Design and Assessment for Hybrid Courses: Insights and Overviews

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the transition from traditional to hybrid courses, demonstrating that hybrid delivery can be as effective or better, with improved student retention, based on five years of empirical data.

Contribution

It provides definitions for hybrid course approaches and evaluates long-term data showing benefits of hybrid over traditional delivery.

Findings

Hybrid courses are at least as effective as traditional ones.

Hybrid delivery improves student retention.

Five years of data support hybrid course benefits.

Abstract

Technology is influencing education, providing new delivery and assessment models. A combination between online and traditional course, the hybrid (blended) course, may present a solution with many benefits as it provides a gradual transition towards technology enabled education. This research work provides a set of definitions for several course delivery approaches, and evaluates five years of data from a course that has been converted from traditional face-to-face delivery, to hybrid delivery. The collected experimental data proves that the revised course, in the hybrid delivery mode, is at least as good, if not better, than it previously was and it provides some benefits in terms of student retention.