Dr. Rosemary Lehman of Instructional Communications Systems, University of Wisconsin-Extension interviews Ellen Goldstein, Instructional Designer at GE Medical Systems Performance Solutions.

This interview was held at the 19th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning on August 15, 2003 and was part of the New Directions Forum: Blending Asynchronous and Synchronous Formats.

Rosemary: Since the focus today was on blending technologies for teaching and learning, I’d like to begin by asking your definition of “blending.”

Ellen: Blended technologies, it’s kind of a new, it’s a new term, It really means incorporating all the things that we used to do and trying to figure out how to do them better through technology. I think the whole key to blended technologies or using a blended solution is that you choose the right solution for the problem that you’re faced with when it comes to training.

Rosemary: Now I’d like to know how you actually use blending in your work and – if you can, give us a few examples?

Ellen: Our training programs, some of them are to solve problems, to fill a performance gap, some of them are to just make short changes, some are to introduce new products. Based on our scoping, our analysis of the problem of the training that needs to happen we determine at that time what objective is taught and how best to teach it. If a learning objective is really important, for instance, something that has to do with safety where perhaps a person fixing one of our medical imaging, equipment pieces of our imaging equipment doesn’t make the adjustment to the gantry or another part of the equipment absolutely right, it might result in the patient being injured or worse, then it’s a higher level objective. You may need to be sure that that person can do it absolutely 100% effectively – and you may need to do that in person. If on the other hand it’s knowing when to use protective equipment, if we’re all talking about safety, that might be done either asynchronously or during a synchronous session.

Rosemary: So, once you’ve made your decisions, designed your program or course, and implemented it, how do you know that it’s been successful – how do you measure and evaluate it?

Ellen: One of the things you do early on is design your evaluation plan, and you don’t only plan to evaluate the program itself and then there are all the different levels you can evaluate that at, but you also evaluate the tools that you use, the instructor’s effectiveness, the technologies that might be used and we have what we call our evaluation score card and our students fill that out. But that’s how we know whether the blending, or the solution that we’ve chosen is the correct one.

Rosemary: As we wrap up – do you have a final comment on blending technologies?

Ellen: Yes. Design. Design is everything. It doesn’t matter what technology you use, it doesn’t matter what format, what platform, what bandwidth, what anything. You have to know that you’re doing the right thing for the right reasons.