Blended learning in Totara

What is blended learning?

Blended learning is an approach to training that combines traditional classroom-based learning with digital learning, leveraging the strengths of both to deliver content in the most appropriate way. Alternatively, blended learning can be viewed as any form of training that allows learners to engage with content prior to working with their trainer, often through digital means. This approach, commonly known as a ‘flipped classroom’, typically involves completing digital training before meeting with a trainer or coach.

Blended learning typically includes some combination of the following components:

• Online learning: Digital, web-based learning such as courses containing SCORM activities, assignments, system simulations, interactive scenarios and more. Self-paced (or even self-directed) learning can include structured resources in Totara, or wider research and reading.
• Trainer-led training: These sessions can be conducted in person in a classroom, or online via video call (e.g. Zoom or Microsoft Teams). These sessions can include traditional learning via presentation and discussions, or practical, skills-based training.
• Assessments: Blended learning can include a mixture of online assessments (such as Totara quizzes) and in-person exams or practical assessments.

The benefits of blended learning include greater flexibility to deliver training, a variety of engaging training methods, access to resources via multiple channels, and more personalisation to meet learners' needs, and the opportunity for learners to reflect on content ahead of time. The combination of synchronous and asynchronous training provides the benefits of live, facilitator-led learning with more flexibility for users to fit their training around existing responsibilities and commitments.

Key roles

In Totara, roles are the bundles of capabilities and permissions assigned to users depending on what they need to do in the system. Here are a few of the key roles involved in blended learning:

• Trainer: These users are responsible for running courses, which can include grading assignments, moderating forums, and running seminars.
• Editing Trainer: These users have more permissions and capabilities than Trainers, and are primarily responsible for setting up the course and its content.
• Course Creator: These users have the capabilities to create and configure courses, but aren't expected to be involved in running the courses.
• Learner: These are the users completing the blended learning training, working through the required activities and resources.

For more information on the default roles in Totara, see Default roles.

Setting up a course

In Totara, blended learning is typically delivered via a course, or even a program containing multiple courses.

One other thing to consider when setting up a course is how the courses on your site are organised. Courses on a Totara site are organised into a hierarchy of categories. If you're a Site Administrator, take some time to consider the information architecture for learning on your site, and set up the categories you'll use to organise your courses, programs and certifications. If you're a Course Creator, decide which category is the best home for your new course.

Once you know which category your course will sit in, it's time to create the course. There are a number of settings to configure at this point, but one of the most important decisions to make is choosing the right course format. This will determine how the course looks and functions. For a modern user experience, we recommend the pathway format, where each part of your blend is added as a separate activity in a structured learning path.

Once you've set up your course, you can start adding activities and resources. For blended learning, you may want to add activities such as:

• Quizzes
• Assignments
• Seminars
• Files
• URLs

See Course activity types for information on the available activity and resource types.

Finally, you can configure the course completion tracking, defining exactly what users need to do in order to complete the course. You can also use completion tracking to define a path through your blended experience. For example, you could restrict access to live training until a Learner has completed some self-paced online learning.

Setting up seminars

Blended learning contains some form of trainer-led component, such as classroom-based sessions, facilitated workshops, or online seminars. You can integrate these sessions into your course using the seminar activity, which allows you to track attendance and completion.

Before setting up seminar activities, set up the rooms, facilitators, and assets you will require. Of course, seminars don't need to be face-to-face - instead of assigning a physical room to each seminar event, you might want to set up virtual rooms using tools such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. The best way to do this in Totara is by configuring your virtual room providers. If you're a Course Creator or Editing Trainer, the available seminar rooms, facilitators and assets should have been configured by your Site Administrator.

You can add a seminar activity to your course as you would any other activity type, configuring the settings as needed. Also note that there are additional seminar settings configured at the site level. Next, add the events to the seminar to represent each event that users can sign up for. Each event can also contain multiple sessions if required.

At this point, you may want to configure the notifications that will be sent for the seminar to ensure that users are up to date and aware of any important information or changes. Seminar notifications are part of Totara's centralised notifications system, meaning Site Administrators can configure these notifications at the site level, then Course Creators and Editing Trainers can adjust them as necessary for an individual seminar. There are a number of default notifications for seminars, but you can set up other reminders for facilitators or attendees.

Running a seminar

Once you've set up your seminars and the individual events, you can either assign attendees to each event, or allow Learners to sign up themselves.

Then, when your events run, you will need to take seminar attendance so that it is reflected in Totara. You can do this by uploading a seminar attendance CSV file. You can also create attendance reports using the Seminar events report source.

Communicating with Learners

With blended learning it's particularly important to keep all of your users up to date with effective communication. For example, if a Learner misses a seminar event they were signed up for, this can be difficult to reschedule. There are a few ways to communicate with enrolled Learners in a course.

Firstly, consider setting up a course forum to use as a central hub for important information and announcements. Alternatively, you could use a workspace to use alongside the course to facilitate discussions and knowledge sharing, encouraging Learners to create resources in the workspace library. You can also prepopulate the workspace library with resources and playlists that expand on the course content, allowing Learners to explore topics in more depth.

In the Setting up seminars section we covered setting up site-level and activity-specific seminar notifications. However, you can also set up other notifications in your courses, such as letting Trainers know when a Learner completes an activity (e.g. an assignment that needs to be marked), or notifying Learners that the due date is approaching.

Monitoring and reporting

Once your blended learning course is underway, it's important to keep track of how your learners are progressing, and there are a few easy ways to do this.

Totara courses have a number of built-in course reports that can tell you which activities Learners are completing and participating in. For example, the Activity completion report shows which users have completed each activity, while the Course participation report can show how many posts each user has made for specific activities.

If there's any specific insight you'd find useful, you can always create a custom report using a wide range of report sources.

As a Trainer, you can also review Learners' progress and achievements in the gradebook, and via reports such as the grader report.

Additional tips and best practice

Here we've outlined a few tips and suggestions for best practice in delivering blended learning with Totara:

• Effective blended learning should include a balance of online and trainer-led activities.
• Consider which types of training are best for each topic you need to cover or the specific skill you want learners to develop. Some topics require learners to delve into a topic and take the time to digest what they've learned, revisiting content and doing further research as required, while others are better when learners can discuss ideas and ask the trainer or facilitator questions in real time.
• Time management is crucial when running in-person events; a detailed plan for seminar sessions helps to ensure that they don't overrun and that you have time to cover all of the required content, along with any questions and discussion from your learners.
• Seminars should be interactive - if participants are expected to just sit and listen, think about whether your content could be delivered through another medium, such as a video or SCORM activity.

Here are some Totara Help articles we recommend visiting for further information:

• Compliance in Totara
• What are programs?
• What are certifications?

Additionally, we have a number of courses in the Totara Academy relating to blended learning:

• Courses and categories
• Course resources
• Seminar management
• Getting started with quizzes
• SCORM activity
• Grading, completion and certificates