Building Hybrid classes

When I began teaching college classes, I was an adjunct.  At that time in my life I wanted a part-time job and teaching college classes was perfect fit.  I started out teaching 1 section face to face.  For 4 hours a week, students sat in a classroom with me and I taught them.

Those were good days.  I had a lot of control of the pace of the class, the presentation of the material and how they were assessed.  Looking back, there was a lot of wasted time with too many quizzes, me talking too much and students not being actively engaged in their learning.  I was like a tour guide that narrated what they saw as we drove on by.  At the time I thought I was serving them very well but now I see ways to improve.

Fast forward a bit to being full time.  Instead of 1 class, in the fall I will teach 1411 online and hybrid (hopefully) in various sections.  I'll also be teaching 2311 face to face (hopefully).  The pacing will be different for different sections and I need to be ready to transition to fully online in the case that the decision is made to do so. 

I've also switched curriculum so everything is new.  Lots of work to be done before classes begin.

Last spring I taught my first hybrid class and it there was room for improvement.  A few things I tried with varying success:

*popsicle sticks with each student's name.  I told students that when we were practicing material I had assigned and we were reviewing it together, everyone would have his/her stick in the box.  When I called it the expectation was to be ready to answer.  I gave participation points so this was a fair way to be sure all were called on.  My goal was accountability for learning the information.  I'm not sure it worked.

A huge value to me is to help students feel safe in class.  This accountability was on the line of not allowing that safe place.  Granted, when we discussed new info or I went over concepts that I could tell many students were not comfortable with I made a show of not using the sticks.  

A good way to utilize sticks in the future could be for group work.  We'll see.

*"prep quizzes" before class.  The expectation was that they would do the assigned learning activity from the online curriculum before class so they could be introduced to the material.  It was a grade.  They would also do the "prep quiz" in Canvas before class for a grade.  The prep quiz was designed to be very easy;  if they had been exposed to the information they should have received excellent grades.

The problem was I had 2 groups of students:  ones that did this and were very successful and ones that didn't do this at all.  There was no middle ground.  I never figured out where the breakdown was--did they just not care about their grade;  did they not figure out the online curriculum (even though I did everything possible to explain and show how to use it);  were they leaning on what they knew from high school?  

As an instructor this was hugely frustrating because the class was designed for them to learn the material before class and in class they could ask questions, practice the concepts and leave class as experts.  I explained that before class their prep work should get them about 85% comfortable with the concept.  After class, they should be about 95% comfortable.  After doing homework to practice the concept (as well as Quizlet and practice quizzes) they should be at 100%.  If not, they needed to see the tutor or me to ask questions.  I worked hard at buy-in at the beginning of the semester, but clearly it wasn't effective.

*Research shows that students learn material best in the hybrid model, but the hybrid model doesn't work when the students don't take responsibility for their learning.  Back when I was face to face I could drag students along who chose not to do anything outside of class.  In the hybrid model, I can't.  The trouble is some still expect me to.

Going forward, I will have more accountability at the beginning of the semester to help them build good habits.  I hesitate to "mother them" too much by sending lots of reminder emails, but I'm starting to see that some students need that.  I gave up being the most popular professor a long time ago.  My classes are very challenging and many students need to take just 1 semester for their degree plan.  They don't have the goal to be completely fluent, so they see this as just another "crap class" (not my term) to check off.  That mindset is hard to change.  Many do the least amount necessary to get it checked off.  Hybrid doesn't fit that very well.

*Quizzes to target the hardest elements of the class.  I don't use tests as a "gotcha" but I've learned that quizzes are a great attention getter.  If a student does poorly on a small-stakes quiz he/she sees that work needs to be done before the test.  

In my hybrid class I did a better job of not wasting lots of class time giving quizzes.  They were very brief and targeted the specific concepts students needed to be sure and pay attention to for the tests.  This was a step in the right direction.

*I added student projects when we moved online and that was the saving grace for many students.  They had the chance to personalize their learning from the semester and creatively show me what they had learned.   It was so nice to see students shine.

Up to this point I haven't reached out to many other instructors for guidance.  I've figured it out as I've gone along.  I'm happy to report that I'm building a network of other instructors that I can ask questions when I'm not sure and learn from their experience.

I've heard before that great teachers aren't taught;  they're born.  On the one hand, I agree.  I'm currently teaching a very intensive 5 week 1411 online and yikes.  It's going fast.  I had a live review session for the midterm and I offered it at 2 different times.  The earlier time had 2/3 of the class and they watched while I did a PP review of the material.  No one asked a single question.  

When I did the same PP later, there was only 1 student and she asked lots of questions.  I got to teach--explaining why something was correct, telling how to study the concepts and encouraging her as a learner.  I loved that review session because I was born to teach.  

Designing online and hybrid classes don't celebrate the parts of teaching that I love.  I believe they are more beneficial to the learners who choose to fully participate and take responsibility for their learning, but I have to work much harder to make sure they are effective.