Teaching in the Hybrid Mode – Initial Experience

As discussed in the previous post, when normalcy returns, it is likely that hybrid teaching will be the dominant method for teaching some types of courses. As explained in previous post, in hybrid teaching, the lecture is given to the in-class students, but is also simultaneously streamed to online students, and the taped version is made available to all students. So, students can attend a lecture in-class or online – i.e. some attend in-class and others attend online. There are many advantages of hybrid – for the students, for the faculty, and for the institution – the previous post discussed a few.

In this post we discuss how hybrid teaching is done, based on personal experience. I will also share some feedback regarding how online and in-class students view hybrid lectures.

Mechanics of Hybrid Teaching and Equipment Needed

How is hybrid teaching to be done? We assume that for teaching, the faculty member is ready to use a projection-based system for the class (and not a whiteboard with pens.) It should, however, be added that in a large class in a university or college, projection based methods for teaching are the norm (cannot really use a whiteboard for a large class). In advanced courses also, presentation based approaches are now standard. And during covid times, even for courses where white board style may be preferred (e.g. Maths), methods have been evolved to use projection-based approaches (e.g. using a tablet with a pen).

In the in-class mode of teaching, a faculty member projects the screen of her laptop/devise to the class. The screen may show some slides (e.g. powerpoint), an interactive terminal on which she may draw or write, videos, documents, website etc. For audio, for a large class the standard method is a collar-mike which was connected to an audio system to carry the voice to students in the class; for smaller classes, there may not be any audio system.

To teach in hybrid mode in such a class, one straightforward method is to share the laptop screen on the streaming platform (e.g. zoom) being used for online students, and also project the screen in-class through the projection system. I.e. in the class room, the zoom screen is being projected. In this approach, it is best that video from laptop camera is projected only at the start of the lecture, but otherwise is disabled – so when the faculty member moves around the class the online students don’t see a blank.

Audio needs more thought. For in-class, the regular collar-mike with audio system can remain. But how do you stream your lecture to online students.  I had tried using a Bluetooth earphone with a microphone – but the sound quality of that was not good (they are designed more for listening rather than speaking; also, with earphones listening to students in-class will get harder, besides looking funny going around in them in the class.) I finally just used the laptop’s microphone for steaming the audio, and laptop speaker for listening to online students.  It worked well – there was no feedback from in-class audio to the online students and online students were able to hear clearly. I was also able to listen to online students. It, however, restricted the physical movement to a couple of feet around the laptop. I have since learned that there are Lav microphones available for connecting to a laptop – they are just like the collar mike with a wireless transmitter (which can be kept in a pocket), and a receiver that can be connected to the laptop using USB. They tend to be somewhat expensive though.

Initial Experience in Hybrid Teaching

This semester (Jan-April, 2022) I was teaching a large class with about 300 students on “Introduction to Programming (Python)”. It is a core course meant for students of all programs. When the course started, it was entirely online. We used zoom as the platform for online lecturing. For presentation to students, I largely used powerpoint, but also some interactive websites to show execution of programs, as well as a Python editor to type and run programs. I.e. the presentation to students was a mix of slides, websites, and an interactive window of the editor running on my laptop.

When about 3 weeks were left in the course, the covid situation eased and campus was opened to students. We surveyed the students regarding whether they will like to continue online for the rest of the semester or prefer to come in-class. About 70% said that they will prefer in-class. Given that a large fraction wanted to continue online (many were living in places far away from campus, some even overseas), I  decided to try the hybrid mode. This became a “natural experiment” in which some students who till previous week were attending lectures online and are now in class for the same course with same instructor (something which will be hard to force in a designed experiment).

First learning from this experiment was about in-class attendance. While 70% of the students had voted for in-class, actually only about 30% of the students finally came physically to the class – the rest continued to attend online. (The actual numbers were – appx 70 students in-class and appx 150 students online). So, it was clear that while students wanted to be in-campus, they did not necessarily want to be in-class for lectures – the convenience of attending from their place of residence/hostel was strong. (The course was scheduled at 830 am, which may also be motivating some students to attend the class from their hostels.)

We took feedback of the two categories of students separately – those who were in-class and those attending on-line. (For taking the feedback, I used a mobile app called ALT (for active learning-teaching), which I had been using throughout the semester to take student feedback – so both in-class and online students were able to give the feedback.) I just took feedback on one question:

• Question to online students: Today’s online class in hybrid mode – how similar/different from fully online class (Green: Better, Yellow: Similar, Red: Worse).
• Question to in-class students: How will you compare your lecture understanding (incl all factors like attention, sitting, …) in the in-person class as compared to online. (Green: In-class is better; Yellow: About the same; Red: In-class worse)

The feedback from online students is shown in the first pie-chart below. As one would expect, most (about two-thirds) found the hybrid similar to the fully online. Very few (˜5%) found it as “worse” – perhaps my movement in class may have made audio a little worse. Surprisingly, about a fourth of students found the lecture “better” – this is counterintuitive, but there is a possible explanation: most faculty get energised with students in the class which can improve the quality of their exposition; maybe the presence of students in-class improved the lecture quality.

Feedback from on-line students

Feedback from in-class students  is shown in the pie chart below.  The vast majority (three-fourths) found in person better than online – this is to be expected as students who *chose* to attend the in-person class probably did so because they did not like the online ones. Quite a few found no difference – perhaps also to be expected as there are studies indicating that (for college students) learning online is comparable to learning in-class. There were quite a few students who found it “worse” – clearly these students will prefer online classes for their learning, if an opportunity is given.  

Feedback from in-class students

Though this is small experiment, it does suggest that for a course like this hybrid teaching may be suitable: some students seem to prefer online over in-class for their learning and many find online similar (so a good fraction of these students will, due to convenience, attend many classes online), and hybrid lecturing may have a beneficial effect on the quality of online lecturing as well. Besides these, there is a significant advantage of recorded lecture being available (in another feedback on what helped students learn well, “recorded lectures” was consistently mentioned as an important factor.) Hybrid teaching may also enhance attendance in classes – we know from experience that students miss lectures often, and towards the end of the semester the attendance often falls dramatically; online option may encourage many of these students to attend more lectures. Plus there are other advantages of hybrid teaching, as discussed in the previous note.

Overall, hybrid teaching seems to work smoothly. And this initial experience indicates that it may be a good method of teaching a large class, perhaps better than fully online or fully in-class.

Hybrid Teaching

Now that familiarity with online is widespread and accepted, given some of its benefits like convenience of attending remotely, having taped lectures available later, etc, it is unlikely that higher education will go back to fully in-person teaching and attending of courses. At the same time in-person has its own advantages, particularly in assessments, and is an approach that has been refined over centuries in higher education. So, that will not be given up. What seems to be emerging as a consensus is that hybrid teaching will be the predominant method going forward. In a few posts, starting from this one, I want to discuss what Hybrid Teaching is and its potential.

What is hybrid teaching? In hybrid teaching, the lecture (or tutorial) session is given to the in-class students, but is also simultaneously streamed to online students. So, students can attend the session in-class or online – some attend in-class and others attend online. Implied in hybrid is that there will be some in-class assessments – maybe the major exams – where all students will be required to come in-person for proctored assessment, with maybe exceptions made for special students. And that given the session is being streamed, they will be recorded made available to all students.

It should be pointed out that blended education – the other term that is often used – generally means something slightly different. It is about using different forms of teaching (in particular online and in-class) for different portions of a course/module. I.e. the same set of students experience both the in-class and online portions. So, some parts of the course may be delivered online, while some parts may be in-class. The blended model has been around for some time, particularly for degree/diploma programs for working professionals who cannot attend classes in-person (before Covid, the non-in-class portion took different forms like distance education approaches where material is sent to students to read, online MOOC content, etc.) In this note, we will focus on hybrid teaching.

Standard Hybrid Model

Hybrid teaching seems a natural extension of regular in-class teaching where computer-based projection methods (e.g. PowerPoint, writing on a tablet, …) are used to present to the class, except that lecture sessions are also being streamed and part of the class is joining online. It can also be viewed as an extension of regular synchronous online teaching where the faculty gave lectures from their office or home and students attended online, except that the lecture is being given by the faculty from the classroom.

So, hybrid teaching is a natural extension of the two forms of teaching with which faculty and students have become very familiar and comfortable – in-class teaching and fully online teaching (with scheduled classes and lectures being streamed to online students).  This makes it easy to adopt by students as well as faculty.

And given that it permits benefits of both online (e.g. students can attend classes from anywhere) and in-class (e.g. deeper connect of students with instructor, proctored assessments), there are compelling reasons to use hybrid teaching going forward, particularly in higher education. Let us discuss some.

First provide a definition of hybrid teaching. We will focus on teaching of a course (or module, subject, …) where a faculty member is responsible for teaching a class of students some subject, typically over a semester. Hybrid teaching of a course is where: (i) Most sessions (lectures, tutorials, …) during the term are delivered live to the students as per a declared schedule, (ii) Generally, these sessions will be delivered in-class in front of the in-class students, (iii) all lectures are streamed online allowing students to join the session online, (iv)  the live sessions will generally be recorded and made available to enrolled students as reference / study material for this course offering, and (v) some assessments are proctored and conducted in-class for almost all students.

This hybrid model has some clear advantages from students’ perspective and can facilitate learning. First, if a student lives far away from campus, and happens to have only one or two lectures in a day, the student can save time and effort (and money) for travelling to attend the lectures, by joining them online. This saving of commute time can provide the student with more time  for revision, other learning tasks. It should be added that in a large metro like Delhi, students living off-campus often spend 2 hours or more in commuting each day they come to campus.

Second, if a student misses a lecture for some reason, the recorded lecture is available for learning/studying. This is extremely beneficial as all academics know that students miss classes all the time for a host of reasons (including illness, getting up late, some student events going on, family event/function, etc.). Without recorded lectures, a student has to take notes from friends or other sources for missed lectures. While there are potential risks (primary among them that many students will choose to attend most classes remotely which can have adverse effects on students without them appreciating it), it is clear that hybrid teaching, due to its naturalness, low cost, and the benefits to the students will be demanded by students.

There are other advantages of this form of hybrid teaching. It will allow larger classes to be handled more efficiently. Often due to lack of class room of sufficient size, a large class is divided in sections – with each section having its own instructor who gives the lecture. While this may provide “smaller” classes, often even this size is quite large, and if the size of a section is more than about 100 or 150, the benefit of “smallness” is minimal. Furthermore, having multiple instructors for the same course throws up many challenges as different instructors may move at different pace, have focus on different topics, and may have different styles of teaching – making the learning experience for students of different sections somewhat different for the same course – which is not desirable. It may be mentioned that many universities in US have for long been scheduling large classes in smaller classrooms while making taped lectures available. The hybrid mode actually improves on it – besides having the recorded lecture, students can also attend the class in realtime online.

This hybrid model can also be leveraged to increase the reach and inclusiveness of higher education. It is easy to see that with hybrid teaching, it is easy to offer a course to people who are not enrolled as students in the institutions where they are being taught. This allows, for example, working professionals, including teachers in teaching-focused HEIs, to easily attend some courses from some high quality institutions being offered in hybrid mode.  

Many HEIs (e.g. IIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi, IIIT Hyderabad, …) actually have such provisions to allow working professionals to take some courses as “casual students” – where they are not working towards any degree and attend the courses to upgrade their knowledge. These casual students attend the course, just as regular students do, and they get a certificate on completion of the course. The provisions of casual students did not gain much traction with working professionals in the traditional in-class lecturing mode, due to travel overheads, necessity of missing some classes due to other professional reasons, etc. With hybrid not only there is no commute involved (so the casual student only has to plan in her schedule for the scheduled sessions of the course), as recorded lectures are available, missing some lectures, which are bound to happen for a working professional, can be easily made up.

Having professionals attend courses can be quite attractive both for the HEI and the working professionals, particularly for advanced topics – the working professional can upgrade her knowledge and skills under the guidance of expert faculty, and the institute offering the course can generate additional fee as well as increase its engagement with industry and other academic institutions. This potential of expanding reach to professionals is a compelling reason for most top institutions to teach most of their advanced courses in hybrid mode, and actively engage with industry and other educational institutions to take advantage of it.

Generalized Hybrid Model

We have been discussing what can be called as the “standard” model of hybrid – which is really defined from the perspective of students attending the course – i.e. students can join a session in-class or online. The model can be generalized, by also allowing “hybridness” from the perspective of faculty also. This can be done by relaxing the condition (ii) in the definition to: These sessions will be delivered in-class in front of the in-class students, or online, by the instructor. That is, instead of requiring “most” sessions to be delivered in-class by faculty, it allows sessions to be delivered online by the faculty (in which case, even though the lecture can be projected in-class, there will be little point for a student to come to class and it will become online for all.)

With this more general model of hybrid teaching, some new possibilities emerge for improving education.

One, when the instructor is not able to come physically to the class (is sick, some family exigency, attending a conference, …), instead of cancelling the lecture and arranging for a make-up, can give the scheduled lecture online (with suitable notice to students). This can minimize disruptions and provide an additional degree of freedom to the Instructor.

Two, having guest lectures in a class becomes very easy. In an in-class approach, an instructor had to invite the guest lecturer to come to the campus and deliver the lecture to the students. Now, these sessions can be given online by guest lecturers from anywhere. This is hugely empowering – instructors can get some top experts from anywhere in the country/world to deliver a lecture on a topic of the guest’s expertise in their course, they can invite industry experts to give lectures on topics relating to how the subject is used in industry, which can hugely enrich a course, etc.. Besides, enabling students to be able to listen to lectures from these top academic or industry experts, it can also facilitate collaboration between faculty, and guest lecturers, which can have other advantages.

Taking this general hybrid model further, some courses in the curriculum can be taught mostly online, e.g. all the lectures are online. (Other conditions of hybrid will still have to be satisfied, i.e. some in-class assessments.) This will allow an HEI to get some expert from anywhere in the world to teach a course to its students – something that is extremely challenging in the in-class model. Many institutes have distinguished alumni who are experts in academia or industry in organizations across the world. They may be able to tap this talent and have them offer some courses – an idea with huge potential. Of course, this may not be limited to alumni – HEIs can request faculty / experts from other organizations to offer courses in their institution.

This aspect of hybrid can really allow tapping of teaching talent and expertise globally. Many academics across the world will be happy to do for a fee, particularly during their Sabbaticals, during which they may be unwilling to come physically to the HEI but may be willing to teach remotely. It also opens the possibility of leveraging retired faculty from various countries, or retired experts from industry – who may design and offer a course after retirement  – they may even agree to offer to teach the course to many HEIs. There are clearly other possibilities that can be constructed. In this model of hybrid teaching, the in-class assessments to be done (e.g. exams) can be done. For example, the remote instructor can set the exam questions and the HEI where the students are taking the course can conduct these assessments in a proctored environment; the answer scripts can be shared with the remote instructor in a variety of ways, or graded locally under the guidance/supervision of the remote instructor.

Another possible advantage of general hybrid teaching can be in having courses jointly taught by faculty from multiple institutions. In this model, a course (e.g. an advanced course) is designed by some faculty from different institutions together. It is then offered to students of those institutions as regular elective course. In this model, in each institution where the course is being taught, some of the lectures will be taken by the local faculty member involved (probably in-class), but some lectures will be given online by faculty from other institutions. This requires the course to be scheduled at the same time in the different institutions. In-class assessment poses no issues. An example of this type of course offering done during the fully online times is the course offered by colleagues from IIIT-Delhi and IIIT Hyderabad on AI for Software Engineering.

Summing Up

Overall, one can say that going forward hybrid teaching is the natural course for most higher educational institutions. It has some clear advantages for students, and so HEIs can expect a demand from students also. It has also many advantages for institutions and faculty. In addition to the advantages, there are a host of possibilities that emerge that can help an HEI improve its education significantly by innovatively tapping the general hybrid teaching model. I expect hybrid teaching to become a norm in most forward looking institutions soon at least for some types of courses, and which other institutions will be forced to adopt later on.