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Hybrid Courses: The Best of Both Worlds
"Hybrid instruction is the single greatest unrecognized trend
in higher education today."—Graham Spanier, President
of Penn State University
Definition:
- Hybrid courses are courses in which significant portions of
the learning activities have been moved online, a combination
of traditional classroom and Internet instruction.
- Time traditionally spent in the classroom is reduced but not
eliminated.
- The goal of hybrid courses is to join the best features of
in-class teaching with the best features of online learning to
promote active independent learning and reduce class seat time.
- Using computer-based technologies, instructors use the hybrid
model to redesign some lecture or lab content into new online
learning activities, such as case studies, tutorials, self-testing
exercises, simulations, and online group collaborations.
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Maximizing Physical Resources
- Enrollment Growth: Limited Classroom/Computer Lab Space
- Budget Issues/Equipment
Maximizing Student Learning
- Flexibility: Both students and instructors liked the greater
convenience afforded by the hybrid course model.
- Develops/enhances time management, critical thinking skills,
problem-solving skills.
- Enhances computer skills, increasing opportunities for academic
and professional success.
- Promotes self-directed learning.
- Because of the highly text-based nature of websites and email,
hybrid courses become de facto writing-intensive courses.
- Instructors reported that the hybrid course model allows them
to accomplish course learning objectives more successfully than
traditional courses do.
- Allows an instructor to teach to subject mastery without traditional
class time constraints.
- Encourages integration of out-of-class activities with in-class
activities to allow for more effective use of traditional class
time.
- Most faculty noted increased interaction and contact among their
students and between the students and themselves.
- Better able to approximate a "real world" writing
environment, including collaboration.
- Faculty participants almost universally believe their students
learned more in the hybrid format than they did in the traditional
class sections.
- Instructors reported that students wrote better papers, performed
better on exams, produced higher quality projects, and were capable
of more meaningful discussions on course material.
- Additionally, by sequencing assignments so that they move students
from significant discussion/responding online, through written
reflections about their responses and the reading, to group or
individual projects that are posted to a common learning space,
such as a website or discussion board, for discussion and elaboration,
teachers can have students engaged in doing, rather than just
experiencing or reading.
- Students can view and review prerecorded lectures and access
course notes and other materials such as course syllabus, assignment
schedule, task sheets, grades, and so on.
- Students who rarely take part in classroom discussions are more
likely to participate online, where they get time to think before
they type and aren't put on the spot.
- Presents materials in a range of formats can help make sure
every student is fully engaged in at least some class activities.
Allows for auditory, visual, tactile learners.
- Research shows that student success rates in hybrid courses
are "equivalent or slightly superior" to face-to-face
courses, and that the hybrid courses have lower withdrawal rates
than do fully online courses.
**Above information gathered from sources listed in Hybrid/Distance
Learning
Resources.
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Introduction
to Hybrid Courses
by Carla Garnham and Robert Kaleta, UW-Milwaukee
When designed carefully, a hybrid course combines the best features
of in-class teaching with the best features of online learning to
promote active student learning. In this hybrid course primer, Garnham
and Kaleta describe their Hybrid Course Project, funded by UW System
and coordinated by UW-Milwaukee's Learning Technology Center. Readers
can access streaming media clips of participating instructors discussing
their hybrid course experiences -- a TTT first. (Note: Viewers will
need RealPlayer to download the clips.)
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Approximately "Real World" Learning
with the Hybrid Model
by Rachel Spilka, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
How can instructors of business and professional writing prepare
students for the relative freedom and independence of workplace
writing? Despite all her efforts, Rachel Spilka's students tended
to work on projects with too much instructor oversight and supervision,
to collaborate mostly in person with writers they knew well instead
of collaborating from a distance with writers they barely knew,
and to manage projects with regular instructor or peer input, instead
of mostly on their own. She discusses how the hybrid model helped
free her from the restraints of traditional instruction to simulate
the "real world" for her students.
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Reflections
on Teaching a Large Enrollment Course Using a Hybrid Format
by John (Jack) Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Large enrollment classes pose a plethora of challenges to university
instructors. Jack Johnson, who teaches a large enrollment business
communications course at UW- Milwaukee, outlines his major concerns
about student learning in these classes and explains how hybrid
courses have helped him address them.
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Inside
Outside, Upside Downside: Strategies for Connecting Online and Face-to-Face
Instruction in Hybrid Courses
by Peter Sands, UW-Milwaukee
Peter Sands writes, "Successful hybridity--however that may
be defined--requires bringing the two dissimilar parts together
so that they work in concert and produce a third result. In the
case of effective hybrid courses, there are two dissimilar groups
of two that must come together and produce a final result: teachers/students
and online/face-to-face classrooms." An experienced hybrid
course instructor, Sands offers five suggestions to help teachers
connect face-to-face instruction with online work.
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Lessons
Learned from the Hybrid Course Project
by Alan Aycock, Carla Garnham, and Robert Kaleta, UW-Milwaukee
This Teaching Scholars Forum article reports on the most significant
observations from the Hybrid Course Project, in which 17 instructors
from five University of Wisconsin (UW) campuses participated. Its
authors hope that faculty, faculty developers, and administrators
interested in promoting hybrid courses can benefit from their experiences.
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ALN Web Center:
Learning Networks Effectiveness Research
Repository of papers presents current research in the area of Asynchronous
Learning. http://www.alnresearch.org/index.jsp
The
emerging contribution of online resources and tools to classroom
learning and teaching: Trends in higher education
A review of current trends and literature. http://www.tact.fse.ulaval.ca/ang/html/partie3.html
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