Teaching during times of disruption requires creative and flexible thinking about how you, the instructor, can support students in achieving essential course learning objectives. This mini-course offers suggestions in looking to continue offering a student-centered learning experience in a remote or online learning environment.

While the process will no doubt feel unfamiliar and at times frustrating and overwhelming, try as much as possible to be patient. There will always be hiccups, but be willing to switch tactics if something is not working. Above all, stay focused on making sure the students know what they need to do, and keep a close eye on the course learning goals--while you might not be able to teach something exactly the way you imagined, as long as you are still meeting the learning goals of the course, you are doing fine!

The main challenge for a faculty member teaching remotely is to integrate their teaching experience with innovative approaches and tools, all in flexible ways that maintain or improve learning outcomes. One of the most common misconceptions when first transitioning to an online environment is the belief that the instructor has to begin from scratch. This is not true. Most of the face-to-face content can be converted into a digital delivery with some degree of variation.

Blended or Hybrid courses

Courses can be either fully onsite, fully online using a learning management system, like Canvas, or somewhere between the two: partially onsite, and partially online: known as blended or hybrid courses. HyFlex and HyBlend refers to a course that offers flexibility to students by fully creating online and onsite versions of the same course in parallel.

The approach known as “inverted" learning is the belief that technology is most powerfully used outside of the classroom. All of the lecture material is made available online for students to study prior to class. Classroom time, --or real time sessions, invaluable in hybrid classes, can then be used for clarification, amplification, small-group work, problem-solving, and assessment activities based on that material.

Essentially, the transmission of information is moved outside of the classroom, so that class time can be devoted to higher-level assimilation activities. This approach leads to the “flipped classroom”, in which students access the content prior to meeting in class. Canvas, our LMS, serves as a repository, manager, and delivery mechanism for the lecture materials, thus freeing up face-to-face days for active learning, discussion, and activities during which they apply that content.

Some define blended learning as optimizing the achievement of learning objectives by applying the 'right' learning technologies to match the 'right' personal learning style to transfer the 'right' skills to the 'right' person at the 'right' time.

Some of the benefits of blended teaching and learning include extending the reach of the course to more participants due to increased flexibility; increasing both the effectiveness of the course and the completion rate of the course; increasing efficiency of faculty by creating learning opportunities outside of onsite meetings; and increasing exposure to material through a variation of formats. It is important to note that Canvas also provides tools to engage students in a variety of active learning activities in an entirely online environment.

Remote courses

Teaching remotely at TTUHSC, refers to education delivered using our Canvas and WebEx (or Zoom). In some cases, the use of applications such as Kaltura, Power Point, and Articulate, provide solutions for easily preparing content materials for distance delivery: presentations with voice, video, and some interactive features, like quizzing.

Using WebEx or Zoom will allow you to connect to students in real time and for short periods of time, review a shared document and reduce potential feelings of isolation. However, using WebEx or Zoom alone are not appropriate or efficient in managing the delivery of timely content to students, or assist with course organization, the monitoring of student participation or meaningful assignments and assessments.

Using Canvas alone can provide tools for organizing your course, managing content, collecting student work, monitor group interactions, grading, etc. - you can have the entire course packaged within Canvas! When students work asynchronously, they have more time to read, study, problem solve, ‘meet’ with peers, ask questions, and submit their work. You also have more time to engage with students, and Canvas provides monitoring reports regarding student participation, time spent on work, and assessments.

Using a combination of the two, Canvas and WebEx (or Zoom), can address your current needs. Adding in WebEx within Canvas, is even better, because you can provide information and schedule most if not all the course activities in one place. This constitutes a modified version of blended learning: optimizing the achievement of learning objectives by applying the 'right' learning technologies to match the 'right' personal learning style to transfer the 'right' skills to the 'right' person at the 'right' time. The learning activities and tools within Canvas to use will depend on your course learning objectives and your teaching style preferences.

Getting organized to switch to teaching remotely will require some adjustments in how we approach lesson cycles. The approach has to include “flipping” the classroom more. There is no way around it! Students receive content materials in advance: Book chapters, articles, presentations, videos, web links, written lectures, and so on. Then, you provide student instructions on what you expect them to do: Read? Summarize? Memorize? Problem solve? Individually? In teams? And so on. As you set-up these items within Canvas, you provide instructions, due dates, and point value towards their grades. As you get the hang of it, be flexible! You must assess the quality of student work, as well as the quality of your instructions, provide feedback, and more importantly, improve your instructions.

For now, you should not seek course perfection, but a course that is good, because it clearly addresses learning objectives, provides clear instructions to students, fairly assesses their work, and utilizes varied tools for diverse learning experiences.

HyFlex or BlendFlex Courses

This is a term that refers to creating fully online and its identical twin course, fully face-to-face, and students decide which sessions they will attend face-to-face and which ones completely online, asynchronously. This approach is certainly student-centered and requires a lot of planning and effort to deliver the content in two very different modalities. Hence, the term Flexible (Flex) refers to the choice students have to whether attend or not to face-to-face sessions with no learning deficit.

In brief, HyFlex courses allow students to create their own “blend” of online and classroom learning experiences, within the design constraints established by the instructor.

References:

Ko, S., & Rossen, S. (2017). Building an Online Classroom. Teaching Online (pp. 162–196).

Beatty, B. (2014). Hybrid courses with flexible participation: The HyFlex course design. In Practical applications and experiences in K-20 blended learning environments (pp. 153-177). IGI Global.

Watwood, B., Nugent, J., & Deihl, W. (2009). Building from content to community:[Re] thinking the transition to online teaching and learning. Virginia Commonwealth University CTE White Paper, Recuperado de http://www. vcu. edu/cte/pdfs/OnlineTeachingWhitePaper. pdf.

(Re)Thinking the Transition to Online Learning and Teaching

Schimming, L. M. (2008). Measuring medical student preference: a comparison of classroom versus online instruction for teaching PubMed. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 96(3), 217.

Measuring medical student preference-a comparison of classroom versus online instruction for teaching PubMed.pdf

El Mansour, B., & Mupinga, D. M. (2007). Students' positive and negative experiences in hybrid and online classes. College student journal, 41(1), 242.

Students positive and negative experiences in hybrid and online classess-Mansour_and_Mupinga.pdf