The TopClass Blog

Blended Learning programs are the ideal way to deliver leadership development programs as they are more effective at creating behavioral change and deep learning. When your organization is concerned with "Building Strong Girls" as is Gamma Phi Beta, the first women's organization to be called a 'sorority', a blended learning approach supports the development of both leadership skills and organizational growth.

The eLearning Coach, Connie Malamed, outlines some of the benefits of blended learning as follows:

• Technology-enabled delivery can reach a geographically dispersed audience.
• The continuous learning approach promoted by blended learning is more effective at creating change and deep learning.
• Provides more opportunities for social learning, collaboration, increased participation and informal strategies.

Successful Delivery of Blended Learning with an LMS

As the term suggests, blended learning combines the use of technology with in-person learning activities to enable organizations to reach and engage with their learners in a variety of ways. Using an LMS to deliver blended learning is ideal for organizations that want to ensure consistency in the delivery of core learning objectives, while also enabling more in depth, personalized, or informal exploration of key topics by combining online content with face-to-face learning activities, such as group project work, in-classroom activities, or community discussions.

An LMS can be used to easily deliver the technology elements of your education program. An LMS helps you to deliver a uniform experience to learners that may be geographically dispersed, ensuring that new concepts and core learning objectives are presented in a consistent manner to all learners.

As we have previously outlined in our blog, an LMS can also be a really useful tool to help organize and manage the delivery of offline learning. With a good LMS, you should be able to manage locations, facilities, registration and administration of all types of offline and face-to-face learning with ease. The ability to track logistics and participation, gather all the data for on- and off-line learning in one place and run reports, enables your organization to make more informed decisions when planning education and certification programs.

Success Story: Gamma Phi Beta International Sorority

Gamma Phi Beta International Sorority, one of the ten oldest women's organizations in North America and the first to be called a "sorority," was founded in November 1874, at Syracuse University in New York. With 18,000 annual learners in 140 chapters located across North America, Gamma Phi Beta helps their members to realize their full potential by offering forward-thinking programs, opportunities and tools to become constructive, engaged leaders and contributors to the community.

Gamma Phi Beta provides comprehensive member education through Fidelity, a combination of required online modules and in-chapter programs intended to educate all members on Gamma Phi Beta policies and procedures. In addition, Fidelity provides a forum for discussing chapter-specific challenges with common organization challenges such as goal setting, alcohol awareness, service, personal dignity, and hazing and harassment.

By using TopClass Learning Management System to deliver their blended learning program, Fidelity, Gamma Phi Beta can now easily create and maintain their online content themselves, and can manually set the course completion status for learners when offline components have been completed. TopClass LMS automates many previously manual tasks and processes – such as assigning and enrolling members into courses, which happens automatically based on the user role as defined in iMIS, their member database, thanks to a direct integration with the LMS. All learner training history information is sent back to iMIS via the integration bridge, resulting in fewer errors and enabling comprehensive reports to be produced from one system.

The implementation of TopClass LMS to more effectively manage Gamma Phi Beta's blended learning programs has opened a number of opportunities for further growth and expansion, including new types of content and extending use of the LMS to new types of users.

The implementation of an association learning management system, specifically designed to meet Gamma Phi Beta's needs, with a strong integration to their engagement management system, is helping Gamma Phi Beta to deliver a successful leadership development program for their members. For more detail on how Gamma Phi Beta achieved this, download the case study.

At WBT Systems, we have used our years of experience working with associations to build an award-winning LMS that enables organizations to manage, track and report on all the learning opportunities they offer – online or offline. If you would like to learn more, request a demo today, to see how TopClass LMS can help you to fully support your blended learning programs.