Comments on: What’s up with hybrids at PCC?

By: Josephine

Josephine — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:50:40 +0000

This is so timely! Thank you. Many of us are talking about contingency planning for teaching parts of our courses online, so I’m going to make a prediction that we emerge from this COVID-19 crisis with many more innovative ideas that we can use in generating new Hybrid classes. We will still need the funding support for training, but we will be ready!

By: Debby Machuca

Debby Machuca — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 21:54:52 +0000

I would welcome the opportunity to meld minds with others that teach classes that have labs. The biology SAC policy is that labs are done face to face. I believe there is an opportunity to blend, the fact to face lab with the face to face lecture portion to create a great learning opportunity. If others are interested, I would love to begin a discussion with other faculty on what this would look like in their courses.

By: Greg Kaminski

Greg Kaminski — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:20:56 +0000

Thanks for sharing these excellent strategies Kathy! That’s a great idea to show the class about how much time a student will likely need to spend in order to get an “A” in the class, and strategies for how to study as well. Time management is so crucial for a hybrid.
How true that it doesn’t work well to just keep adding activities to the online part of an already robust class without giving up something else. This is so easy to do, and the result is the “course and a half syndrome” as discussed by Cub Kahn in his 9-minute video “Effective Practices for Successful Hybrid Course Design.” If there’s an instructor who only has 9 minutes to devote to this topic, this video is a great place to start. (Hybrid design resources page)

By: Kathy Carrigan

Kathy Carrigan — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 01:47:41 +0000

Very good article Greg and all. I like the graph that shows the expectation of the typical hours of work for a 4 credit class, is about 12 hours, I remind our OL team that it is easy to continue to add things do to, videos to watch or activities students will love to OL (parts of) classes. I caution them to keep in mind that if you have a robust course to begin with, then consider removing activities, videos or things to do before adding more.
I have a detailed list of how much time I “think” an A student is spending on each learning activity in our class. This is based on communicating with A students. I share this in the course so students can plan their time accordingly. I have one student who followed this last year and got A’s on everything, after starting the course terrified!
It is important guide your students to how to study, and not expect them to know how to study in college.

By: Jaimie Powell

Jaimie Powell — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 22:53:57 +0000

The importance of hybrid classes in the sciences is often missed . Many of our classes have required, face-to-face lab or field components and cannot be taught fully online. More support for these classes is needed.

By: Greg Kaminski

Greg Kaminski — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 22:33:10 +0000

I agree Val, it would be quite helpful. Two of our former hybrid mentors taught hybrid courses that had a lab component (Gretchen Gebhardt and Debby Machuca). Even though the consultation guidance has ended, they might be happy to have a brief chat by phone sometime to share a strategy that worked for them. We might hear more about this in a future blog post as well. Thanks for your comment!

By: Val Brenneis

Val Brenneis — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 18:35:11 +0000

This is very helpful, thanks! I would love to see PCC support training for faculty that would like to transition to hybrid courses for lab science classes.