How do you design a Hybrid Course?

The Design Framework

When we are faced with making changes in our course, it can be important to start with a plan. To guide our changes we will use an abridged instructional design model made of the following stages:

Analyze Stage

Design Stage

Implementation Stage

For the purpose of our module, each stage is marked by reflection questions to guide your thinking.

Analyze

A good place to start when designing a Hybrid course is to consider it as a framework for solving problems.

Hybrid learning is a way to maintain the effective and engaging aspects of on-ground teaching, and mix it with the benefits of online flexibility. To do this we need to analyze our course and determine what problems we might be able to solve by reducing time on-ground.

Design

After analyzing your course our next step is to think through what can be substituted for online experiences.

Moving a course online is not an exact science, but by using your course analysis we can design to maximize the benefits for us and our students. Designing a hybrid course requires substitution. We substitute activities for online flexibility to give us more time doing the activities that benefit from being on-ground.

Implement

With your design outlined, now you can build the experience. Find the tech to fit your needs and ensure you and your students can be successful. 

Now that we have activities and materials that we can substitute online, think through what tools you have in Canvas and what technology you will need to integrate into the course to be successful.

The next section of the module will be a scenario. As you work through try to think back to these reflections and compare your responses to the example decisions the instructor makes.