Faculty Focus highlights five potential pitfalls of online course design. Let’s jump to Pitfall #3 Insist on being the “sage on the stage.” and some initial ideas for avoidance in a hybrid course format. The key here is for the instructor not to be central stage and dominate content delivery. In a hybrid course my colleague and I are redesigning from an established f2f version, we’re moving away from three 50-minute lectures each week to ~10 minute microlectures which will be augmented with a variety of other content types such as animations and videos. There also will be followup discussion of that content both online and f2f, among all class participants. Students will interact with each other as much, perhaps even more, than with the instructor. Furthermore, we anticipate students with diverse backgrounds, thus the experiences they bring to the class will be valuable contributions.
I like the idea of the 10 minute mini lectures, but I wonder how often this will need updating. In our health policy classes, I have found that the PowerPoint voiced over lectures by some faculty are outdated (Even in the span of 2 years.) As a result, the material needs to be updated quite often. As a way to avoid these problems I am trying to find current videos developed by reputable sources to substitute for faculty lectures.
To avoid, or at least minimize later editing, the mini-lectures will comprise primarily foundational/established content that is unlikely to change much. However, if our knowledge base does change, we can draw student’s attention to those updates on an overview page (which is something I already do), and those changes/advances can readily become discussion points!