The first thing one might notice when visiting the Web site of the Educational Technology Center (EdTech) at Northeastern University (NU) is its cool design highlighted with a mix of pleasant colors and eye-catching graphics, one of which, at the time of this writing, was a Superman cartoon. Then, as you navigate through the site, you start to realize that there is a great deal of information offered here, and it’s all easy to find and written clearly. To add a sense of fun, there are some informal phrases sprinkled here and there, such as "So you wanna build a Web site, huh?," and "Online course development got ya frustrated? Get help with EdTechies."

Inside the "Who We Are" section of this Web site one can easily get a sense of the big picture: EdTech’s mission is "to improve teaching and learning with technology through research, development and training." The EdTech staff "helps NU faculty assimilate everything from digital imaging devices to software for developing Web sites." There’s also a new EdTech Web development branch, called the Center for Innovative Course Design (CICD), which "responds to the growing need to provide support for technology-related projects," and "collaborates with faculty teams to design, develop, assess and evaluate technology-related projects that receive instructional or external grant support."

At the helm of all this is Alicia Russell, EdTech’s founding director, who explains that, overall, her staff is "really focused on faculty support and course design." She then continues with a description of the many creative and innovative projects that have come out of EdTech and CICD.

One of those projects, which has garnered a lot of recognition since it started in 2000 with a $25,000 internal grant from NU’s Office of the Provost, is the Hybrid Writing Project. In the fall of 2001, this project’s pilot entailed redesigning three sections of a writing course that is required by all NU students - called the Middler Year Writing Requirement (MYWR) - into a hybrid form, with one-third of its face-to-face class time converted to an online mode. The project became a springboard for more grant funds, which has led to more hybrid courses across the university.

Three "concerns" indicated by students were addressed in the Hybrid Writing Project: (1) Students wanted more flexibility to meet course requirements; (2) The classroom had too much time in "filler" activities as opposed to facilitating more productive research and drafting activities, and; (3) Feedback on students’ final writing assignment for the course was not rapid or extensive enough.

The pilot was successful. Says Russell: "We went from a small pilot program to 60 courses per semester being offered in the hybrid format just for this writing program alone. It has been very effective, and it certainly involved instructors all the way along the line from the very beginning. This was not top down - although I think now it is - and the students’ comments have been very positive."

Russell further explains that the Hybrid Writing Project succeeded because of a highly organized support-focused EdTech infrastructure whereby instructors are provided with ample services. (Information about all of these services can be found at the EdTech Web site.) For instance, plenty of regularly scheduled faculty workshops are offered on such topics as Web site building, how to use NU’s Blackboard course management system, how to add multimedia to a course, how to teach with PowerPoint, how to add interactivity to a course Web site, and much more. The EdTech Center also provides open lab hours in its Training and Implementation Lab to support faculty in the development of Blackboard courses and other online course components. Also, an "EdTechies" program gives faculty the option of having trained coop students provide them with one-on-one support in the faculty member’s office. EdTechies’ support offerings include, but are not limited to, putting course materials in Blackboard, creating online quizzes or surveys, setting up a gradebook, and putting images into Blackboard. Sessions generally last from 1-2 hours.

Hybrids at the Course, Program and College Levels

The Hybrid Writing Project is an example of a successful hybrid format implementation at the course level. NU also has hybrid implementations at the program level and at the college level.

At the program level, a graduate Early Intervention Certificate Program offered by NU’s Bouve College of Health Sciences was converted to a hybrid format in the fall 2002 semester. Here courses were converted to 75 percent online and 25 percent face-to-face. The program prepares students to serve infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. It provides team-based interdisciplinary learning in the classroom and in the field. The program is the only approved interdisciplinary program in the state for certification as an Early Intervention Specialist, and the Bouve College of Health Sciences wanted to offer it to practitioners all across the state who could not regularly come to the university.

Two of the three veteran professors in this program did not have experience teaching online. "This was a really great opportunity for us to see how you work with faculty like this," says Russell. "They (a course design team led by Instructional Designer Laurie Poklop in collaboration with the program’s faculty) looked at all the course requirements and decided that using narrated PowerPoint slides would give them the flexibility that they wanted (for the faculty) and still the presence that they wanted for the students."

Other elements of the program include a Web site that provides resources to students, a student orientation program, and Blackboard courses that demonstrate a variety of learning and communication strategies. As noted on the CICD Web site, one professor in the Early InterventionProgram summed up her experience with the new hybrid format as follows: "The major advantage to this kind of teaching is that I feel connected to each student and am aware of their thinking and digestion of the material, whereas in a traditional class, you cannot tell that everyone is following the discussion or integrating the readings."

At the college level, EdTech is in the process of converting a NU part-time MBA program into a hybrid. "We have completed two overview sessions with faculty and the next step will be to conduct workshops with them," says Russell. "They are quite interested in the case-base method, so we’ll be looking at ways to do case-based teaching in a hybrid format."

Solid Infrastructure

Russell repeatedly emphasizes the importance of having a solid infrastructure in place to make all of the EdTech Center’s many initiatives work. She stresses the importance of education coming before technology. At the same time, she explains that a lot of what the EdTech Center does has a focus on scalability and sustainability. "When we do a model course, it is so we can use the functionality in another course. We are very interested in efficiency."

The overall philosophy of the EdTech Center is perhaps best summed up in a recently published CICD newsletter column by Russell. "We are all working to find ways to help our students succeed," she wrote. "When faculty and educational technologists come together to produce and deliver a course that makes the best use of instructional tools, whether or not they are technology-based, the synthesis results in a whole greater than its parts. In the end, both teachers and learners benefit."

EdTech Center: www.edtech.neu.edu/