Will it blend? Finally, a worthy merger of ‘online’ and ‘leadership learning’

Blendtec’s spokesperson has tried blending everything from fruit to iPhones in the company’s highly successful “Will It Blend?” video campaign for its tough blenders. The segments that test the blending of golf balls, marbles, markers cubic zirconia and other surprising things get the label “don’t try this at home.” Likewise, putting together “online” and “leadership learning” and pushing “blend” has produced less-than-stellar results in the past.

But times are changing.

As CUES’ SVP/Chief Learning Officer Christopher Stevenson, CIE, announced on a CU Broadcast segment taped at our Directors Conference in December, CUES is launching next month a new online learning offering—CUES Elite Access™ Virtual Classroom—that successfully blends the best of CUES’ well-regarded face-to-face educational sessions with truly interactive online delivery.

“Interactive” in old-school online leadership learning might have meant filling in the blank or dragging and dropping an image to the right place on a worksheet. But much of such learning was dry and one-way—teacher to student. CUES didn’t want to do that.

Instead, the new, richer offering will feature live-taught courses in which the students see the teacher. Real-time interaction with classmates is made possible by special breakout sessions created by the phone conference system. And the courses aren’t just one-time, one-hour hits, but multi-session programs. Homework asks students to apply what they are learning to their day-to-day work. The sessions are recorded, of course, for later playback.

This richer, more effective online format for leadership learning will be leveraged by CUES’ new Payments University, developed with CUES Supplier member CO-OP Financial Services. In fact, two online segments will be held before the April 3-4 in-person segment of the program, helping to prepare participants to make the most of the face-to-face portion.

I’m sure as you are launching 2017, you’ll consider both what you’ve learned and what you can learn next.  If online learning is something you’ve avoided in the past because you find it “dry” or even “boring,” we hope you’ll try out our new blend.

John Pembroke

John Pembroke

As president/CEO of CUES, John Pembroke came full circle in his career. His first exposure to business was a high school internship working in his father’s church credit ... Web: www.cues.org Details