The course I am designing as a hybrid is H407, the Pre-Internship Seminar in Public Health. This is currently an on campus course offered every term for two credits, and it meets currently twice a week, 50 minutes for each class meeting. The course is required for all undergraduate Public Health Majors, with options in either Health Management and Policy or Health Promotion and Health Behavior. The course is also required for students minoring in Environmental Safety and Health. The course enrollment is usually approximately 60 students, with the majority of them being seniors with most of their coursework completed. The purpose of the course is to prepare students for their internship and includes internship sites as guest speakers, information on professional resumes and cover letter writing, interviewing skills and professionalism.
I chose to make the course hybrid to make it more beneficial to the students and make it more tailored for each student to really be involved, through more assignments offered online. With the large range of internship interests, having each student actively participate online instead of listening to lecture, will provide students with the ability to explore their interests, skills and develop professional documents to really be prepared for the internship.
The hybrid design of this course would consist of 50% of the time being in class meetings, which equates to one day a week and then the other 50% online which would also equate to one day a week. The online content will consist of students developing cover letters, resumes, participating in peer review assignments, discussion boards, and an online exam at the end of the term. The class meeting times will be used for guest speakers, who will be current internship sites. The class meetings will also include activities based on the online assignments and discussions, to blend the online learning with class time, and making the topics link together to be cohesive. For example, a lot of guest speakers who talk about their internships, discuss professionalism, and I can then create a discussion board, to further explore professionalism as a topic and blending in the guest speakers points from class. Another example would be resumes and cover letters, which would be covered in class and then the students would go online and complete peer reviews based on what was covered in class. The online final exam will serve to cover both online content from the term and in class content to bring it all together. My hope is this hybrid design will provide the students with a high degree of personalization, in which they end the course fully prepared for their internship.
I love the way this “course” sounds nothing like a course! In the new hybrid format, it really feels like the approach is more in-line with a series of career development seminars. With the amount of personalized feedback and practical applications of the skills learning and guest speakers, I can’t imagine ANY student feeling like this was a waste of his/her time. I totally think this encompasses the spirit of learning in the modern age–an endeavor that emphasizes people over content. Nice work!