Text CITL Professor R: Flipped Hybrid with In-Person and Remote Students

What challenges did you experience in transitioning to this hybrid style of delivery? Or what attracted you to this style?

I started planning to flip my course when the pandemic happened and was working on lecture videos and more interesting things to do with groups in class. Then my Dept Head asked if I would open the course to online remote students to increase enrollment. Since I was already used to remote teaching I figured it wouldn’t be very different. Wrong. What I didn’t understand was how hard it is, at least at first, to switch attention from the students who are in front of me to those who are online and largely out of sight—how to include them. After a few rough starts I began breaking the class period into segments with different tasks and expectations. That helped to make things more predictable, and once students got with the program things began to flow better and it’s been mostly fine since. Also figuring out room and presentation technology was very challenging. My department IT helped me get set up with what to plug in where and how to switch views and see students, but it’s not ideal and I feel like I’m fumbling around a lot which is bad for students to see. Still, I’m completely sold on the flipped part—that’s been really good. Students seem more involved, and I've gotten to know them a lot better.

Describe a typical class session (or week's schedule)-whatever gives us an inside look at how it works

I break my class into four segments: some kind of check-in, a short lecture, group work, and debrief. Check-in may be just talking with students finding out how they are—there’s so much stress these days. Then not everyone does the reading or video watching before class, so I might ask a few broad questions, or have them open Canvas and do a short quiz or write a few answers and submit online right there. I may also ask them to add questions to this google doc we have running all the time. We cross off things when they get answered. Things like that. Then I give a high-level review of the lecture—big ideas, and more complex things, and we do whole class Q&A. I cold-call everyone in the room and online, so they stay interested. I just tried this tool called Mentimeter that lets you add questions and quiz things during the presentation and that’s pretty interesting. I love cool tools and I’ll try anything. Then it’s group work time and I always have something prepared, something they need to go deeper on. Mostly for this I ask the remote students to go into breakout rooms online so there isn’t much mixing with in-person. I’ve also tried random 'buddy' assignments connecting in-class and online students. Meh. It gets noisy and a little crazy; not sure anyone likes it that much. Oh, I forgot that I always ask two students to watch chat and watch for hands raised online since I can’t see everything. I have this random name generator so it’s two different students every class. Then we all debrief together, digitally--remote and in-person--using a Jamboard or Padlet or even an online concept map to organize ideas. I don’t have any asynch students, but I do notice that students like to go back to these digital pages later on to review or add things. I do too.

What communication (or learning) strategies do you use or find most effective?

I think I mentioned the importance of keeping on top of the including thing—I never want the remote students to feel less-than. I’m pretty organized and told you about breaking the class up. That really helped. I also worked with someone at CITL to get my Canvas space tighter. That’s when I realized that maybe I wasn’t so great at explaining things. It really helped to have someone else read and follow my instructions so students wouldn’t be confused when they're asked to do group work or other activities. Probably the best learning strategy for me has been to use digital tools online. This way everyone can be working together, wherever they are, and we can all see things happening in real time. I really like Padlet, although there’s a limit of pages you can have with the free account, and I signed up for a free educator account with MIRO that I’m playing around with.

Advice for faculty who are just starting out?

Plan. Everything. I thought transitioning my course to being a flipped course was challenging, and it was, but speaking to and really including remote students who you can barely see and hear is a different set of challenges. It has gotten easier, and I think I’m pretty good at it now, but there’s definitely a learning curve. So the best advice I’d offer someone starting out is to definitely flip their course, and try the remote hybrid thing, just maybe not at the same time!