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Hybrid courses to grow this fall

3 colleges to offer multidisciplinary, 'dynamic' classes

by Barrett Goldsmith
The Daily Cougar

After testing the water this semester, UH administrators are ready to plunge headfirst into the future with a full slate of hybrid courses this fall.

Hybrid courses combine traditional lecture-based courses with nontraditional elements like online multimedia presentations, museum tours and online testing.

"This is a much more dynamic way of learning than simply reading and saying the material," assistant art professor Rex Koontz said. "We can teach students in ways we never thought possible. By allowing students to see something and touch it, we give them that context that's missing from traditional courses."

Koontz was one of a handful of instructors who incorporated a limited hybrid curriculum in his spring classes. For one of his art history courses, Koontz commissioned a series of five-minute digital video packages from several faculty members. Students were able to view these mini-lectures on the Web as a supplement to Koontz's lectures.

"We've got an incredible wealth in terms of faculty, and we wanted a way to leverage those talents," Koontz said. "We have some faculty members with some very specialized knowledge, and now we can allow a lot more students to take advantage of that expertise."

But as hybrid education expands at UH from a pet project to a large-scale operation, administrators and staff must tackle the logistical and financial concerns of implementing a completely different method of instruction, officials said.

"Hybrids are expensive to build and expensive to implement," John Antel, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, said. "But once you've made the initial switch, it becomes more cost-effective because of the decreased amount of physical planning. You're not having to buy all these textbooks and print all these materials."

The courses will be funded internally, without any special fees, though the participating colleges -- CLASS, the Bauer College of Business and the College of Technology -- each received $25,000 grants for start-up expenses.

The total number of hybrid courses this fall will be between 12 and 15, depending on a few classes whose professors have not yet made a decision on whether to incorporate hybrid elements. Nearly all the hybrid courses fall into the lower-division core category.

Marshall Schott, director of educational technology and outreach, has taken the reins of the program's administrative implementation.

"The most difficult thing has been developing the administrative support structure," Schott said. "Ideally, down the road we'll have special section codes and required meeting times that tip students off that it's a hybrid course. That piece we haven't finished yet."

Administrators and faculty are banking the rewards of hybrid education will far outweigh the challenges.

"If you have students only meeting once a week, the benefits for them and the University are seemingly endless," Antel said. "They'll have more flexibility, more time and they won't have to engage in the Darwinian struggle for parking so often.

"As for the University, we'll save time, we'll save money and we'll save space. It's a new method of doing business, and we're getting better at it all the time," Antel said.
 

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