Hybrid Learning: How to Know When to Use It

Welcome! You made it to the Secret Society of

Success! In this not-so-secret podcast, we interview L&D

changemakers about how they approach the evolving corporate

environment and cultivate their own careers. We hope that from

their stories, you find lessons and inspirations to make

yourself, your people and your organization's more successful.

In this first season, we're exploring the topic of hybrid

what that means at different organizations, why it

is increasingly important, and how L&D leaders can invest in

the right resources to best leverage it. Today, we're going

to talk about how to decide what the right mix of hybrid learning

is for your strategy. To do this, we've invited Brian

Washburn to talk this through. Brian is a co founder of

Endurance Learning, author of What's Your Formula?, and host

of the podcast Train Like You Listen. Welcome, Brian. Thanks

for joining us.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be

here.

Brian, you know, we shared a little bit about

your background in the intro. But why don't you share a little

bit about your background and L&D and the philosophy behind

Endurance Learning?

Yeah, so I think my start in the world of

training might even be traced back to my freshman year at the

end of my freshman year of college at the George Washington

University, when I tried out to be the mascot at the school. And

that was an opportunity for me to really tap into my creative

side and figure out, you know, kind of the sky was the limit to

engage people. And so if you fast forward a little bit more,

I actually began doing training of people about 25 years ago as

a Peace Corps volunteer. And in the time since I've mostly

worked in the nonprofit space, I started as a GED instructor at a

youth center in Washington, DC, I've led training teams at

organizations that focus on foster care, or eye banking. And

then the idea for Endurance Learning came along at some

point. And our vision is really that every learning experience

can be engaging and lead to change. And so you combine the

mascot in with work in Paraguay as a Peace Corps volunteer and

work in nonprofits that oftentimes have to run on a

shoestring budget, and kind of combine all of that. And that's

really where the philosophy of Endurance Learning came along.

But beyond all of that experience, I had the

opportunity to write a book that was released last year, and you

mentioned it called What's Your formula?: Combined Learning

Elements for Impactful Training. And that really revolves around

a Periodic Table of Elements of Effective and Engaging training.

And so when we think of all the different ways that people can

learn, I love that we're talking here about a hybrid approach,

because at the end of the day, while the book is called, What's

your formula? And while we're talking here about some

different contexts, for the hybrid may work, the fact of the

matter is that there's no one right answer to a formula. The

key is to find the right formula that works for each

organization, or each team with which we're working.

Yeah. That's great. I appreciate you sharing

the background. And I love that concept. I think that's when

we're going to spend a lot of time during this conversation

unpacking, which is, you know, not that there's not there's

never one right answer, it's the right answer for you. And how do

you help figure out what that is? Right? What are the steps to

take to actually decide what that right answer is, in the

context of your organization, to level set the conversation,

Brian, I'd love it, if you could, from your perspective,

define for us. What does hybrid learning mean to you?

Yeah, I love the fact that we're going to set the

level here as we get started, because there are so many terms

that we toss out that people just assume we're talking about

the same thing, because we're using the same word. And it's

not necessarily the case. Like I drive a hybrid vehicle. Now, I

have driven gas powered vehicles, I had a Nissan LEAF

for a while, and it was all electric. And now my Honda CRV

is hybrid. So it mixes gas and battery. And that's two things.

And so a lot of times when people think hybrid, they think

two things. And when I use that term, I think hybrid can have

all sorts of things, right? It's but basically, the key there is

that there's some sort of mix, but it doesn't have to be just

two things. Post pandemic, I've heard a lot of people use the

term hybrid to describe a mix of virtual - which is what we all

had to do during the lockdown - and in-person, you know, we're

returning to in person, but I would broaden that definition a

bit simply to mean you know, when I'm thinking of hybrid or

when I'm using that term here, it's a mix of more than one

learning In delivery methods, so it could include in person, it

could include virtual, both of those are live instructor led,

it could include elearning, which is oftentimes self guided,

it could be self directed learning paths, informal

learning, as part of an overall learning strategy. So a lot of

those things, I think can be blended into some sort of hybrid

approach.

if you will, is really what hybrid is. So I

think where we really want to focus this discussion is, what's

the right mix for me?

Yep.

You hit on it perfectly earlier, Brian, when

you said, you know, there's not one right answer. And I love

that philosophy. It's a philosophy I've applied and in

my profession with my teams and a sales organization, because I

completely agree with you. So let's actually unpack the

specifics like what are the variables that might influence

how you determine what the right formula of hybrid would be in

the context of your organization? So I've got a

bunch of terms here that you and I prepped before, let's just

start going down each of those and say, Okay, well, how do you

make the decision based on factor A, or factor B, or factor

C? And hopefully, give the audience a lot of fun stuff to

take away? Sound? Good?

That sounds great. I love it. Awesome.

So let's start with budget. That's always a big

question, right? Well, how do you use budget as a factor to

consider what the right delivery method is?

Yeah. So and I think this is a really good one

to start with, because oftentimes, it's the first thing

that is put in front of us, right. And so when budgets a

consideration, a lot of times it can be cost prohibitive to allow

people to travel, which oftentimes is a big

consideration, especially with dispersed teams. And so this,

this, this could be a situation in which you turn to virtual

training. So perhaps one element to that hybrid approach could be

making sure that things are virtual, so that no matter where

you are in the world, you can take advantage of the technology

and still have something that's facilitated and advantage to a

facilitated experience, whether you're in person or virtual. But

when we're talking about budget, you know, sometimes we have to

go virtual, a big advantage of that is that you can have live

discussions. And you can have activities with real time

feedback. And the reason I mentioned this is because I was

working on a project just last week, and I was reviewing an

elearning, a self directed elearning project with a

customer and the subject matter experts, when we're going over

an assessment question. One of them said, you know, I'd choose

choice A, and the other one said, Actually, I'd choose

choice B. And so we realized, wow, that would be a great

question, for facilitated situation. But because we were

creating elearning, we had to be much more specific and much more

kind of dogmatic in terms of what we allowed people to

answer, how we allowed people to answer. So I think that even

when budget is a concern, I love having some sort of live element

as an opportunity to learn, because you can have that

facilitated discussion, you can throw things out where there is

gray area, and you're able to kind of engage with that gray

area. Some disadvantages to virtual training include the

fact that presenters or participants who aren't

comfortable with the technology, and believe it or not, two plus

years after we all started to go to zoom or teams or whatever.

There are still some people, both presenters and participants

who aren't comfortable with that technology of going into

breakout rooms, some people will still leave a session, when you

put breakout rooms up. Or some some presenters don't love

having to or maybe can't... don't have the cognitive

bandwidth to be facilitating a session and if they don't have a

producer to use some of the the tools that really make virtual,

a much more engaging experience. Another issue that comes with

any sort of virtual experience, especially with dispersed teams,

again, is timezone differences and allowing for timezone

differences and having to repeat the same session multiple times.

Another one that you always need to be mindful of, especially

with virtual, is the propensity of people to want to multitask.

So there's tons of advantages to virtual but then there are some

things you need to be kind of aware of too. Another piece that

goes into considering for budget would be self directed

elearning. I think that that can be a really, really important

piece. Again, if we're talking about dispersed teams and budget

impacting any sort of travel possibilities, self directed

elearning it can be pricey sometimes depending on what you

want to do. But it's also scalable, right. And so when you

think of the cost of per per learner, or the cost over a

series of time, you can start to really make the case for that

every learner will get a consistent experience. So it

doesn't depend on the facilitator, it can be used as

follow up to a facilitated session, if you're if you are

doing using a hybrid mix, or it can be used as as a prerequisite

to a facilitated session so that people get some content. And

then when they come, virtually, you can, or even in person, you

can actually have people, you can make them smaller sessions,

and people can can engage a little bit more like a flipped

classroom type of approach. If you know you're going to have a

facilitated session after an elearning course, then the

elearning course doesn't need branching scenarios, which can

sometimes be more expensive to develop. And so when you start

to mix some some different delivery strategies, you can

take the best of both worlds, without needing to go all in

with your budget on one or the other. Of course, all of this

assumes that formal training would be a solution in the first

place. And even if it is informal learning pieces can

also help with budgets and issues. So that could include

things just as simple as job aids, right? So if if, if budget

is a consideration, you know, is training even the answer? Or,

you know, can you use job aids or mixed job aids in with some

of the other things that you're doing, that can be posted on the

Internet, or YouTube or podcasts or Google, book clubs, you know,

mentoring, all of those things can can really be part of a mix

when budget, especially as a concern.

I love that I love some of those takeaways,

specifically as it relates to that concept of, you know, when

do I need to use live? I wrote that down as we're talking and I

think the idea of do you need to engage in gray area? Right?

That's kind of a simple, yes, no question you can work with, you

know, the stakeholders that you have, or the audience you're

delivering training for, to achieve some sort of business

outcome and say, Okay, well, is there is there nuance to this?

Is there a gray area? If yes, we're probably going to need to

factor some sort of live component to this budget,

because it'd be really complicated for us to do

effective training. Without that live interaction, I think that's

a really interesting and straightforward way to just

decide, hey, is this a tool that I need for this scenario?

Yeah, yep. And, and when you think of, you know,

anything that is going to be done via kind of elearning, it's

documented, it's in writing, it's there. And sometimes it

makes people really uncomfortable, right? So and,

and honestly, when it comes to some policies, when you think of

HR policies, or there's all there, there is gray area, but

you don't necessarily want to have that in writing. And so

that's another opportunity to think about, you know, what role

does live instructor led have? Where, as you know, it may not

be as appropriate to do it in some sort of job aid, or

eLearning module or things like that. Right?

That could be a good segue, let's talk about how

the audience impacts these decisions, specifically, who the

audience is. So you know, the people within the organization

who you're delivering training for, how might that impact your

decisions? In terms of the delivery methods you choose?

I think that's a great question. And so the

audience is really important piece of that analysis, you

know, who are we delivering this to? If it is executive level or

senior level folks, they don't always have time to sit through

a class, or sit through a 30 minute eLearning module, nor

will they have the attention span. And so if you're thinking

executive level, you need to really think through what's what

do they what is absolutely crucial, and how do we deliver

that? That could simply be a one pager that talks about some

differences. It could be, you know, some sort of micro

learning that you want to put in there. You know, if it's

something that the entire organization needs to go through

for compliance reasons or things like that, again, you want to

kind of figure out what's that going to be that sweet spot. And

we haven't even talked about micro learning very much here.

It wasn't even something that I put into my notes, but it is

something that we'll want to keep in mind when when

considering an audience that may be super, super busy. Now, if

we're thinking of rule specific training, or even training that

everybody needs to take, but different people in different

roles or with different responsibilities throughout the

organization. You know, I love the idea of having elearning as

a piece to that, because with elearning, you can design it to

ask what somebody's role is from a drop down menu. And then you

can skip over certain points if it's not relevant for them, you

know, the relevance is an important important piece to any

sort of learning strategy. And so finding ways for people to

either to test out, or to skip over certain information that's

not relevant to their role, I think is pretty important. When

you have differentiated self directed learning, you know, and

I'm just reading the book Map It by Cathy Moore, and she gives

this great example of, you know, kind of a compliance training

that somebody at a hospital wanted, right, they wanted to do

a training about how to dispose of sharps. Now, the person

handling a scalpel to a surgeon might need certain information,

the nurse who administers injections might need certain

information, accountants or janitorial staff, might, a lot

of it might not be relevant to them, right. So but if everybody

needs to know, at least where to find the job aids, or where the

other things are, where things are posted, where the sharps

disposal is, then, you know, expose them to that information,

but you don't have to expose them to everything. So role,

role based learning, I think, is something to really consider.

And there are some different ways to do it, you know, self

directed elearning, as I mentioned, but you know, simply

leaving things to a quick job aid or micro learning, and can

also be really helpful in that in that regard.

That's great. I like that. I think those are

very, two very specific and actionable takeaways, right? If

you if you are getting really narrow focus, or if there's

something that's broad, but has narrow nuance, depending on the

roles in the organization, I think thinking about, you know,

job specific elearning is a really valuable, specific way to

think about that. So I think that's, you know, obviously that

reminder, with the, with the executive audience of be

thoughtful of their time. What they need, and probably nothing

else, right, is definitely a good one. And it's a good one,

to probably have you in the audience takeaway. A good way to

keep them in your corner as well. What related to audience

not the not the who, but maybe how big? Yeah, does that

influence what you're going to decide to do?

Yeah, one of the trickiest things, that the

biggest challenges that I'm ever faced with is when people say,

you know, we need to develop a one-to-one training, which is

like, well, I'm wired to do classroom, and classroom doesn't

work with one-on-one. And so what do you do when you need to

just kind of train individuals because of hiring cycles,

because it's a small organization, because they're

specialized roles, you know, one to one, it doesn't make sense to

do a ton of formal classroom training or even, you know,

virtual training, but some hybrid strategies that could

work with one to one include, you know, I've talked about

micro learning, self directed learning, job shadowing,

independent study, and journaling, regular mentoring,

have some sort of learning path, that people that individuals are

able to go through, maybe it's checklist with their supervisor,

things like that, you know, sometimes you have a lot of

people. So going from one extreme to the other, from

individual training, to training a ton of people. And if they're

all in the same place, you know, classroom training can be a

really important element. Again, it's an opportunity for

elearning to be either something that's pre work or to introduce

the topic or post training, follow up. If they're dispersed,

you may want to combine things like virtual sessions, or self

paced elearning, maybe even break people up into cohorts

where there can be some social learning as well, people have an

opportunity to make relationships a little bit

better when the groups are smaller. And then, you know,

even a multi week online course, something that you might find

similar to the way that universities run these days, or

things like that. So it could be a facilitated online course as

well. So you can have a couple of different extremes. I think

that a lot of people kind of find a natural sweet spot in

training people, groups, as small as six to is, you know,

30-40 people. But when you have one on one, that's a different

set of kind of learning activities or learning

strategies might want to take. And when you have a really large

group, that might be something different as well.

Yeah, that's great. Brian, I love the fact

that you focused on the outliers, I think, because like

you said, I think the audience is familiar with the deck group

size of six to 30. Right? That's, that's the sweet spot

that everyone's familiar with. But the takeaway is of job

shadowing, mentoring and micro learning for one on one group is

great, I might borrow some of those. We're in the process of

hiring a class of one right now on one of my teams because of

the way it works sometimes. And then also the big audience. I

love that idea of the cohorting to drive you know, kind of more

of a social learning, right? Like if you're even if you have

a course over multiple weeks. You know, the idea of putting

cohorts together that might be cross functions that could just

have a social element to that learning experience where they

can share and learn from one another. I love that. That's a

really awesome takeaway.

Yeah. And just to go back really quick to the

one on one. One of the most powerful tools I think with with

small groups, or one on one is a checklist, right? So that person

knows what to expect, what the order should be, you know, where

some certain resources are, their supervisor can kind of who

may have 50 other things happening, but is responsible

for their development as well can kind of see where their

progress is. And so that is another piece to just keeping it

organized. But also, I think that's part of the strategy.

Yeah, that's great, simple tools, right? It

doesn't have to be doesn't have to be complicated, just use the

right tool for the right job. I think which is really kind of

the whole the whole major takeaway from this discussion.

So you mentioned it earlier, you know, in spite of the fact that

we've all been living on Zoom for the better part of the last

48 months or so, your digital literacy is still a thing in

many organizations, right? Or we all get the dreaded system

reboot, or software update that comes on a Friday, right before

a training session. And then then all bets are really

awesome. How does that factor come into consideration as

you're trying to plan for the right delivery method?

Yeah, so honestly, ideally, when you're

addressing some sort of digital literacy issue, in-person

instruction can can be helpful, right? I, I rarely have issues

with with people with digital literacy, when I'm doing an in

person, instructor led training. Now, sometimes that's not

possible. And so other pieces that are really, really

important whether people are ...anytime that technology is

part of that hybrid approach, things like job aids that just

help people log in or trying to take advantage of technologies

that people are familiar with, right? So email, you can send a

diagram of how to log in and how to kind of proceed through a

certain thing, or if you're going to send somebody you know,

a podcast that they should be listening to, you know, kind of

give them a visual aid in terms of step by step instructions. Or

if they have to download something to your computer,

giving people visual aids in terms of step by step

instructions, in order to access it, I think is going to be

really important. Sometimes is not just digital literacy, I've

worked with some groups where literacy itself is an issue,

especially when we when we do some work in the developing

world. And we need to really rely on job aids. They have very

little text. We have to really kind of also, again, not lose

sight of the power of things like mentoring, or just

relationships in those areas. When it goes beyond digital

literacy, and while we're talking about different

settings, whether it's rural areas here, or even my my home

office, right, so sometimes home offices, even if you're in the

most advanced parts of the world, Seattle, home of Amazon

and Microsoft. And yet, I still struggle with bandwidth issues.

And so sometimes bandwidth is another challenge where we need

to come up with one or more ways of delivering, learning. And so

when it comes to low bandwidth areas, for internet, sometimes

you can, you know, have people rely on on their smartphones and

using data, you can still run a Zoom meeting or deliver

elearning to a mobile device. And then when you start talking

about mobile devices, you're going to need to take into

account how are we designing that training? Are people going

to be taking this on their laptops or on their phone or on

a tablet, than if they're taking it on tablet? Should we say you

know, click on because you're not clicking on anything. When

you have your phone, right, you're tapping. And so the words

that we use in instructions suddenly become important, the

types of activities that we put into any sort of digital

training, if it's going to be elearning, you know, do drag and

drop activities work as well on a phone. Do slider activities

work as well in a phone. And so you do need to also take some of

the design considerations into account when you're designing

for low bandwidth or, you know, people who struggle with digital

literacy.

Yeah, I would imagine that that could also

impact, you know, tool selection as well, right? If you have

tools that you need, you know, you know, you're going to need

to deliver whether it is microlearning, a virtual

instructor led session, right? There are tools out there, some

of which give you the ability for some offline connectivity

now, it'll always require a download at some point, so

you'll have to have bandwidth at some point. But you know,

considering your audience and their bandwidth and their

connectivity. You know, that's another factor I would imagine

the audience should probably be considering when they're trying

to put together the right formula for their, their

business.

Yep.

How does...How does the objective of the

course... at the end of the day, this is the most important

question, right? You're designing, learning to achieve

something to achieve some outcomes a behavior change? How

does the scope of that objective influence the way that you might

pick your right delivery pieces or your formula?

Yeah, I think this is a really, really

important question. So you know, a lot of times you you need to

define your learning objectives before you figure out, you know,

how am I going to deliver this? Right? So? So you're thinking,

Okay, what is it that people need to be able to do? And then

you're thinking, who's my audience? And how can they best

digest this? But I do think there's something to a hierarchy

of learning objectives. And I know that there is there's a

number of conversations, if you take a look at LinkedIn or

Twitter, in the really super nerdy l&d space, people get

really upset about Bloom's Taxonomy and some of the things

but when you think of what somebody needs to be able to do,

when that's the learning objectives, right, so what is it

somebody needs to be able to do newer, differently, or better as

a result of this training session, sometimes it's

awareness. And sometimes, you know, when I worked for an eye

bank, so cornea transplants, we would train nurses on the

procedures or the steps they would need to do in order to

make sure that the corneas were preserved until somebody could,

could arrive and recover the corneas. And so for that

training, the nurses basically needed to list three steps, and

we had an acronym for it. So we do a training and say, you know,

expose people, these are the three steps, we would also leave

behind a job aid, you know, a little wallet size card that

people could take with them that said, these are the three steps

and that was it, right? So that's, they need to be aware of

the steps. And then if they needed to actually do the steps,

they had a job aid to take care of it. However, if the learning

objective goes beyond that, and somebody actually needs to be

able to perform something, right, they need to be able to

coach, they need to be able to coach their employees, or they

need to be able to engage people in sales conversations. It's one

thing to expose people to that through an elearning or through

an instructor led class. But it's another thing to follow

that up, make sure that that behavior is changed, and how do

we do that? So having things like checklists for supervisors

to observe afterwards, or, you know, a follow up email to

people that says, hey, you know, just reminding you that we went

through this course. And these are three steps to the sales or

whatever it might be, to figure out what's the best way to

follow up, follow this up a week, a month down the road,

because people do forget what it is that they learned, when they

end that, that learning experience. And until people can

practice it enough, until people get feedback until people you

know, kind of do it enough to change that behavior, then that

learning objective isn't accomplished. And so when we

think of learning objectives, and truly what the ultimate

success of a session or training initiative might be, then I do

think that we need to figure out, you know, at what level do

people need to master this. And if they need to really have a

deep mastery of A and B and change their behavior, there

needs to be more elements to that learning experience. If

it's simply awareness, and then knowing where to find

information. You know, maybe, maybe you don't need to blend

it, maybe you don't need the hybrid approach. Maybe one thing

is enough.

I think that's great. I think that's a very

specific, actionable takeaway. And I love the idea of, you

know, I think everyone, like you said, you know, depending on

where you spend your time on LinkedIn or not, you know, there

might be different opinions on things. But I, you know, for me

for being a leader of an organization who, who genuinely

wants to develop everybody in my team all the time, and just get

them from where they are to 5% better. Like, that's a very

simple framework, right? Like, is it an awareness to a skill to

an activity? Or is it actually performing the function if those

things, you know, depending on what that is, you know, maybe

you need to change the delivery method to make sure that you're

meeting that it's, I'll share a story I use something similar. I

had an old boss, who was a fantastic sales leader and sales

professional, but he always talked about this, a specific

competency model where you would move from unconsciously

incompetent to consciously incompetent to consciously

competent, to unconsciously competent, and I use that all

the time. Honestly, it's like one of the best little acronyms

or models and my leaders and I talk about out are people and

where they are uncertain skills in that context, because in

practical terms, what you need to do to move somebody from

unconsciously incompetent, meaning I don't even know that I

don't know, to the next step is completely different than what I

need to do to take somebody from consciously competent to

unconsciously competent, where they can just do it in their

sleep without thinking. And those are completely different

parts of a skill development and learning journey, at least in

the context of, you know, a salesperson or revenue owner.

And I think that you're, you're a little hierarchy there, you

know, that resonates a lot with me. I agree. That's a great

takeaway.

Yeah, it's been a while since I've thought of

that model. And and I was exposed to that model when I was

going to grad school and organizational development and

the idea of moving from unconscious incompetence to

unconscious competence. You know, it's a journey. And do you

need to be unconsciously competent about everything? And

sometimes the answer is, yes, like pilots, yes. I want them to

be unconsciously competent, about everything. But you know,

is, you know, for a salesperson or for, you know, an

administrative assistant or for a department head, you know,

what is it that they need to be able to do day to day without

thinking? And what is it that you need to be aware of and know

where to find, you know, some some resources when they when

they when a situation comes up?

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I think

there's some really, really great takeaways there. There.

Brian, there's some that I wrote down, I put like a bunch of red

stars against and I wanted to get back to we said early in the

conversation, you know, you mentioned at one point, that

there are tools, I think, during the budget conversation, that

there are tools that you can use to make every virtual experience

engaging. And we kept going on that conversation. But I'd like

to go back to that, because I think that like the concept of

hybrid learning. We've defined it very clearly, it's a mix of

delivery methods. I think a lot of you in the audience in the

last 48 months, that's meant, I've got to add more zoom to my

life, and there's got to be more virtual stuff. So I'd love to

give the team out in the audience,some takeaways about,

you know, what are those tools that they can use to make every

virtual experience as engaging as possible?

Yeah, and I'll preface this by saying there are

some people in the field that are way more knowledgeable than

I am, when it comes to virtual, you know, Kassy LaBorie comes to

mind, Cindy Huggett. And they have, they've literally written

books about this. And so I'll try to give a quick answer to

this. When it comes to virtual engagement. I think one of the

key rules of thumb is to get people interacting and engaging

as early as possible and starting to explore any sort of

tools that we're going to be able to, we're going to be

using, from the get go. And so if we're going to be using

polling, if we're going to be using Breakout Rooms, if we're

going to be using on screen annotation, try to build that

into any of the introduction activities that we're doing. So

that sort of tone is set. And people are familiar with it with

the technologies and the features that we'll be using in

low stakes conversations first, because if somebody doesn't

really know how to, you know, kind of get into breakout room

or write on the screen, it's better to figure that out when

you're asking people to put a little star on the map of the

country where they're calling in from, as opposed to later in the

session when you only have a minute or two for an activity

and people are like Well, where's the, you know, where's

the onscreen annotation?" Right, so being able to, so that's one

of the really important first rules of thumb is if you're

going to be using some engagement strategies later on,

try to introduce those as early as possible. The other thing

that I think is really important is that different platforms

offer different things. So you have the polling feature, you

have the onscreen annotation, you have the breakout rooms,

those are a lot of times that you have the chat, right, so

those are oftentimes, you know, for the most common ways that

people can interact and engage in a virtual setting. And then

there are some things that you can do outside of the

environment. So you can play a game of Kahoot for example, or

you can put other you know, there's there's mural is another

technology where people can kind of use sticky notes in everybody

and the group can start to like you would in person, sometimes

you have people write things down and sticky notes and bring

them up to the flip chart and move things around. You can do

that virtually as well. And so I think that it's also really

helpful for people to think outside of the platform when it

comes to engagement strategies because in the spirit and... and

take a look at what K 12 teachers have done over the past

two years, because they were masters at figuring out what are

some different technologies that I can have my students who are

second graders, doing in order to engage, pick it up quickly

and engage. And there's lots of other little tools out there,

that K 12 teachers were using early on in the pandemic, that I

think would really behoove those of us in corporate learning to

really take a page out of their book. All that said, obviously,

it also goes back to the learning objectives, right? So

what is it the people should be able to do, and then making sure

that you're selecting the right activities in order to get

people to engage, but don't don't say that just because it's

virtual, and you don't have physically people in front of

you that you can rely on PowerPoint to go through an hour

session, because that's, that's not the case. Right? It's, it's

boring, you know, in person, it's gonna be boring virtually

as well.

I really love the idea of takeaways to go, go poll

K through 12 teacher that can that you know, that experiences,

that's another great outside resource that our corporate

learning and development professionals here in the

audience can really take away, because that's a great point,

right at the end of the day that the audience they need to engage

with, has a completely different context. So there can be some

really cool tools and resources they can find there. Brian, I

have to thank you again, this has been fantastic. Before we

wrap, you know, if there's any way that the audience wants to

continue to hear about what you're doing, what Endurance is

doing, where can they find you?

Yeah, so there's a couple of things, I'll put out

a shameless plug for a website that we have, it's free for

people to go to it's called 51 elements of learning.com. So if

you want to think of, you know, what could be the array of, of

learning elements that we could bring into a hybrid program,

then that is a kind of, it's an interactive website that has a

periodic table, you click on the different elements and explains

more about each of the elements. And what which other elements

you might want to combine your elements with. So that's one

kind of cool way for people to think through a hybrid learning

approach. And then if people want to get in touch with me,

they can always drop me an email at Brian at endurance

training.com I'm always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn

too and have virtual coffee. And so if you if you are listening

to this, you decide, oh, I want to connect with Brian Washburn

at Endurance Learning, go on LinkedIn, find me, connect with

me, but don't just add the connection. drop me a note

saying, Hey, I heard you on the podcast, and it'd be fun to grab

virtual coffee sometime. And I'd love to chat.

That's great. Thank you, Brian, I really

appreciate you share the website to that's a great resource.

We'll we'll grab a link to that and leave that in the show notes

so that the audience here can grab that and go engage. That's

a... That's an awesome resource. Thank you again, Brian. This has

been a great conversation. I know there's a ton of actionable

takeaways that I have for the for the training

responsibilities I have here for my teams. And I know our

audience will really appreciate this as well. So thank you so

much for your time.

Thanks for having me.

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