An ambitious three month (blended) learning programme to improve blended learning design expertise and provide ongoing support to 550 L&D staff across all 43 Police Forces.
The Government committed to recruiting 20,000 additional officers by March 2023. To help support forces to do this, Police Uplift Programme (PUP) was established. The PUP has several workstreams, including an L&D one, which prioritises and focuses on the ambition and innovation that blended learning can offer. The Covid pandemic meant that the move to blended learning needed to be fast-tracked.
To up-skill L&D staff within the Police so that they were able to design and deliver effective and engaging blended programmes, the NPCC partnered with LAS to deliver an ambitious 3 month (blended) blended learning training programme.
Necessarily short timescales and the pressures of policing in a pandemic were the biggest challenges for this project, coupled with different technologies and levels of experience of digital learning across different Forces.
For this programme the medium needed to be the message. The idea was to design a blend to help the Police L&D teams both learn about, and experience, blended learning first hand. The blend had three levels, which increased in complexity:
Level 1: Knowledge (4 weeks)
Base level. Next Generation Blend theory and methodology in a policing context
Level 2: Education (4 weeks)
Building on Level 1 and putting theory into practice
Level 3: Growth (3 weeks)
Strategic level ways of working and change enablement
We ran weekly interactive virtual classrooms and the blend included a rich range of learning experiences such as videos, animations, podcasts, digital interactions, assignments and curated content; all accessed from a responsive Sharepoint site, which was used to release content each week. There was also a social channel where learners could share tips and best practice
The blend was designed in such a way that learners could choose which elements they wanted to engage with. Policing is high pressure and very busy so we allowed flex in the blend, giving learners the opportunity to work at their own pace.
Despite the pressures of policing in a pandemic the group remained highly engaged and enthusiastic throughout.
The project has acted as a catalyst for change with Forces embracing blended learning, collaborating more and sharing best practice more than ever before.
‘What has emerged from the [programme] is a passionate internal L&D community who are in place to drive the next stage of the BLP [Blended Learning Programme ]development journey.’
Independent CIPD Evaluation Report
Learner feedback:
‘I have to say that I found it really inspiring, the whole thing and I’ve gone away with more confidence to use various blended methods’
‘It’s given people new ideas… It’s reignited people’
‘There’s an awakening across Force learning… It’s helped us understand that there are some real opportunities around digital’
