Thriving in a Hybrid Course

When I began this year with plans to teach a course on "Thriving in the Digital Age" (for details, see my earlier post), I wasn't sure how well it would work. Would I be able to create a hybrid course, a combination of digital and face-to-face learning?

(A little background: For the past five years, I've been co-teaching courses designed for a small group of homeschooled students. The actual composition of the group has changed slightly over the years as families have come and gone, but the format has stayed pretty much the same: with two parents as co-teachers, we've organized weekly discussions, student presentations, and team debates. In between classes, students have worked mostly on their own or in pairs. The only online portions were the websites, which I created for posting assignments and other course information. The students checked the websites perhaps once a week.)

First, I wanted to see if we could extend our time together by adding an online component. I chose Google+ for our discussions (kept private by limiting posts to a Circle that includes only the class participants). At the beginning of the semester, I gave the group Guidelines for Participating in Online Discussions (derived largely from Lehigh University's "Guidelines for Discussion Board Writing"). They hardly needed the guidelines, though: they already seemed to have a natural instinct for the length, style, and appropriate content of effective posts. Perhaps that comes from being digital natives?

So far, the Google+ discussions have been going well. The response to the combination of in-person and online discussions seems to be very positive. The introverted students, who tend to talk less during our face-to-face discussions, are happily asserting themselves in the online forum. All of the students are contributing, reading and responding to each other's posts. As for me, I enjoy being able to share extra videos, articles and questions during the week instead of feeling like I have to cover everything in a two-hour class. I'm also thrilled to see the interesting things the kids have been finding and sharing. Their comments are insightful, and they ask great questions. 

There's another change this year as well. Since I no longer have another parent working with me, I'm relying on the students as co-teachers. (Credit goes to Howard Rheingold, whose Social Media Literacies Syllabus for High School Students provided most of these ideas.) I've noticed that this type of participation seems to increase the level of engagement: during the weeks that students are responsible for co-teaching, they work harder on assimilating the material so they can come up with good, thought-provoking questions for their peers. They're also using Skype, chat, or (less popular) a wiki project space to collaborate with their co-teaching partners.

A Few Technical and Logistical Details

During the first couple of weeks, we started each class with a short (20 to 40 minute) "technical workshop." Any problems with accessing or navigating sites were quickly resolved. By now, nearly seven weeks into the course, everyone is proficient with Google+ and getting better at wikis, so we're coasting. I still set aside a few minutes at the beginning of every class to make sure the students have a chance to ask questions about the various tools they're expected to use for online communication. Soon enough, we'll be tinkering with other online tools, and the workshops will become important again.

Since we already have our computers in front of us at the start of each class, I no longer bother with printed handouts. I simply make all the materials available online and encourage students to use their laptops as needed to refer to them. Most of the time, we're still paying more attention to each other than to our devices, but that may be because we don't usually keep the computers on or open the entire time. My assumption is that we will spend less and less time with our computers as everyone becomes more comfortable with the tools we're using.

I'm still experimenting with different methods for making course files available, specifically:

1. On the website, I'm using the File Cabinet template that Google Sites provides to create a page for linking to course files. Students can go to the page and click on a link to access documents quickly and easily. I can add files in several ways: uploading them from a folder on my computer, linking to online articles, or connecting to files I've stored on Google Drive. 
2. I'm using Google Drive (and Google Docs) to organize and share files. I started by creating a folder labeled with the course title. Then, I connected Google Drive to my computer, so now I can easily drag and drop files into the folder. Being able to view the files on my computer while also making them accessible to students—all in one step—saves me a lot of time. By linking to the files from the website, I can provide students with easy access to all the course documents. 

I've used Wikispaces to create the class wiki. I like being able to set up Project Teams, and the idea of using a wiki to collaborate on drafts of class notes, lexicons, and discussion questions is appealing. Unfortunately, the response from the students has been lukewarm thus far. My goal for the next six weeks is to encourage them to work with the wiki and see if we might be able to come up with more interesting ways to use it.