The following appeared in Volume 2000, Number 2 (Spring 2001), pp. 73-75 of the APA Newsletters

American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers

"'Hybrid' Courses: The Best of Both Worlds"

For all the hype about "distance-learning," nothing can replace in-person classes with dialogue, discussion, and eye-contact with students. After one experiment with a course taught entirely on the Internet in spring 1998 (see "Teaching Philosophy of Art On-Line," American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, 98:1 [Fall 1998], 30-32), I concluded that I needed to reconnect with my students, while still taking advantage of Internet technologies.

Unfortunately, the model most of us have been using for "teaching-with-technology" -- a traditional in-class format, supplemented with various on-line activities - presents its own problems. Offering regular courses with on-line add-ons - a threaded discussion group, assignments for finding and using materials on the Web, virtual office hours in a chatroom, e-mail communication - results in an overload of work and complaints from students that they now have a class-and-a-half.

We all like to think our courses are so interesting and exciting that students will not mind devoting many extra hours each week to our brilliant and challenging assignments. But the reality of student lives today, with heavy courseloads and part-time jobs to pay expenses, means that every minute counts in their lives. Their complaints about piling on too much extra work outside class must be taken seriously.

A reasonable guideline for the amount of work in a course is the traditional rule-of-thumb, viz., for every one hour in classroom, a student should spend two hours in study, preparation, writing papers, and so on. Taking an existing course that meets this model and adding a host of on-line activities thus, admittedly, far exceeds this workload.

A solution with great promise is the so-called "hybrid" course, which expressly blends both in-person class meetings (although fewer than a traditional course) and heavy on-line use. The key to designing an appropriate course and to winning support from academic administrators is to re-think the student workload using a model already accepted on campus, such as the two-for-one rule. Instead of measuring academic units in the antiquated model of "seat time" (e.g., a three-credit course requires three hours in a seat in a classroom), instructors and administrators should think in terms of the overall expectations each week for a course, both in-person classes and time outside of the classroom.

I initially saw the potential for a new approach to measuring student workload/credit when my campus ran workshops for the first group of faculty who would use CourseInfo by Blackboard, which our campus implemented in fall of 1999. High-ranking administrators at those workshops stressed that it would be acceptable to skip an in-person meeting for a class and substitute an on-line activity, such as a chatroom or a threaded discussion group. Administrators, in their eagerness to encourage distance-learning, had already sent out the word that they wanted to break the lock of the so-called "seat-time-credit-hours" on our campus. Their stress on flexibility with CourseInfo was consistent with earlier signals.

Implementation of this new model can take various forms. My first venture, fall of 1999, was a course called "Law, Philosophy, and the Humanities," an interdisciplinary course for 60 upper-division students and MA students, targetted to philosophy majors interested in philosophy of law and pre-law students from various majors. An express goal of the course was to use on-line technologies they would likely encounter in the next year or two in law school or graduate school. Although scheduled to meet twice a week, for 75-minute classes, the Thursday class meeting was often cancelled so they could substitute on-line work beyond the normal course syllabus.

For example, for a four-week period, they were required to participate in a threaded discussion group, with points assigned according to substantive responses to the reading assignments and to comments from other students. They did not have to make their contributions during the Thursday meeting time, but could participate anytime from Tuesday night until the following Monday night. They were told to log into the group several times to see how the discussion was going and to respond to follow-up comments on threads of interest.

As the semester progressed, I was struck by how often our classroom sat empty during the class period. Good rooms at good scheduling times are in great demand on our campus, and I thought the empty room was a huge waste. I asked some of our academic administrators if we might try in a future semester having two instructors share a room and keep the classrooms in full use, and they happily agreed.

We implemented this approach for a course in fall 2000. I shared a large lecture room, holding 117 students and equipped with the best technology on campus (built-in projector for my laptop, network connection, etc.). My course on "Liberty and Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in American Law" filled the room, as it had become popular with pre-law students around campus and also met several upper-division General Education requirements. I took the room on Tuesday for 75 minutes and a colleague in another department took the room on Thursday for his course in Chicano Studies. For the rest of the week, we each planned a range of heavy on-line usage so that students were getting the expected nine hours of work each week for the three-unit course.

Administrators loved our shared classroom use. In effect, we doubled the capacity of the room without violating fire rules. Large, well-equipped lecture rooms in "prime time" are scarce on our campus, as the state deals with burgeoning enrollments from Tidal Wave II.

Students also liked the flexibility. The on-line work could be completed at any time during the week, but they could also do it in campus labs if they choose during the class period when they were not meeting in person.

My challenge was coming up with serious on-line work that I could justify as a substitute for the missing in-person class period. I offered students a choice of three activities for our "virtual classroom" each week, with up to four points available. The first option was participation in a threaded discussion group on the readings from the most recent in-person class meeting. To get the maximum points, students had to respond substantively to all of the readings, as well as other student comments.

The second option was a four-question on-line quiz, timed for one-hour, on the readings from the previous class. CourseInfo automatically graded these and posted the points on the on-line Gradebook, a time-saver for me. Although CourseInfo gave me the option of letting students immediately know the right answer, I turned off that feature, as students were taking the quiz any time from Tuesday evening through Monday night. After the quiz was no longer available, I posted the correct answers on the CourseInfo site.

The third option was a written case brief on one of the cases we would be discussing at the following class, sent to me electronically (either as an e-mail attachment or in the CourseInfo DropBox).

I had a good "baseline" for the amount of work in this course, as I had taught it in a traditional format the previous year. My reading list was essentially unchanged. I required the same short paper, mid-term essay exam, and final essay exam as I had before. The only real difference was the substitution of "virtual classroom" activities for the second class meeting each week.

To do a good job and get the maximum points on "virtual classroom," students needed to spend at least two hours each week, which satisfied my interest in substituting a demanding requirement for the missing class meeting. Two of the assignments required considerable writing each week and the third, the quiz, required a close reading of the assigned articles. As we all know, weekly writing and/or close reading of the material is not an activity in which students necessarily engage when they simply show up for an in-person class and absorb whatever is being said. Pedagogically, the course was thus more demanding and worthwhile than the traditional course had been.

One small technical problem was easily solved. The final exam schedule on our campus matches class times, but the room was not big enough for both courses to take an in-person exam at the same time. The Chicano Studies course took the classroom, and I used a timed on-line final exam, which worked well. At the designated start time, my students were told to be at a computer, logged into the internet (whether a campus lab, at home, or at work). I posted the exam question on the CourseInfo site at the exam start time. To be safe, I also sent it out on the e-mail list-serv on CourseInfo, so they would have it that way as well. The exam was an open-book exam, due two hours later through electronic submission (e-mail attachment or CourseInfo Dropbox). With the date stamp on submission, I knew the exam had been submitted on time, two hours after the exam started.

Hybrid classes in shared classrooms solve multiple problems for the instructor and the campus. It gives us the flexibility to moderate workload for students to reasonable expectations, taking into account both in-person meetings and on-line work. For campuses short on classrooms, our shared room doubled the enrollment in that time slot in the schedule.

Although my course was taught on CourseInfo, which has access restricted to registered students, I have an "old-fashioned" web page open to all with the Syllabus and Course Requirements, showing the "Virtual Classroom" assignments and other course elements: http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/451/

I cannot imagine teaching a course entirely on the Internet again, after having tried it once. But I expect to regularly offer hybrid courses in shared rooms - for me, this is the best of both worlds and an approach I heartily recommend.

Last updated: 3/30/2004