What blended learning is
Blended learning (التعلم المدمج) is the delivery of a single training programme in more than one mode: one part in person and another remote, or one part synchronous, bringing the trainees together at the same time, and another asynchronous, completed by each trainee alone.
The defining condition is that it is one programme. Two separate programmes, one attended by the employee and the other watched as a recording, are not blended learning. They are two activities placed on the same timetable.
We found no published measurement on which to base a claim about what combining the in person and remote modes does to training results. What follows concerns how a blended programme is designed and what the Saudi rules on training ask of it, not whether it outperforms other formats.
How blended learning differs from simply combining methods
The difference is that the design decides what is done in each mode, and why it is done there rather than in the other. Theoretical knowledge, an introduction to terminology and the reading of policies can be done asynchronously, because none of them needs a room. Practice under observation, feedback, and exercises on a machine or a system are done in person, because they need someone who corrects the trainee in the moment.
A programme that turns its in person sessions into a spoken review of what the employee has already read alone spends the costly part of the programme on something that does not need it.
The design stage of the ADDIE model is where this allocation is settled, part by part, before any material is written. In the sources we reviewed, we found no reference setting a ratio by which a blended programme should be divided between its in person part and the rest, so no ratio is offered as a rule. The split follows from what each part of the content needs.
Blended learning and the delivery method field in training records
The delivery method can be regarded as a logistical choice, but it is more than that. Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) requires establishments bound to provide training to document the training data of each worker, including the name of the training programme, its type, its duration, the provider of the training, and the mechanism and method by which the training was delivered. Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation sets that documentation within a period of no more than 30 days from the date of the training, on the electronic platform the Ministry designates.
So the delivery method is a field in the training record, and it has a deadline. A blended programme whose description was not settled before delivery reaches the documentation stage without an answer to give.
Who Articles 15 and 16 of the Implementing Regulation address in blended learning
The two articles sit side by side in the Implementing Regulation, and that can hide a difference between them which decides which of the duties above bind a particular establishment.
Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation lists eight duties addressed to every employer. Among them are an occupational description of each job under the unified Saudi classification of occupations (التصنيف السعودي الموحد للمهن) and the national occupational standards; training and qualification programmes for the jobs whose tasks require them, including training programmes in line with its first item, in addition to the training programmes set by the sectoral skills councils; keeping up with new developments and enabling workers to train in them; varied lists of training programmes for each occupation; evaluating the trainee at the end of the training or during it and placing the evaluation in the worker’s file; and training at the workplace with accredited trainers, or through an accredited centre or institute, inside or outside the Kingdom.
The duties in the first part of Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation, which include the delivery method field, the 30 day deadline and enabling the trainee to combine training with work, are addressed to establishments bound to provide training (المنشآت الملزمة بالتدريب). Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation relies on that description without defining it, and in the sources we reviewed, we found no decision that sets it. Those particular duties should therefore not be attributed to every employer, and nor should it be said that they bind nobody.
The practical effect for blended learning is that the duty to evaluate the trainee and place the evaluation in the worker’s file rests on every employer under Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, and it is a duty a blended programme can struggle to evidence. The in person part is evidenced by attendance and by performance before a trainer. The asynchronous part leaves no record by itself that can serve as an evaluation. Without a test or a deliverable for the part studied alone, an employer can end up evaluating half the programme and noting only an impression of the other half in the employee file.
Blended learning costs and the rule against charging the trainee
Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, in its seventh item, provides that the trainee is not to be charged any expenses related to the training. The rule can be quoted alone and then taken as absolute, which it is not. The second part of Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation allows an employer to charge the worker the training or qualification costs spent on them in three cases:
- The trainee decides to end the training or qualification before its set date without a legitimate excuse.
- The contract is rescinded during the training or qualification period under one of the cases in Article 80 of the Labor Law, except its sixth paragraph, which is the case of a worker under probation. Article 80 of the Labor Law also requires that the worker be given the opportunity to state objections to the rescission.
- The worker resigns or leaves the work during the training or qualification period other than in the cases set out in Article 81 of the Labor Law, which are the cases in which a worker may leave without notice while keeping all statutory rights.
Three qualifications inside these cases can drop out when they are summarised: without a legitimate excuse in the first, the exclusion of the sixth paragraph in the second, and the reference to Article 81 of the Labor Law in the third, which takes leaving for one of its reasons outside the rule. A summary that lists the cases without their qualifications makes the costs recoverable where they are not.
This touches blended learning in a particular way, because part of its cost can sit in tools: a platform subscription, a content licence or a device. How that cost relates to the rule and its exceptions is worth settling in the contract before the money is spent, not after. How Articles 80 and 81 of the Labor Law work in full is covered in our guide to dismissal without an award and leaving work without notice.
Where blended learning can take place
Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, in its eighth item, allows an employer to hold training at the workplace where trainers accredited by the competent authority are available, whether they are the establishment’s own workers or come from outside it, or to entrust it to a training centre or institute accredited by the competent authority. Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation adds that the training may take place inside or outside the Kingdom.
The place and the provider are left open by the text, and the condition falls on the accreditation of the trainer or the centre, not on the format. That is what makes a programme combining a part delivered by an accredited centre with a part delivered by an internal trainer a permitted arrangement rather than an exception that needs justifying. In the provisions we reviewed, which leave the place and the provider open and require accreditation, we found nothing requiring a particular delivery method for a particular type of training.
What a blended learning programme must contain under Article 44 of the Labor Law
Article 44 of the Labor Law lists what a training programme must contain: the skill on which the worker is trained, the rules and conditions followed in the training, its duration and number of hours, the theoretical and practical training programmes, and the method of testing and the certificates awarded.
The separation of theory from practice within Article 44 of the Labor Law is the basis on which the allocation in a blended programme is built. The number of hours covers both modes, since Article 44 of the Labor Law asks for the duration and hours of the programme and does not confine them to its classroom sessions.
What blended learning is not
One question separates blended learning from its neighbours: for each part, what can it achieve that the other mode cannot? Where the question has no answer, one of the two modes is surplus. Applied to the arrangements that can be mistaken for blended learning, it sorts them as follows.
- A fully online programme. It has no classroom, but the absence of a room is not a blend. It is a single mode chosen alone, and a blend needs two modes in one programme, each with something to achieve.
- A recording of the in person session. Filming the room and making the recording available to whoever missed it does not design an asynchronous part. It provides a substitute for attendance. An asynchronous part is designed to be completed alone, not watched as compensation.
- A programme split across locations. It puts one part at the workplace and another at an outside centre: a matter of place and provider, which the eighth item of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation allows. It becomes blended learning only if what differs between the two parts is the delivery method, not the location.
Blended learning, Article 44 of the Labor Law and Royal Decree M/44
A confusion of names arises here, because the number is the same and the instruments differ. Article 44 of the Labor Law, set out above, is an article listing what a training programme must contain. Royal Decree M/44 is the amending instrument that changed Article 44 of the Labor Law along with other articles in Part Four of the Labor Law, on training and qualification. Each should be named where it is meant: Article 44 of the Labor Law where the content of a programme is at issue, and Royal Decree M/44 where the amendment is.
Royal Decree M/44 added one element to Article 44 of the Labor Law: the skill on which the worker is trained. The other elements were left as they were. For a blended programme the added element can serve as the question to settle before the modes are allocated, because the skill decides which part needs someone who corrects in the moment and which part does not. Defining that skill calls for observable terms, as describing competencies does.
Blended learning and combining training with work in the same day
Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation requires establishments bound to provide training to enable the trainee to combine training tasks and work tasks during official working hours, in a manner consistent with the Labor Law, where the trainee has to be assigned work during the training period.
Blended learning bears directly on this provision, because the asynchronous part can easily be pushed past the end of the working day by its nature. A programme designed so that its self study part is completed outside working hours has moved the burden of training onto the employee’s time, and that is a decision to take knowingly, not by neglect.
The statutory provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 44 of the Labor Law (the contents of a training programme), Article 80 of the Labor Law and Article 81 of the Labor Law (the cases referred to in the exceptions on charging training costs). From the Implementing Regulation, issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 dated 19/8/1446H, Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation is relied on for the eight duties on every employer, including evaluation, the rule against charging the trainee and the place of training, and Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation for the duties on establishments bound to provide training and the three cases in which training costs may be charged. Royal Decree M/44 dated 8/2/1446H amended Articles 42, 43, 44, 46, 47 and 48 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Article 80 of the Labor Law, which was last amended by Royal Decree M/46 dated 5/6/1436H, or Article 81 of the Labor Law.
Before a blended learning programme is built
The blended format is chosen because part of the content does not need a room, not because cost alone calls for it. A programme that does not separate theory from practice before delivery will afterwards record a delivery method nobody designed, and can find, at the first question asked, that the record needs a more precise answer than in person and remote.
This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.
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