Whether you’ve been managing online classrooms or working solo, a sudden switch to working and learning from home forces us all to adapt. 

Organizations have embraced the move to work and learn from anywhere, and perhaps we might welcome digital a little more going forward — starting with blended learning. 

What Is Blended Learning?

If we look at the definition of blended learning, there’s a strong emphasis on the student having more control over the learning process than in classroom learning. That’s more than just being able to take a course at a time that suits them — it means being able to pick specific modules or classes that align with their interests rather than forcing them to undertake a central curriculum. 

This kind of freedom often just isn’t possible in traditional learning. It can be less cost-effective, and it can be hard to find a specialist in the area. There are multiple variations of blended learning, but probably the most useful is “outside-in” blended learning. Here, participants engage with the course material and curriculums at their own pace, culminating in a classroom-type meeting where knowledge is demonstrated and shared. This allows team members to pass along the basics of their newfound expertise to one another.

Imagine that you’d like you have an esports club and your team to delve further into communication strategies.

You don't force them all to do the same class and treat your entire esports team robotically. Blended learning means that the whole team can take core classes while interested parties can pursue advanced strategy separately. Other (relieved) team members might opt for a class on motivation and mindset strategies using professional tactics or how to make specific gameplay processes more effective.

Not only does this mean you’ll have a team (and students) that are more engaged in their learning and more appreciative of your effort — it also means you’ll have a more well-rounded team. 

You might want to be flexible in your planning, then — engage students in conversation about which skills they’d actually like to learn and how they see them aligning with both their career goals and your education ideals.

What are the Benefits of Blended Learning?

You will no doubt have considered how to make your esports teams and students as efficient as possible, for example, implementing a regular stand-up meeting. After all, your students will one day become employees. Best to acclimate them to real professional settings before they embark on their career.

What you might not have considered is how to make your students as engaged — and therefore as mentally efficient — as possible. 

This is becoming ever more important as new generations begin to dominate the workforce: 30% of millennials surveyed by Deloitte thought the onus for preparing students and employees with necessary skills was on the educator and employer. Meanwhile, one of the top reasons for changing careers for the 18–64 age group was the opportunity for career development.

So, we know that people want to be learning and progressing. But how can we ensure that our learning and development scheme works for everyone?

Enter blended learning. It’s flexible by nature — both in terms of courses and paths students could follow and in terms of when they can complete the classes. It’s also more budget-friendly, meaning you can offer a higher quality development scheme at a lower or similar cost to an entirely in-person one. 

Plus, a student body that has the time and space to learn as they desire is likely to be a much more satisfied one. You can use this to your advantage: try to work out which skills employers are going to find essential over the coming years and offer your students the chance to train in them. Future-proofing skills that are learned via esports and gaming are all the rage at the moment as the world edges toward a more digital future, but the classics — leadership and communication — are always going to be in favor, too.

Esports as a Blended Learning Strategy

You might think that learning ends when you leave formal education, but that just isn’t true. LinkedIn found that 96% of learning and development (L&D) professionals recognize that employee experience is of tantamount importance.  It can certainly strengthen the perception of your students to have bold skill development schemes. Every school can’t offer the same levels of competitive esports and gaming that larger counterparts are able to. To make up for it, they can offer rapid and effective learning and career progression — and that is where a good career development scheme comes into it. It might be a good idea to check out grants and funds available for these programs as well.

In our rapidly evolving world, there are new skills to learn every month. You can do courses on anything from YouTube video making and LinkedIn analytics to implementing robots in a business.

And as your students grow, so can your esports program. Unusual skills might become useful as technology improves, or you might just find yourself in need of more esports coaches who know the ins and outs of digital marketing.

Either way, implementing an esports learning scheme has been shown to increase student engagement. Blended learning is a great way to ensure students are engaged and yet still flexible enough to make it work for everyone.

Conclusion: The Infinite Possibilities of Blended Learning

Embracing the digital and jumping headfirst into blended learning might well be the best thing moving forward for our students. Useful far beyond the school years, it can help create more positive and interesting workplaces, ones geared towards personal evolution and career progression.

Perhaps as a society, we’ll become more enlightened — or maybe we’ll just have a broader range of skills at our disposal. Either way, this hybrid model that combines the support of in-person learning with the ease and versatility of online, asynchronous learning makes learning development more accessible than ever.

We’re hoping to enhance blended learning programs at your school — and who knows what we can achieve when we do? Get a demo today and learn more about how you can utilize the power of blended learning with esports to boost student engagement.