XplanaZine

Can your iPod be a part of your hybrid course? Will you do your course activities through your cell phone? It’s coming, if it’s not here already. Most people generally think of hybrid courses as ones that involve face-to-face instruction alternating with web-based contact, usually within a learning management system. However, technology and new ideas about how people learn at a distance are allowing new configurations of “hybrid” to emerge. The major dividing line is over the level of interactivity in the distance portion of the course.

Web-based delivery, with face-to-face components: This style of hybrid is gaining increasing acceptance as students and instructors like the flexibility. Instead of meeting 3 times per week for 50 minutes per class period, the class may meet once every one or two weeks. The face-to-face time is often used for group presentations, lectures, and reviews of required work. In the interim, students go to the internet for interaction, collaboration, guidance, course content, and instructional activities.

Benefits:

–Allows individuals to obtain course materials on-demand, and read them in anticipation of the face-to-face sessions;

–Allows individuals to participate in discussion board activities that either reinforce face-to-face, or to facilitate discussion of materials;

–On-demand access to instructional strategies, with clear presentation of learning objectives, units, etc. which helps the learner gain a sense of how to make connections between course content and learning goals;

–Allows self-paced, flexible learning as students retrieve information, engage in online learning activities, and engage in online collaborations;

–Encourages students to engage in expanded research as they access online libraries, etc.

Non-interactive handhelds, pdas, CD-ROMs, with face-to-face: This method can be looked at as a variation of an old theme which has been very successful in accelerated program, and low-contact (low “residency”) formats. In the past, the usual method was to assign readings, ask students to send in work, and then to meet over weekends or for a week. In the face-to-face settings, students often participated in group discussions, gave presentations, listened to presentations, completed assessment and evaluation tasks, and reviewed required work.

Today, however, the format is different. Students may still have an intensive short-course contact time, or, they may go to assessment centers for testing. However, the mode of instruction for the independent study part is absolutely different. Instead of books and tapes, the students are more likely to have interactive “serious games” types of activities on hand-helds, modularized content delivered on handhelds or iPods, multimedia presentations in small format, easy-to-deliver video and audio.

Portability and power are keys to success in this format. Learner autonomy is enhanced by having the ability to access content to accommodate multiple learning styles.

Benefits:

–Allows individuals to engage in course content on-demand, in anticipation of the face-to-face sessions;

–Allows individuals to reflect upon and review course content;

–Gives individuals a chance to review the overall structure on-demand;

–Instructor can focus lectures around certain content that learners have reviewed online.

Contact hours are enhanced and enriched in the following ways:

–scaffolding of course content and materials;

–understanding objectives and outcomes;

–guiding students in developing strategies for organizing knowledge;

–guiding students in making connections.

On-demand content allows students to organize the timing of their access, and gives them an opportunity to be self-directed.

With portable devices, students are encouraged to bring the content into the context. For example, a student taking a leadership course can bring the materials directly into leadership situations / decision points. He or she can review film clips, listen to audio, and review content and “think about it” questions in situations that can mirror the content. This is an excellent way to situate learning.

We are most definitely on the cusp of the new hybrids. There will be new advancements as technology makes new approaches possible.