By Jan Schwartz
I work with people in alternative health care and career type schools. Hybrid education is excellent in these fields where some of the more kinesthetic skills cannot yet be taught online. I say “yet” because who knows what will be possible in the future?
I teach a practice management class in an acupuncture school and it is a hybrid course. No hands on components (as in skill development with needling) are taught, but the nature of the practice is such that the students like having some face to face time because that is how they will be functioning with clients or patients when they graduate. We meet the first week or two in the classroom (I give them the choice at the end of the first meeting), usually one week in the middle, and then again on the final week. That’s 3-4 times out of a 10-week quarter.
If the goal was to do this fully as a distance course, it could easily happen. But the goal is to teach the students in a way that they can learn best and in a way that has relevance to what they will be doing after they graduate. These students are adults, almost all of them with undergraduate degrees and many with graduate degrees. Most have had some online experience, and all are technologically savvy enough to have an easy time navigating around a course site.
I don’t understand the need to have education be either-or — either face-to-face or fully online. Or even to push for fully online or face to face. What about the students’ needs/desires? Their own objectives for a course? The students I teach are from all over southern AZ and some drive a distance of 100+ miles to get to school several days a week, yet they choose to do that, both for the reputation of the school and for the human contact with their classmates. They love having a hybrid course and think this is the best of both worlds. I posted online the material we would cover in the face to face classes in case they couldn’t make it — but they all did.
Education for students is for the student to learn something. Education for the teacher is a field of employment, and our job is to not only help students learn in an environment that works for them but to help them find answers to the questions that will help them succeed. The practice management course I teach (that’s a fancy name for a business course) is to assist them in developing a plan that they can run with when they graduate. This is a simplistic description, but in a nutshell that’s what I do. All students do not want to do the same thing so they have different questions, different ideas, different needs.
What they all have in common is the current need for flexibility and the future need to describe themselves and what they do to real people. They will interact with patients on a daily basis, and they will interact with the larger healthcare field on a periodic basis. Part of what I do in the face to face class is bring in a panel of other professionals so the students can have a conversation with the panelists to help them build their confidence. Not all health care practitioners are accepting of acupuncture, and this gives the students a chance to practice their “pitch,” as it were. The students asked for this opportunity.
As teachers, we are not even on the same page with the definition of hybrid or blended learning. To make a generalization about what is the right method of delivery in education or where education must go are mistakes. Students’ needs and, yes, their opinions do matter.
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Daniel Herrera: "As a Mexican American, I know that words of identity are powerful; so to discuss white privilege with my professor and classmates in a face-to-face class would have been terrifying and impossible" (Judith McDaniel, "
Cathy Gunn: "Traditional methods for effecting change at my institution aren’t getting us even to a trickle yet, let alone to thinking about or planning for a wave!" (
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
“I don’t understand the need to have education be either-or — either face-to-face or fully online. Or even to push for fully online or face to face. What about the students’ needs/desires?”
Suppose, Jan, there is a potential student who needs your course who lives 200+ miles from your campus. Or even further away: in Ghana, say, or Nigeria. Or anywhere in the world that does not now have faculty trained as you are trained, but who would like the knowledge and the skill you have.
In such situations, you have to choose: it’s either all online learning or none at all.
Or: if you already have a campus built and staffed with experienced faculty , and you are content to serve only students who live within 100+ miles, or who can change their lives and come live in your community, you don’t have to choose.
Otherwise you have to choose.
Steve, You are absolutely right. If a course can be all online and it works best for the students that way, then great. I was talking about more about making institutional decisions that the program needs to be all online or all face to face. In the course I teach, if students are unable to come to class they can do the whole thing online. They chose to come to class. I only ask that they let me know so I don’t have to show up if no one else does.
Mostly I was responding to what sounded to me, in some other articles, that hybrid courses were a waste of time and energy. In my experience, they are not.
please excuse the grammar in the reply–mixed tenses.
Things change. As today’s young people grow up with electronic immersion, they will expect a large portion of their lives to be lived online. It will be second nature for them.
I’m guessing that sports, drama, etc. will remain F2F activities.
That’s true, Harry. I think we will move more and more to fully online, but even in sports, drama, etc. there are some things that might work well in a blended course. There is no doubt that given a choice of being on campus everyday vs, say twice a week, the latter will usually win. People just need to be creative in their teaching and asking students what they want generally helps with finding creative solutions even in courses we think may need to be f2f.
Jan,
I agree with you that:
Education for students is for the student to learn something. Education for the teacher is a field of employment, and our job is to not only help students learn in an environment that works for them but to help them find answers to the questions that will help them succeed.
I think that saying that education can only happen one way or another ignores the fundamentals of good education. I have taught f2f, hybrid, and online and I have seen strengths and weaknesses in each as a delivery format, for me as an instructor and for the students. Not all students learn well f2f and not all students learn well online. F2f is not convenient for all students; neither is online convenient for all students. Certain content may lend itself better to one format than another. Therefore, I like understanding how to use all kinds of deliveries so I can be flexible in designing a course which meets a variety of student educational needs and learning styles. In the unlikely event a student in Nigeria wanted to take one of my courses, I have the knowledge and experience to create a course that would allow that person to participate, and hopefully learn something.