Hybrid teaching is an alternative for on campus teaching and distance teaching. The suitability of hybrid teaching for a course depends on many factors such as the resources available, contents of the course as well as the needs of the teacher and students participating in the course. When weighing the pros and cons of hybrid teaching one should take into consideration what are the alternatives. The alternatives are usually teaching that happens completely on campus or remotely or having two separate sessions for students on campus and those participating remotely.
Pros of hybrid teaching:
- expands participation opportunities for both teachers and students
- enables teaching remote and on campus participants simultaneously
- enables real time encounters and peer learning between remote and on campus participants
- fosters unity and sense of belonging in a group
Cons of hybrid teaching:
- requires pedagogical design work specific to hybrid teaching
- smooth implementation may require additional resources such as suitable facilities or – equipment
- may require additional work or human resources during the teaching situations
- remote and on campus participants work differently and must be acknowledged in group specific ways
- remote and on campus participants is not equal
- hybrid teaching is not the best option for all kinds of teaching and learning sitations
Choosing hybrid teaching
Hybrid teaching provides an opportunity to meet the entire group in one session, but it is rare that the entire course work is done together. Thus, hybrid teaching is more often a hybrid learning space and a teaching situation rather the method used for the whole course. When planning a course, it is worthwhile to consider when it would be essential for the whole group to be together in the same space. Such situations may include, introductory lectures or orientation, support and guidance for assignments, learning situations related to the content of lecture recordings, or the presentation of group tasks and other assignments.
The pros of hybrid teaching lie in cooperative and synchronized learning, where students in particular are supposed interact with each other and the teacher. Long lectures, independent work, time consuming group assignments and laboratory work are usually better done with alternative means and hybrid teaching situations are just a complimenting parts of the whole course. When hybrid or remote teaching is combined with on campus teaching with independent work and pre-existing learning materials the course as a whole may be more of an implementation of blended learning that uses hybrid teaching and flipped classroom methods instead of pure hybrid teaching. This makes little difference when hybrid teaching is implemented but it is good to understand the difference in terminology.
Read more:
- Hybrid teaching tips
- Panopto’s blog post about the differences between hybrid teaching, blended learning and flipped classroom.
- A guide to help designing and implementing Hybrid-Flexible courses.