Historically, centres of education – schools, universities, hairdressing colleges, training salons, you name it – are traditional institutions that are reluctant to change. This year, the restrictions enforced by the pandemic have forced the sector to adapt to survive.

As a result, a whole new world of collaborative online learning has been born – spawning a movement that simply wouldn’t have been possible even 10 years ago. Thanks to technology, centres of education have integrated Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom into the daily lives of their students. The laptop is now a classroom – and the potential benefits for hairdressing students around the world are huge.

In this post, we explore the way the hairdressing education sector has evolved – and explain how the MHD platform supports you in the delivery of this new model.

Collaborative online learning is the new normal …

The rapid spread of Covid-19 – and the subsequent closure of educational establishments around the world – has meant that schools, colleges and universities have had to take learning online, fast. The integration of collaborative platforms such as Microsoft Teams has not only enabled students to continue their learning: it’s opened up a whole new world, in which students are able to access inspirational teachers and other online resources that they couldn’t in pre-Covid days.

There are, of course, advantages to face-to-face teaching that can’t be gained online. However, a blended approach (one that incorporates both virtual and in-person lessons) has the potential to offer students the best of all worlds. And this trend will continue once the pandemic is a thing of the past.

… and the world of hairdressing education has adapted too

The situation in the wider world of education is mirrored in the hairdressing and barbering world. Pre-pandemic, a significant chunk of hairdressing & barbering educators (in colleges, academies and training salons) hadn’t had the time to prepare a learning platform that incorporated schemes of work, lesson plans and students’ individual learning requirements. However, that had to change quickly.

Currently, restrictions on face-to-face learning vary widely – depending on the country, state or city in which you live. Whatever restrictions you’re currently operating under, it’s clear is that a combination of distance and blended learning is now the reality.

Implement or improve your blended learning with MHD

Here at MHD, we’ve been finetuning our world-leading online platform for over a decade – and we’re proud to have helped a growing number of hairdressing education providers deliver distance learning during the pandemic.

Here are 3 key ways that you can leverage the MHD platform to enhance your distance or blending learning:

• Incorporate standardised MHD tutorials into your live Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom sessions – With 500+ tutorials on the platform, we have theory lessons, as well as those aimed at developing student skills from foundation level right through to advanced. And every lessons is accompanied by a PDF. As we result, we make it easy to deliver quality, standardised tutorials spanning every part of your curriculum.
• Prepare modules or personalised learning programmes – we’ve developed our playlist technology to help educators use our tutorials in any way you choose. It’s simple to create and share personalised playlists, mapping them to schemes of work, lesson plans or individual learning pathways.
• Monitor progress using our Reports feature – Exclusively for those with tutor licences, our Reports feature makes it simple to monitor and evidence learning across all your students. Get a comprehensive overview or individual breakdown – You can even export the reports and upload them to your in-house tracking system.

We’d love to tell you more about how our in-college training scheme can help you boost your blended learning provision and smash student outcomes.

Book your free demo