In my book, User Adoption Strategies, I talk about various ways of delivering learning content about new collaboration technologies and approaches to staff. The book also reports on my 2010 survey about the usage and perceived effectiveness of different strategies in the context of user adoption for collaboration tools. Net-net from the survey is that the more human, direct, and relevant the training / adoption work, the better.

Along those lines, I was interested to see recent research from Europe on learning methods forecasts an up-tick in blending learning approaches:

“The study, which questioned 103 senior L&D managers, HR managers and business education staff, across Europe, showed that blended learning (50 percent) was the most important channel for delivering training content today. This was closely followed by classroom based learning (44 percent), mobile learning (38 percent), and social learning (12 percent).

However the way staff are trained is expected to change by 2014. The data showed that 71 percent of respondents stated that “blended learning” – a mix of e-learning, mobile learning and virtual learning – will be the primary method of delivering training (an overall increase of 21 percent from what is delivered now). Meanwhile classroom training will dramatically fall to only 17 percent (from 44 percent). The data also highlights that one out of five organizations expects that “social and informal learning” will play a greater role in staff development too.“

There’s a white paper available about the results if you want more information.