As a corporate Learning & Development advisor I have seen a big shift in what the general term ‘training’ beholds. We started with almost all classroom training and then switched to digital training (e-learnings in general) and have now come to blended learning or hybrid learning (*)

Within that hybrid learning the multiliteracies are very important. As a company you need to provide or facilitate different means of learning: social learning, digital learning communities, classroom, communities of practice, … to optimize the outcome and return on invest of training.

10 to 15 years ago corporate training was ‘ex cathedra’. The trainer stood in front of a classroom and talked for 6 hours and showed a PowerPoint full of text. The training was mainly focused on oral literacies. For a lot of companies this is still the preferred method of training because then they check who was present and who wasn’t.

Later on came the introduction of e-learnings where the focus was on the visual knowledge sharing backed up by a voice (oral). Some started interacting with their audience by making quizzes.

Now we, as a company, try to focus more on different multiliteracies: we offer books, videos, podcasts that can be accessed at any time and any place. But we are also trying to give it a social dimension by creating a learning platform where learners can comment, rate and post own content. We are trying to achieve what is said by Mary Kalantzis: “Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal - in which written-linguistic modes of meaning interface with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial patterns of meaning.” (**)
For certain topics the online interaction between people is so animated that we organize face to face exchange sessions where we put together a group of people to discuss about a topic, write down or record their findings and post it on the learning platform to keep the community animated.

Conclusion

Blended learning for me is directly linked to multiliteracies and the other topics we could discuss for this assignment #3. New media, digital media, visual learning, simulations, … they can all be part of blended and will all give extra, new or other meanings to a same piece of knowledge.
 

(*) https://sites.psu.edu/hybridlearning/what-is-hybrid/

(**) https://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies