How do I choose a course delivery format?

Dear Aggie,

I am finding my head spinning with all the descriptions and nuances around course delivery formats. I have finally figured out synchronous and asynchronous online, and have been reading about hybrid and blended formats. How do I choose the best format for me and my students?

~Perplexed

Dear Perplexed,

You are asking some great questions!

Perhaps the most obvious distinction is online vs. in-person. Strictly online courses use the internet for all of their instruction/delivery. As you note, online courses can be asynchronous, which have no required meetings, and in which students work at their own pace through the course material. Some online courses are synchronous, in which there are required meetings using some kind of meeting or conference technology, like Zoom. Strictly in-person courses take place during regularly scheduled meetings in a physical classroom, with all students participating in person.

But as I am sure you know, there are courses that use both online and in-person elements. These approaches can add flexibility and leverage the best aspects of each environment to maximize the learning experience for students.

Two of the most common models that combine online and in-person learning are hybrid and blended.

Let’s start with hybrid.

Celise Steele, in a fantastic post “Hybrid vs Blended Learning: The Difference and Why it Matters”, states that:

Hybrid learning is an educational approach where some individuals participate in person and some participate online. Instructors and facilitators teach remote and in-person learners at the same time using technology like video conferencing.

You may have encountered this type of model during the pandemic, for example if you have Zoomed into a seminar or literary reading in which the speaker was speaking live to an audience in a physical room, and took questions from the participants in the room as well as from the remote participants.

The major point about hybrid is that the in-person students and the online students are being taught live or synchronously at the same time. This doesn’t preclude the use of asynchronous online work for all students, but the key idea is that synchronous sessions include both in-person and online learners simultaneously.

While this allows students the flexibility to participate remotely, the simultaneous nature of instruction is a challenge. As the instructor, you have to tailor your delivery to be effective for those two different groups of learners at the same time. As Celise Steele notes, remote students can’t physically handle specimens of rocks being passed around a geology classroom, and students in the classroom may not be able to carry out independent research if the wireless is weak, if they didn’t bring a device or if the classroom is a distracting environment (https://www.leadinglearning.com/hybrid-vs-blended-learning/). The advantages of this approach are that remote students can have synchronous interactions as part of the class, and have the flexibility to continue their studies remotely. And NMSU does have classrooms that are set up to help you with this teaching approach. Videos and other resources about teaching in a Simulcast classroom can be found at NMSU’s Hybrid Instruction and Simulcast Resources page.

Another format that takes advantage of online and in-person learning is blended. Celise Steele offers a great description (https://www.leadinglearning.com/hybrid-vs-blended-learning/) which differentiates blended from hybrid. The key difference is that in a blended approach, every student completes both the online and the in-person activities, often sequentially. For example, students watch pre-class lecture videos or complete a reading assignment with an online reading quiz, then come to class for an in-person collaborative learning experience, and repeat this pattern throughout the semester. This is essentially a flipped classroom. From the perspective of an instructor,  because the online and in-person expertise are needed at different times (not simultaneously), it could be possible to co-teach a blended course, in which one person focuses on the online component, and the other focuses on the in-person component, depending on their expertise.

I know it is easy to start to feel lost in all the terminology. I think we can all get off to a great start by thinking about what will work best for us and our strengths, our courses and our students. We can think about our learning objectives and aligning learning activities to those objectives. We can figure out what students can do on their own, when they are going to need our expertise, and when they are going to need the opportunity to work with and learn from classmates. Are our students “non-traditional” students who may be working full-time jobs as well as taking classes? What kind of flexibility do they need? These are the kinds of issues and questions that should drive our decisions about course delivery.

Once you have figured out the best model for you and your students, reach out to the Registrar to figure out how best to designate and schedule your course. The pandemic turned everything on its head. But that gave us new perspectives and opportunities. Let's take advantage of what we learned to move forward in how we are delivering our courses.

~Aggie