Hybrid Course Development

Vice-President's Academic Council (VPAC)

Standing Advisory Committee on Educational Technology

for Teaching and Learning (ETTL)

Chair: Paul O'Connor

Hybrid Development Course: a support program to assist faculty members

in converting courses to a hybrid format.

2010-2011

The purpose of the Hybrid Development Course is to support faculty members in adapting existing courses to a hybrid format and to help faculty members use the tools available in Blackboard effectively. The result of this program will be an increased number of hybrid courses available at Douglas College. Hybrid courses incorporate both face to face and online instruction and reduce the number of trips students must make to campus. This makes the course more accessible to students and allows greater flexibility in student schedules. Hybrid courses are also more environmentally sustainable since students and instructors make fewer trips to campus and hybrid courses make more efficient use of classroom space.

It is assumed that the online and hybrid courses would be adapted from existing courses and that the courses taught in the new format would have no more students than the face to face courses and that the mode of delivery would not affect how a faculty members workload is calculated (ie if teaching 4 face to face courses over a semester is a full teaching load, then teaching 4 hybrid courses also equals a full teaching load). The hybrid and online courses would follow the normal semester deadlines.

Definitions

Preamble

One of the goals of creating hybrid courses is to increase the flexibility of student schedules; accordingly, instructors are reminded that requiring students to be available online at specific times does not fit with this objective. However, if instructors feel it is important to require students to be available online at specific times these times should be made known to students prior to registration (see Appendix Three for the procedure).

To prevent confusion amongst students enrolled in online and hybrid courses in different faculties College wide definitions of these terms should be adopted. The following definitions are proposed:

A hybrid course is normally one in which the face to face lecture component has been reduced by at least 50% with the intention of reducing the number of trips a student is required to make to campus.

A course traditionally taught in two hour blocks twice a week being reduced to a single two hour block once a week would be a hybrid course as would a course traditionally taught as a three hour block once a week being offered as a three hour block every second week

The following definition of an online course is proposed:

In an online course, no face to face contact will be required of students during the term. Students may be required to write a final exam in person.

Under this classification system, a course offered exclusively through blackboard, where students were required to make weekly discussion postings and the instructor offered virtual office hours would be an online course.

Online and hybrid courses represent a continuum with online courses requiring less face to face contact than hybrid courses. In both cases the purpose is to make the courses more accessible to students by reducing the number of times they must come to campus and allowing students to have a more flexible schedule by reducing the blocks of time when they must be available for class activities.

Furthermore, to recognize that there is a continuum in the use of educational technology, an enhanced course is one that uses educational technology to augment a course. For example, using MyDouglas to make the course syllabus available would be an enhanced course as would a course in which less than 50% of the face to face lecture component been replaced with online activities.

Outline of the Support Program

Those faculty members who want to move a face to face course to a hybrid format need both support and an incentive to take on this task. The program outlined below would be available to those who are interested, but no one would be required to participate.

Training for teaching in the hybrid format would be in the form of a semester long course ¿ the Hybrid Development Course at Douglas College (HDC).[1]The course would be taught in a hybrid format to provide faculty members with the lived experience of using Blackboard as a student ¿ they would use the discussion board, complete quizzes, check their grades and upload assignments.

The course content would be a blend of technical skills and the pedagogy of online learning. The faculty members would learn how to use Word and PowerPoint to create web friendly documents, how to build learning modules with objectives, content and assessment and use the quiz, assignment drop box and discussion tools within Blackboard. The best practices in online education would be presented as well as factors to consider when choosing the mode of communication, content presentation and assessment.

By the end of the course, faculty members will have built two online learning modules including the course syllabus, calendar and getting started documents (see Appendix One). Instructors would then have the next two semesters to work with Client and Learning Services to develop the remainder of the learning modules. For example, if an instructor participates in the Hybrid Development Course in Fall 2010, the course modules would be completed by Summer 2011, so that the course could be delivered in Fall 2011.

The expectation would be that a faculty member would complete the Hybrid Development Course, create a hybrid course from an existing face to face course and teach it in the new format. The HDC course would be taken during a teaching semester in addition to the faculty member¿s regular teaching duties and faculty members would be expected to commit 4-6 hours per week to the HDC course for the 13 weeks of the semester. To compensate for this extra workload, completion of the HDC course would be counted as 10 days of PD time for the next non-teaching semester. (This would not apply if the Hybrid Development course is completed during a non-teaching semester).

Also, after teaching the course in the new format for the first time the faculty member would be eligible to apply for $500 from the Further Learning Fund towards courses, conferences or activities that enhance their ability to teach (Appendix Four).

After the first year of operation, the Hybrid Development Course process will be reviewed to identify any additional resources and support that faculty members need to be successful in developing hybrid courses. Possible future directions include developing an Online Development Course to support the development of fully online courses and developing a Hybrid and Online Course Renewal process to assist faculty members in updating their courses to include more sophisticated technology.