What is this Hybrid Stuff?

Director’s Message – What is this Hybrid Stuff?

At the April 23rd 12 o’clock Scholars brown bag discussion, seven of us tried to answer the question, “What is blended/hybrid learning?” Four of us (not faculty) were certain, and three of us (faculty) were not quite sure. Well, why else would you come to a session with this title?

According to research funded by the Sloan Consortium, an 11-year-old confederation of institutions “committed to quality online education”, the blended/hybrid course is one that combines online and face-to-face delivery. The proportion of content delivered online in a hybrid course is 30-79%. It is different from a “web-facilitated” course, which is defined as one in which the proportion of content delivered online is 1-29%. A course in which 80-100% of the course content is delivered online is categorized as an online course. Based on this schema, what types of courses are you teaching? CELT would be interested in knowing who is currently teaching or intends to start teaching hybrid courses.

OK, so why should you care? At IPFW the fastest growing group of distance course enrollees is what I categorize as “hybrid schedulers”—students who are enrolled in both on-campus and distance (here I have to include both video-based and “online” in the definition of “distance”) courses in the same semester. The number of full-time students in this “hybrid schedule” group has doubled from 1200 to 2400 in the past four years. Full-time hybrid schedulers carry about .5 credit hours more than on-campus-only full-time students, and almost 1 credit more than distance-only full-time schedulers. These hybrid schedulers are also more likely to stick around from semester to semester than their on-campus only counterparts. About 74% of these students who started in Fall 2005 were still around one year later, in contrast to 66% of those starting at the same time, but maintaining on-campus-only schedules. This emerging data, I believe, should lead us to consider how we as an institution might exploit the concept of “hybridizing” both at the schedule level and at the course level to help our students finish their degrees, while at the same time maintaining and enhancing the quality of their interactions with faculty and other students.

Intensive learning formats are becoming more common as students seek to simultaneously manage education, family life, and work .The hybrid course format offers the potential for rich, high quality learning experiences within a compressed time frame. For example, students in a graduate course meeting once a month can, with support from technology, carry on discussions and team projects between class meetings. The feeling of a “cohort” moving through the course together can be maintained and provide the social support that underpins successful learning.

And hybrid courses offer a way to increase the number of courses that an institution can offer, without adding classroom space. The Sloan Consortium has also found that “traditional age” students, aged 17-23, prefer on-campus or primarily on-campus delivery; and when IPFW distance students respond to Continuing Studies’ end-of-semester survey, about half of them usually say that they would have taken an on-campus course if it had been available or if it had fit in their schedules. With hybrid scheduling and hybrid courses, students can get what they need and what they want (face-to-face teaching), while the university has the opportunity to maximize resources, improve retention, and maintain revenue.

What are the implications of hybrid/blended learning for professional development, instructional design and technology support, registration and classroom scheduling, remuneration of faculty, and tenure/promotion? I invite your comments and perspectives.

I will also be investigating these topics in the coming weeks accompanied by OAA Fellow Elaine Blakemore, CS Executive Director Deb Conklin, and CELT Instructional Designer, Sam Birk. I hope to share what we learn in a future newsletter and in CELT programs.

Have a great summer!

Gail