Best Practices for Hybrid Course Development at GGC

Definition of Hybrid Courses at GGC

Hybrid course development at GGC refers to courses in which some sessions take place face-to-face and others take place online. In researching the literature on blended learning (as hybrid courses are often referred by), some designate a course as blended when any online learning component reduces face to face time. The Sloan Foundation believes blended reflects an average of 50% online coursework (http://sloanconsortium.org/. Currently, at GGC all courses delivered in the hybrid format have a combination of reduced face time and online components that may be as high as, but not exceed, 50%.

*Click here to download resources on Hybrid Course Development and Teaching

Best Practices for Student Support

Provide description of hybrid courses in Banner and overview in Bear Essentials session. Address students expectations and skills as online learners. Assist students in developing their time management skills. Provide technical support and help information to the student as well as any hardware and software requirements. Ensure access to technology for students who face the digital divide. Design a system to assess and facilitate student baseline fluency.

Best Practices for Faculty Development

Promote a community of practice that involves formal and informal approaches to professional development and support. Require attendance to the one-day workshop, offered in May of each year. Any exceptions to this requirement must be pre-approved by the faculty members dean. See Deliverables document for compensation proposal. Provide faculty the opportunity to experience being a hybrid student firsthand by participating in the Fellows Hybrid On-Line Course and requiring discussions, group work, case studies, and peer review. Meet periodically with faculty to provide opportunities for self-reflection. Continue to gather data about faculty and student access to, and usage of, technology. Share assessment data with the college community at events such as New Faculty Orientation and scheduled workshops. Summarize and post findings on the Center for Teaching website. Provide online resources for students and faculty that include: tutorials, exemplars, case studies and predeveloped materials that faculty can use (or adapt for use) in their courses. These resources would be available through an LMS.

Best Practices for Faculty

Teach a course in the traditional format prior to delivering as a hybrid course. Move course elements online purposefully. o Identify assignments that particularly lend themselves to being moved online o Identify current problem areas that might be addressed through technology Imagine interactivity rather than delivery.1

Sands, Peter.Inside Outside, Upside Downside. Strategies for Connecting Online and Face-to-Face Instruction in Hybrid Courses, Teaching with Technology Today, March 20, 2002 http://www.uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/sands2.htm

Leverage technology tools such as discussions, chats, blogs, and journals to fully engage students in an online environment. Encourage student-student contact via icebreaker activities, group work, and peer review activities. Promote online community through prompt feedback, and friendly, supportive communications. Adhere to standard design principles: o materials accommodating various learning styles; o clear navigation to access content; o chunked course content; o course objectives linked to activities; o updated and available syllabus, calendar and gradebook. Plan for effective uses of classroom time that connect with the online work. Communicate high expectations by giving tips for being successful in the course. Commit to deliverables as identified in Hybrid Course Deliverables document.

Best Practices for Office of Educational Technology

Provide technology access for faculty who are teaching blended courses. Provide extended help desk support as the hybrid program expands.

Courses Best Suited for Hybrid Formats

Courses which encompass a significant number of online (or outside of class) assignments Courses which include a lab component Courses that use technology tools in a significant way (Digital Media, Information Systems, Intro to Computing) Courses that require independent work (little to no lecture component) Courses that involve a significant number of group-based assignments

Assessment Opportunities
The Center for Teaching Excellence conducts prior-to-launch and mid-semester course checks to determine if Hybrid Fellows demonstrate best practices in course design. The assessment instruments were developed after researching other university sites well-known for their blended learning initiatives and adapting materials to the colleges needs. These documents are displayed at http://teacherweb.ggc.edu/ssmith/home under the topic Hybrid Course Checklist. Course Assessment: Baseline assessment prior to course launch focusing on course design issues Formative assessment ( mid-semester) focusing on interactive components Summative assessment at the end of the course (hybrid course survey given to students) Faculty assessment regarding learning outcomes and next steps

College-wide Assessment: Apply the Quality Matters rubric (http://www.qmprogram.org/rubric ) for college-wide purposes. Develop a college-wide strategy for research and data-gathering for these reasons: o encourage continuous improvement of hybrid courses; o facilitate faculty discipline-specific publication as well as publications on the scholarship of teaching and learning . Collect data to inform hybrid development o End of project reflections by faculty o Recorded interviews with faculty o Student surveys

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Financial studies on impact of hybrid courses Strategic planning for future course offerings

Institutional Policies
Copyright o Define and author clear copyright guidelines regarding the faculty use of scholarly articles as well as images, video and other digital media (p. 99 of the Faculty Policy Manual which refers to Board of Regents policy; p. 119 Administrative Policy Manual). o Student guidelines should be included in all hybrid courses. Intellectual Property o Clarify what is owned by the College, what is owned by the course author and what is owned by students (p. 130 134 of the Faculty Policy Manual, p. 119 121 of the Administrative Policy Manual, BoR policy 6.3.3). Accessibility o Provide resources to address these needs for students, staff and faculty in relationship to hybrid courses (see Disability Services at https://my.ggc.edu).

Recommendations
Faculty compensation o Compensation should reflect the acknowledgement that the first few semesters in which a hybrid course is taught, represents 1.5 2 courses.2 o Arrive at a dollar figure/credit hour or a flat rate per course (based on schedule of deliverables). Deans will decide whether to provide additional compensation for significant course revision and/or peer mentoring activities. o Recognize teaching with technology explicitly in the GGC Faculty Manual, section on Promotion. Suggestion: excellence in hybrid course teaching is equivalent to innovative teaching or hybrid course development should count as the equivalent of a book chapter. o Recognize peer mentoring (senior hybrid fellows teaching new fellows) as a form of service to the institution. Accessibility o Provide training in web design, video captioning, audio transcripts that reflect universal course design. Marketing hybrid courses (internally/externally) o Provide visibility in the community to GGCs offering of hybrid courses (Facebook, Second Life, main college website, websites of individual schools, GGC portal). o Create a course code for hybrid courses to easily identify them by prospective and current students and tallied by the College. o Public Affairs work with schools to develop strategies for marketing and recruiting students for hybrid courses.

See The Impact of Online Teaching on Faculty Load (http://www.itdl.org/journal/Jan_04/article04.htm), Faculty participation in asynchronous learning networks: A case study of motivating and inhibiting factors (http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v4n1/pdf/v4n1_schifter.pdf), Factors influencing faculty participation in distance education in postsecondary education in the United States: An institutional study (http://www.westga.edu/~distance/betts13.html), Distributed Learning Impact Evaluation (http://rite.ucf.edu/impactevaluation.htm), and Faculty Satisfaction with Online Teaching: Administrative Support (http://www.sloan-c-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Faculty_Satisfaction).