Shi Min's Story: Getting Advice

Getting Advice

Narrator: "Shi Min decides she is going to reach out to her colleague, Tali. Tali listens to Shi Min's sticking points and explains her experience switching to a hybrid classroom."  

Shi Min: "Morning Tali, do you still have time to talk through what I sent in my email?" 

Tali: "Of course, Shi Min, I am happy to help. This was about you thinking of switching to Hybrid learning, right?" 

Shi Min: "Yes exactly! I just have been struggling with my labs and have been looking at hybrid teaching to increase the flexibility around my on-ground class."  

Tali: "Well for me it really helped remove some of the pressure I had around the class schedule. I started by moving all my lectures online using Panopto, hosting the asynchronous recordings in my Canvas shell." 

Shi Min: "If you moved all your lectures online, what did you do in class?" 

Tali: "Well, I instead either have activities that support or are supported by the lecture I also want to be mindful of how much time I am asking them to work through material. If I move an hour long lecture online, I wouldn’t have an activity the same day. If the online lecture is 30 minutes, I might do a 30 minute in class activity with optional review afterwards, or might just try to move the activity online. I am able to decide based on the objectives of the lesson and what I prefer to do on-ground."  

Shi Min: "I like that flexibility, but I am finding my students are struggling to come prepared to labs and don’t know how moving things hybrid would change that."  

Tali: "That reminds me of my in-class discussion activities. Students just weren't doing the readings and were coming underprepared to the in-class group discussions. What I did for example was I moved my discussions to an online annotation tool, Perusall, and had students analyze text, give comments and discuss with the rest of the class asynchronously. Students were able to model correct behavior and it gave students struggling with the text peer feedback to work from. As a result of freeing up class time, I was able to build in review sessions where I could help clarify ideas brought up in the asynchronous discussion and help catch up leaners falling behind." 

Shi Min: "Oh, interesting! That sounds similar to what students have been asking for. More time with the content to prepare for the lab, and more time afterwards to debrief. If I move my lectures online I can make them available well in advance and increase the flexibility of my on-ground sessions." 

Tali: "Exactly! I gravitated towards this new course design because it moved a lot of the knowledge building and research online. That meant I was able to choose on-ground activities that I preferred to monitor in real time. With more materials online, I was also able to reduce the amount of required in-class time and give students flexibility on whether they come to class or not because all of my content was living in Canvas. Then they could attend review sessions when they needed the extra support."

Part 2 of 3