The growth of hybrid courses in higher education has brought on a new wave of predictions. Here’s one from Robert Kaleta, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (UWM) Learning Technology Center (LTC): "I would predict, without a problem, that the typical course on a university campus is going to be a blended course. That is what’s transforming education - having this ability to take the best of both worlds - the best of face-to-face and the best of blended - and combine them into a new instructional model. It has everything going for it, and I really think it is going to be the dominant model a few years down the road."

Kaleta has been involved with the development of hybrid courses since 1999 when a University of Wisconsin (UW) System Redesign Grant Program provided the funds for UWM’s LTC to collaborate with other UW institutions to create a faculty development program and a Web resource for teaching hybrid courses.

As noted on the LTC hybrid course Web site, the LTC staff, since 1999, "has repeated, revised and refined our formal training program for assisting faculty who are designing and teaching hybrid courses for the first time."

In an interview with Kaleta and two of his LTC colleagues, Instructional Design Consultants Alan Aycock and Jay Caulfield, along with a review of some of the literature the LTC team has created since 1999, Educational Pathways got a timely update related to how faculty in the UW system are adapting to the, so to speak, hybrid phenomena. Two other staff members round out the entire LTC team (whom we did not get a chance to interview): Instructional Innovator Carla Garnham, and a third Instructional Design Consultant, Amy Mangrich.

An interesting point of view presented by Kaleta began with a brief discussion about the term "instructional designer," which he claims can frequently "bring up different images and definitions to different people." Kaleta’s definition: "An instructional designer is somebody who has a substantive teaching experience and has done an excellent job of teaching, regardless of what kind of training they have had or whether or not they have had training in instructional design." He further explains that someone who has a degree in instructional design, and has never taught, can learn principles, but they "really haven’t been involved in the real application of teaching."

So, it is no coincidence that all of the LTC staff have substantial teaching experience. "We don’t have instructional design degrees, but we know a heck of a lot about teaching and what works and does not work," Kaleta says. "We can clearly relate to the situation of our colleagues in other departments."

It makes sense that the LTC staff’s combined teaching experiences, in conjunction with all the knowledge they have gained over the years about hybrids, in general, has resulted in a very sophisticated hybrid teaching and learning faculty development program that has a keen focus on "practical pedagogy."

The faculty development program consists of three face-to-face sessions (four hours long typically scheduled over one month), one virtual synchronous teleconference, a series of assignments submitted online, one-on-one consultations that are available upon request, and debriefings and assessments to ensure that the program is meeting the needs of all the participants.

A recent faculty development program syllabus that LTC designed for UW-Stevens Point, which, by the way, is conducted in a hybrid format, reveals the learning objectives, listed below, that are covered in three modules. Before the first face-to-face meeting begins, however, participants are required to review "Ten Hybrid Course Planning Objectives."

• Identify the components of a pedagogically effective hybrid course.
• List the advantages of a hybrid course design.
• Demonstrate an understanding of critical points in hybrid course design.
• Learn to construct a learning module in rough draft form.
• Locate learning objects and use them in course assignments and activities.

• Learn how to effectively facilitate and evaluate online discussions and interaction.
• Demonstrate an understanding of constructing an effective asynchronous discussion assignment.
• Identify hybrid learning activities that are well suited to small group projects.
• Learn to develop and use templates and rubrics to evaluate student work.
• Learn how to keep organized and manage your hybrid course workload.

• Demonstrate an understanding of how and when to apply classroom assessment techniques.
• Learn to develop an effective hybrid course syllabus.
• Identity and learn how to manage problems and issues that typically confront students in hybrid courses.
• Learn to effectively use multimedia in hybrid courses.

According to Aycock, "one of the things that is critical that we found in hybrid instruction is that you must completely integrate the face-to-face with online work rather than having two parallel courses going on, one face-to-face and one online, which is a mistake that is often made."

The integration issue is also covered inside a paper composed by Aycock, Garnham and Kaleta titled "Hybrid Courses: Obstacles and Solutions for Faculty and Students," that was presented at the 2003 Annual Distance Teaching and Learning Conference in Madison, WI. In this paper the authors explain that one of the most common regrets expressed by hybrid instructors who have participated in the LTC program over the years "is that they did not focus sufficiently on integrating the course’s online learning with the classroom activities in their first hybrid course. The connection between what occurs in class and what is studied online is essential. If well done, it enables the student to develop more in-depth and thoughtful discussions and ideas."

Another common mistake made by faculty new to the hybrid environment is what Aycock calls the "course and a half syndrome," where faculty have a "very powerful tendency" to add about 50 percent more to the hybrid course to take advantage of the unlimited online environment. In the same aforementioned paper, it’s noted that faculty "must rethink their course goals in new ways. Simply inserting all the work they have always wanted to accomplish in the traditional course as an additional online component in the hybrid course will not work."

Finally, Educational Pathways asked the LTC staff members interviewed how they would characterize the most important lessons they have learned as both practicing teachers and instructors of new hybrid teachers.

Caulfield says she has learned how to improve her own teaching. "Many of the faculty have shared that with us as well. When they redesign their course in this kind of format, they have incorporated more active learning activities. If we believe the literature on active learning, it indicates that students do, in fact, learn better when they are involved in their own learning process. So for me, I think, it has improved my overall teaching whether I teach a traditional face-to-face class, or a hybrid course, or a totally online course (she currently teaches business courses in all three modalities).

Aycock, who teaches anthropology courses in all three modes, agrees with Caulfied. He explains that one of the things learned was how to "become more explicit in my expectations of what the students would learn, how they would learn, what sorts of artifacts they would create that would demonstrate their learning, and how that was going to play out in the classroom as well as online. In the process of making all that more explicit, I actually became a better teacher."

UW-Milwaukee Hybrid Course Web site
www.uwm.edu/Dept/LTC/hybrid.html

Aycock, A., Garnhan, C., Kaleta, R. (2003). Hybrid Courses: Obstacles and Solutions for Faculty and Students. 19th Annual Conference on Distance Learning and Teaching Conference Resource Library. Retrieved April 12, 2004 from www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/proceedings/03_72.pdf.