Reflections on Evolution:
Face-to-Face, Online, Hybrid

Summary: Moving from a completely online course to a hybrid course is the result of 4 years of evolution involving students, their computer literacy, and the amount of time needed by the instructor to adequately assess thousands of audio and text files each semester.

Background: After over 20 years experience in the classroom, I began teaching Elementary French online in the spring semester, 2002, along with colleagues in Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. We were technology-friendly folks and we loved a challenge. It was a challenge; partially because we pioneers in the Foreign Languages Department were told it couldn’t be done and we wanted to prove the naysayers wrong, partially because it was really hard to rethink what we did in the classroom to adapt it to the online medium. There was a fear that we would draw away students from our colleagues teaching in the classroom, so must of us designed our courses with few or no on-campus meetings. Our thought was that we would attract students that wouldn’t otherwise enroll at CCSF, which was partially true, especially at first.  Our adventures are chronicled in the proceedings of Digital Stream, Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Cultures, Volumes 2&3, and Volume 4, LARC Press, San Diego State University.

There were many successes. Two of my colleagues received recognition from the State Chancellor’s Office for excellence in course design, and one of my part-time colleagues obtained a full-time job at another school because she was willing and able to teach online. We attracted many students to our program. It was also rewarding for us as teachers as we met people involved in the online program from other departments that we never would have met otherwise, enlarging our community of colleagues.

The Decision: Recently, after teaching my course completely online for several years, I decided to reintegrate face-to-face meetings, making the course a hybrid. Still officially considered “online” by the state, since over 51%of the content will be delivered online, my course will contain eight 2-hour face to face meetings for a total of 16 hours (the traditional version of my course meets 3 hours on one evening per week for 18 weeks – 54 hours).

My department chair likes this model, because he believes it will offer a better foundation for students, and because if other teachers adopt it, it will make scheduling rooms much easier for him. It may also draw students interested in the flexibility the hybrid format offers. I hope it will make the oral component of the class easier to manage. **

As a TA at UC Berkeley, many years ago, I could not imagine an effective language course other than one that met at least one hour per day, 5 days a week. Since that time, especially since entering the community college world, I’ve learned that there can be other models of instruction that work for busy working adults at a commuter school.

My fully online course required students to interact synchronously in a text-only chat room and asynchronously on a discussion board within WebCT. Students also completed assignments that required them to record sound files which were also uploaded into WebCT using the assignment tool.  (Our school could not afford to use Wimba or other available tools for sound production. I opted not to use VOIP tools such as Skype, because of the number of passwords and user names that students collected for the course – for WebCT, the CCSF online language lab, the Quia workbook that came with the textbook, and so on.) I found that I spent so much time downloading, listening to, assessing, commenting on, uploading, these sound files that the workload for this single 3-unit course was enormous and was becoming almost untenable. 

Additionally, since we have no student technology help desk at our school, I was responsible for helping students with all the problems they had installing and using Audacity (a relatively easy to use, free audio recorder), WebCT, and the various plug-ins needed to access the online audio and video used in the course.  I provided online handouts and support, answered questions in the discussion board, but even so, spent much time with individual emails about using the tools, not the course content.

One might think that students would have higher levels of computer literacy now than before, but I found that since more people are now at ease using Internet browsers, email, and the like, that many more people now feel comfortable signing up for an online course.  Just a few years ago, it was only the truly tech-savvy that ended up in our classes.

Previously the majority of my online students did not come to campus at all. Recently, though, I've noticed that most of my online students are involved in a program of study combining online and on-campus offerings.

My new hybrid course will use the Internet for what it does best; drill, written work, some dynamic presentations that can be viewed over and over by students for review, for drill, for written testing, for contact with authentic documents, audio, and video, from the Francophone world, and more.  We’ll use the classroom for what it offers; synchronous communication, oral presentations, conversation practice, and just getting together, freeing me from hours of file uploads. I’m looking forward to this “new” experience, again.