Module #6 Module Objectives:

By the end of this module you will: Be able to identify a hybrid course Recognize a web-enhanced course Understand the student services currently available and under development at Sierra College Know the importance of actively participating in the evaluation process

Whats a Hybrid Course

A hybrid course is one that is not fully online and in which you are required to complete a certain percentage of your work online and the other on campus face-to-face with your instructor and peers. Hybrid courses are very popular with departments such as math and science in which you may need to participate in a lab component. In some instances a math course may have a steep learning curve and working on problems and formulas may require an in class session on a weekly or other regularly scheduled basis. Hybrid courses are becoming very popular as instructors who had no original intention of teaching online begin to see the value of having material available electronically for their students. Providing the lectures, assignments and handouts online allows an instructor to design their face-to-face segment of their course around discussion, lab assignments and working on complex formulas and problems. How an instructor sets up the hybrid is up to them and their division. In most cases a hybrid will require that youre on campus fty percent of the time and online half of the time but the ratio of online versus face-to-face is dependent upon the course curriculum. In addition to online and hybrid courses, Sierra College now offers all of our instructors the opportunity to add a Blackboard component to their traditional courses resulting in what is referred to as a web-enhanced course. When an instructor utilizes our course management system in their classroom their students are able to retrieve any posted information at anytime. There are some instructors who no longer distribute hard copies of handouts but have you go online and read the material or print it out if necessary. In addition to handouts, instructors are able to post lectures, powerpoint presentations, and audio and video les. The most common reason that faculty use Blackboard is to post grades. Several will even do their testing online and require that you complete it within a designated period of time. Others will even post discussion questions each week so that you can carry over the topic of conversation onto the board. That way over time a discussion can develop and those that would have resisted participating in the classroom may open up and contribute to the richness of the discussion.

What were seeing happen as Blackboard becomes popular campus wide is that students in a traditional classroom are pushing their instructors into using the system. When they are exposed to it in one class and see that they can have easy access to their grades and other course information they begin to see its value and encourage, or almost demand, their other instructors to utilize the system also. What power technology has given to the student!

Student Services and Resources at Sierra College

Online students are entitled to all of the same resources provided to those students who enroll in the traditional classroom. This is referred to as having equal access to all campus services for all students. Student service areas that should be available to online students include: Application Financial Aid Schedule of courses Registration Counseling Library - electronic databases and resources Tutoring Writing Center Bookstore Help Desk for course management system

At Sierra College we are currently working to achieve the goal of offering all of these services as we begin to implement more online resources on our campus. Currently we have the application, schedule and registration available online. We have both an online counselor and a reference librarian available to our distant students. We are in the process of establishing an Online Writing Center and anticipate it opening in the spring of 2009. Online tutoring is another service we would like to offer. Our bookstore is owned and operated by Barnes and Noble. Online orders are accepted and books can be delivered to your home for an additional fee. Although the Distance Learning department is staffed Monday through Friday between the hours of 7:30am and 5:00pm there is currently no help desk for after hours when a student has a problem with Blackboard. This issue is currently being discussed and plans are in the process of how we are going to deliver this much needed service to our online students. By the end of 2008 we should have a plan in place with the goal of having the service available for all online students by the beginning of 2009. It may be that we end up with an outside vendor to deliver this service but whether it be conducted from on campus or off campus it is one that is vitally important to our students and recognized as being so by the technology department of the campus.

The Importance of the Evaluation Process

Feedback is one of the most important elements of the educational process and is no different when courses are conducted online. This can be an ongoing process all semester and should be used as an opportunity for an instructor to make sure that the students in a course are comprehending the material that is presented. Within the Blackboard system it is very simple to prepare an anonymous survey to see if students are indeed on the right track. The survey could be created as a formative evaluation tool which marks whether or not a student has understood a particular concept or topic that has just been presented. If there is something unclear, then the instructor can review the material covered and possibly present it in a manner that is more informative for the students. At the conclusion of the course a summative evaluation can be distributed. Again this can be done within the Blackboard system as a survey. Although this evaluation will have been created by your instructor it should give you the opportunity to express yourself in terms of how the course was structured, how the instructor performed and what your overall learning experience was in the course. In addition to an instructor providing you with their own personal evaluation you also need to be aware of the standard evaluation process for our online instructors. Our instructors will be evaluated on a given cycle which is determined by whether or not they are full-time or part-time. These evaluations will actually come from the Distance Learning department and Ill be sending you an email requesting that you complete the evaluation. This will be a standard evaluation that will be used for all online faculty. It is actually delivered to you through a separate course shell which ensures that the instructor has no access to the evaluation and that it remains anonymous. I give you a one-week period of time to complete the evaluation and I cant encourage you enough to do so. These evaluations are tools that we use to ensure that our faculty teaching online are delivering the best quality courses possible. So in the future when you see an email that comes from me, please open it and accept my request to you to complete the evaluation. Not only will the institution appreciate your comments but ultimately your instructor will also.