A learning system will also provide standardization of training with consistent content and materials.

Bersin & Associates, a leading enterprise learning analyst firm, describes blended learning as "the combination of different training media (technologies, activities and types of events) to create an optimal training program for a specific audience." Blended solutions help learners retain information better while reducing training time and costs. The term "blended" means that traditional instructor-led training is being supplemented with other electronic formats. With a blended learning delivery, students can use web-based learning as an additional media, giving them the opportunity to learn the basics online, at their own pace, with 24x7 access to courses, reference materials, and work aids. Classroom time is not only reduced, but it can now be used more productively to reinforce the basic concepts learned online, with valuable classroom time being spent on applications, case studies and coaching. The result is better learning outcomes and more productive, profitable process improvement projects.

ROI can be achieved from several areas, often the reduction in class time has a related travel and facilities cost reduction. Instructor resources can be trimmed slightly, but better results are achieved from allowing instructors to allocate more time to coaching and mentoring. Completion of more projects, and shorter project cycles times can also weigh in heavily. A Fortune 500 client of The Quality Group delivered $1 mil in financial impact when their first Black Belt project completion cycles went from six months to five with blended learning. For more ideas on how to identify ROI you may want to review - "Developing a Business Case for blended e-Learning Systems to Drive Business Excellence"

Since most companies opt to run the first class as a pilot, and reduce lecture PowerPoint's after that, there is typically 5-10 hours/resource assigned to interface/train with our team, decide what materials are needed to populate the e-learning portal, and set-up menus and curriculums. If the organization decides to fully integrate the e-learning with existing classroom materials, and do the work themselves, it may take 10-15 days. However, The Quality Group's Professional Services can handle the project for you with our turn-key services. In most LSS deployments, our team will need about 1-day with the deployment leader and 2-3 days from a Subject Matter Expert (SME) if we're running the project.