Hybrid Courses in an Information (Internet) Society

When I searched for hybrid courses I had a hard time finding specific classes, but I found various schools that offered them throughout the country. Most of the information was very general, explaining the concept of a "hybrid" or "blended" class, and some gave their opinion on why these classes were beneficial.

The hybrid classes at UW-Milwaukee seemed to be most similar to the format of LIS 201. Some of the other colleges like Oklahoma and Northeastern University seemed to describe online courses that were supplemented with the occasional face-to-face classroom time. They often met a lot less often, maybe once a month or a few times in a semester. UW-Milwaukee's page about hybrid classes says, "A hybrid course is designed to integrate face-to-face and online activities so that they reinforce, complement, and elaborate one another, instead of treating the online component as an add-on or duplicate of what is taught in the classroom."

Even after learning so much about the Internet in our FIG, I feel that I benefit more from face-to-face interaction in the classroom. I think that it is really important to be able to talk concepts through to fully understand them. On the blog and wiki we can try to explain concepts, and sometimes we can have discussion through the comments. But we do not feed off each others' online activities in the same way that we do in the classroom.  However, I think the blog posts made up for some of the things that didn't get said in discussion. Sometimes we don't have enough time to fully discuss everything or people are quiet because they either can't think of anything to say on the spot or don't want to share. So the blog is a way for people to share their ideas more cohesively. I was already familiar and comfortable with blogger before this class, but I definitely feel more comfortable with wikis now. I think that we could have even used the wiki more, and I think that there are different courses that would benefit from using the wiki to post assignments. UW-Madison professors should really consider incorporating blogs into their instruction, because it is extremely helpful to have resources that we can use and the assignments explicity explained in one place. I didn't have to question what I was supposed to do, because everything was laid out on the blog. There are other classes that I forget exactly what the instructor wanted us to do, and that makes it difficult to complete the assignment.

The blog really connected with all of the classes in our FIG. It made me think about the reading about blogs and hyperlinks in LIS 201, and we had several readings on the same topic in CA 346. We also talked about Web 2.0 in both LIS 301 and CA 346, and bloggers are part of the user-generated content frenzy associated with Web 2.0. I feel like a blog on subjects other than the Internet could still function in similar terms, the posts would just be a lot less about the process of collecting information and researching, and more about the content of the class.

Overall, I really enjoyed the "hybrid" aspect of this class. I can't imagine a class about the Internet and the Information Society without some incorporation of online activities.