Hybrid Courses

In today's information society, it is becoming increasingly common for schools to offer hybrid courses for their students. Instead of consisting solely of a lecture and discussion or existing only online, this new type of course makes use of both online and offline aspects to enhance the learning experience. After some brief searching online, I found that this is not an uncommon practice among universities. Many pages came up in my results from websites of various universities explaining exactly what a hybrid course is. These schools involved names such as UW-Milwaukee, Northern Virginia Community College, the University of Washington-Bothell, and others. Though these schools may have explained the concept slightly differently, they all followed the same general pattern: all of them said that hybrid courses make use of both online and offline components to create a new learning environment for students.

As for our own hybrid course, LIS 201, I found that the online components helped a lot in showing concepts that were discussed in the classroom in a more traditional manner. Whenever we talked about a concept in class, it was followed up with a relevant activity to do online that further displayed that concept and helped me to better understand the course material. While I did find the online component of the course to be helpful and effective, I also felt that the face-to-face interaction with other students is what was most helpful to my learning. It allowed me to discuss a concept more in-depth with a person and then supplement that discussion with an online activity. Overall, though, I learned a lot from the online part of this course. In addition to elaborating on concepts discussed in class, it also taught me how to effectively use a variety of different online resources like blogs. I would say that in the future, the UW should definitely make use of online components in more classes, but also take care to make sure that the online aspects of the courses do not eclipse the in-person ones. While online parts of a hybrid course can greatly supplement class discussions, it is difficult for them to completely replace those discussions, especially since there are so many different learning styles among people.

In the overall course of LIS 201, I feel that course lectures and readings have helped me to see more and better perspectives of my own online experiences. This didn't just happen while I was doing our weekly online activities, either. The class materials and discussions made me more conscious of exactly what I was doing online and what that meant for the information society. They made me consider what possible strengths and weaknesses accompany our new information technologies in our ever-changing world. I do think, however, that this would be different in a class that isn't focused completely on the vast world of information that exists online. Instead, the online components of the course would make students conscious of other things in their lives and how that course's material affects everything they do, both online and offline, in their everyday lives.