Hybrid Learning: Maximizing Student Engagement

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Case Study

Hybrid Learning: Maximizing Student Engagement

5/23/2007

By Ruth Reynard

Hybrid course delivery, sometimes called "blended," refers to courses of instruction that require students to meet for face to face classes while providing much of the course content and interaction online via course delivery software and instructional tools. Hybrid programs refer to programs of study that provide students with an option of taking some courses fully online and some in class, or hybrid. Effective hybrid course instructional design blends classroom and online methodology and is based on student-directed instruction (as is typical in a distance learning environment), effective and timely teacher intervention, peer to peer interaction, and multiple input sources in a highly interactive learning context. The hybrid model depends on full student and teacher participation and on an instructional design that intentionally supports both specific learning outcomes and flexible delivery.

I became involved with hybrid teaching simply as a common-sense approach to the challenge of transitioning traditional faculty from classroom to online learning environments while I was director of a center for instructional technology at a university in the South. The challenge that faced me was working with faculty who were almost completely resistant to the idea of distance learning via the Internet, believing it to be a diminished learning experience. Many faculty also demonstrated a fear of technology in general and saw it as potentially time-consuming and overwhelming. The faculty were not, however, resistant to the idea that technology might be helpful in some way to support learning outside the classroom, as well as provide ongoing discussion opportunities between students.

In order to try and address some of these issues and to learn how to transition resistant faculty, I thought I should design my courses in a blended design to help understand how the two worlds could meet for faculty in a recognizable fashion. As a result, I designed all of my courses in a hybrid design and began, over a period of almost eight years, to develop a methodological framework. My focus was to look at how the design and the use of technology could heighten the engagement of the students in their learning process.

While my involvement with hybrid evolved from a sense of logical progression, many institutions of higher education are moving toward hybrid programming and hybrid course delivery intentionally to provide more flexibility for on ground students and to increase the overall marketability of programs of study to potential students. My sense is, however, the main benefit to hybrid from a teaching and learning viewpoint is that it provides an opportunity for the learning process to become much more engaging for students and for students to drive the learning process more directly. It is also an effective way to increase students' learning autonomy (Reynard, presentation at Middle Tennessee instructional technology conference, 2006). In other words, with the integration of the Internet both to deliver and to mediate the learning process in combination with face to face contact with others students and with the instructor, hybrid provides a meaningful opportunity to bring together the best of both worlds, so to speak.