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[mathspice]

I didn't see a recent thread about this, so I wanted to get the discussion started again. I'm preparing for a hybrid (math) course. Our class is 50/50 on-campus to OL. I have a few ideas and questions.

Q: How do I encourage attendance (1 day/wk)?
Q: How do I weigh attendance?

One idea (that MAY help answer my questions):
Incorporating Google documents (survey) that will be due before the class meeting; it'll have maybe 5 questions and whose results will be displayed (anonymously) at the beginning of class.

Ok. That's all I have for now. Other ideas?

[dept_geek]

> How do I encourage attendance (1 day/wk)?

Make it worth points. Cover material not covered in the online portion of the course. Presentations are good. Make all assessments during class (no online assessments).

I'm doing the same thing this year, so I'll be following the conversation closely.

[profh]

I've taught several hybrid sections, but for English courses.  I do the following:

Give a quiz that begins at the start of each on-campus class.

Give in-class assignments that are worth points and must be completed in class.

Students complete weekly assignments online, but these are explained and discussed in class.

Material that was completed online for the weekly assignment portion is not on the final exam.  The final exam only covers in class material. 


I don't give points just for showing up.  I don't feel that they should be awarded for that.  It's expected that they come.  Instead, I use quizzes and in-class assignments to encourage attendance. 

From my experience, the students who do not show up for the on-campus meetings do not do the online work.  These students typically fail.  The students who are serious about passing usually will attend the majority of on-campus meetings.

[wanna_writemore]

I've been teaching a hybrid survey course for a few semesters.  I have 10% for on-campus class attendance/participation and then 15% for online discussions, divided into 3 separate grades (5% for each 5 week period of the semester).  The vast majority come to class every week and also participate online.

[kohelet]

I just finished a year of hybrid teaching.  I had success with having graded in-class "events."  Don't know how this would work for math, but students had to participate in two "fishbowl" small group discussions* throughout the semester.  These were guided group discussions that built on work they had done during the previous online session.  Here's the trick:  The schedule was set at the beginning of the semester, but it was unannounced.  Students didn't know when they'd get called.  We had fun with it--I played the theme from The Price is Right playing while I revealed their names on a projected Excel spreadsheet--Johnny Olson was in the middle yelling "Come on down!"  I (being very crafty) made it so that everyone was left with one turn in one of the last two f2f sessions, knowing that even those who had completed their two turns before the last session would still show up for the final exam review.

More generally, be certain that you're not running two parallel courses or two versions of the same course; there should be continuity and minimal duplication as you move between online and f2f sessions.

Developing another hybrid course for next fall, so I'll be interested to see what others have to say, too.


*Fishbowl group discussion--small group sits in an inner circle doing the group discussion/exercise while everyone else sits in an outer circle watching them silently, taking notes, and then we all debrief.

[melba_frilkins]

Why Google docs? Are you not using an actual CMS? Google docs is just so horribly clunky.
---
More generally, my two cents plus:

I've had two semesters experience with hybrid ( 2/3 classroom, 1/3 online) and both were terrible failures. I had no unusual problems with class attendance, however. The hard part was getting the student to do the online stuff. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that the class was poorly advertised to students. In semester 1, it was not clearly marked as a hybrid in the schedule. On the first day of class, fewer than half the students knew it was actually a hybrid, so they weren't exactly prepared or enthused about it. In semester 2, the wise adminicritters had moved all hybrid & online classes out of the regular schedule, so no one signed up for the hybrid until the very end of registration when stragglers were taking anything they could get into. That was a very weak group of students and most would not have taken a hybrid by choice.

Before signing on to teach a hybrid, find out whether the hybrid status of a class is clearly indicated to students via the schedule (both printed and online schedules, if applicable). I will never do a hybrid again unless the administration from the top down is supportive of it and appears to know what they are doing and will properly get the info out to students. I would also want a specific reason to hybridize the given course, or to have it be part of a coordinated campus wide effort to have lots of hybrids available in a meaningful pattern.

I also made the mistake of having the same workload for my hybrid students as in the traditional class. But the hybrid students were missing a day of lecture each week, making the exams harder for them. And then on top of that, in lieu of the missed class day, I made them log in and participate in a discussion forum each week. In other words, they lose a day of lecture content and had extra work to do. What the heck was I thinking?! If I had to do it again, I would set it up as a primarily online course that is enhanced by the live classroom meetings.

Meanwhile I pretty much run my f2f classes as hybrids. Exams are in-class, but quizzes and assignment dropboxes are online as well as supplementary materials. Content overlaps highly between lecture and text/online stuff. Attendance is optional (i.e., highly encouraged but not graded), except on exam days. This works really well.

[conjugate]

Let students know that some (not all by any means) of the examples you work in class will appear on exams; these examples won't be available on-line, where you give them other problem sets, worked examples, and other such things.

This is how I would do it; in addition to making attendance to the f2f¹ parts of the course mandatory and worth (say) 5% to 10% of the grade, there is a clear and compelling reason to attend class.  Also, depending on the class, you may want to emphasize that some test questions will concern the manipulatives² from the lecture.

You may add subtle hints: "It's too bad so many people missed this problem, because I went over it on the 21st, and took questions about it on the 28th, and the people who couldn't be there either day really missed out."

I'll echo the others in suggesting that you let us know how it works out.  Best wishes.

¹ face-to-face, if you didn't know.
² I think that means toys and gadgets the students get to play with during class, but am uncertain.

[mathspice]

Thanks, everyone, for their input.

Why Google docs? Are you not using an actual CMS? Google docs is just so horribly clunky.
---

Melba, I'll PM you with a link to a "survey" that I created in Google docs. I will definitely assign a syllabus/orientation quiz in our CMS for all of my classes, but I really like the features of the Google doc for quick assessments:

* No log in needed by student, they just click on a link to access the quiz/survey;
* Students' work is time stamped;
* At the beginning of class, I can immediately pull up a summary of responses without names attached; nice visuals with bar graphs so that I can say "it looks like some of you may need to work on #4..."

If anyone else would like for me to PM them with my recent survey, just let me know.

[melba_frilkins]

Thanks, everyone, for their input.

Why Google docs? Are you not using an actual CMS? Google docs is just so horribly clunky.
---

* No log in needed by student, they just click on a link to access the quiz/survey;

Ah, no log in needed by student. That's the method to your madness! You can have them do it well before the semester starts before they are able to get into the actual class. That is a great idea. I might steal it and slant it toward scaring online students away. Otherwise those not ready  for it drop during the first week or two and waste slots that other students would have made good use of.

[mathspice]

Thanks, everyone, for their input.

Why Google docs? Are you not using an actual CMS? Google docs is just so horribly clunky.
---

* No log in needed by student, they just click on a link to access the quiz/survey;

Ah, no log in needed by student. That's the method to your madness! You can have them do it well before the semester starts before they are able to get into the actual class. That is a great idea. I might steal it and slant it toward scaring online students away. Otherwise those not ready  for it drop during the first week or two and waste slots that other students would have made good use of.

Yes, I really like the ease of the form function in google docs. I plan. On creating a short form that students will need to complete before our weekly class meeting. I can then display the summary of responses at the beginning of class.

[conjugate]

Thanks, everyone, for their input.

Why Google docs? Are you not using an actual CMS? Google docs is just so horribly clunky.
---

* No log in needed by student, they just click on a link to access the quiz/survey;

Ah, no log in needed by student. That's the method to your madness! You can have them do it well before the semester starts before they are able to get into the actual class. That is a great idea. I might steal it and slant it toward scaring online students away. Otherwise those not ready  for it drop during the first week or two and waste slots that other students would have made good use of.

Yes, I really like the ease of the form function in google docs. I plan. On creating a short form that students will need to complete before our weekly class meeting. I can then display the summary of responses at the beginning of class.

I was surprised to find that my current institution relies heavily on SurveyMonkey for some kinds of assessment.

[pisces]

Mathspice, thanks for starting this thread. I need to revise my hybrid course and am interested in the suggestions others have given here.

[mathspice]

You're welcome, Pisces. I'd be happy to PM you the link to the Google form similar to what I want to assign in my hybrid.