Teaching a hybrid class has the potential to be a paradigm altering experience. The choice is yours. Will you take the leap and rethink your students' learning? Will hybrid teaching infuse your students' experiences with participatory, global, relevant learning?

1. Your Hybrid Classroom:
Will You Change Your Paradigm?
Michelle Pacansky-Brock
email: brocansky@gmail.com
blog: http://mpbreflections.blogspot.com
Idio Lector on Flickr
1

2. When you open your life to
hybrid teaching, your
classroom walls are no longer
learning barriers.
2

3. This is an opportunity to
change the world.
3

4. Will you embrace a new
paradigm?
4

5. Or will you recycle
the past?
5

6. How does this prepare 21st C Leaners?
6

7. Rethink Your Paradigm
Laurie Burruss
7

8. New Society. New Generation. New Skills.
Haaaley on Flickr Taminator on Flickr
8

9. A Student’s Life Outside the “Classroom”
• Socialize face-to-face and online
• 95% of 18-24 year olds use a social network (70% daily)
• Increasingly more create & share online content
• 45% share videos online (YouTube)
• 42% contribute content to wikis
• 37% contribute to blogs
• 35% use podcasts
• Have immediate access to information
• 86% own a cell phone
• 51% own a hand held internet device
Source: Smith, Salaway, Borreson Caruso. ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and IT, 2009.
9
http://www.educause.edu/ecar

10. Participatory Learning is Commonplace
“Since the current generation of
college students has no memory of
the historical moment before the
advent of the Internet, we are
suggesting that participatory
learning as a practice is no longer
exotic or new but a commonplace
way of socializing and learning. For
many, it seems entirely
unremarkable.”
The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg with the assistance of Zoë Marie Jones. From
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachussets, 2009.

11. What will your hybrid learning
paradigm look like?
11

12. teaching without walls
offers global learning opportunities
12

13. How does a major news “story” change
when shared by a blogger reflecting from
her home in Haiti vs through a major
newspaper?
13

14. What “news” do we learn about through
global blogging that we don’t learn about
through mass media sources?
Whose voices are excluded?
Whose are included?
14

15. Blog about that!
15

16. collaborative learning demands a
collaborative learning environment
16

17. crafting collaborative, interdisciplinary
learning projects
VoiceThread.com
http://voicethread.com/share/334997/ 17

18. crafting collaborative,
interdisciplinary learning projects
http://voicethread.com/share/85497/ 18

19. voice discussions about relevant media
(TV, movies, websites, songs)
http://voicethread.com/share/68467/ 19

20. voice discussions about movies
viewed in class
20

21. Some Advice
Prepare to relinquish some of your power
Envision yourself as the facilitator of a community of learners
• a community is a group of people with a common interest
• your role is to facilitate the successful achievement of your students’ learning
objectives (as defined by you)
Be flexible but firm
• establish policies (late work, missed class sessions, exam make-ups, etc.) and
include them in your syllabus
• be human and understand when emergencies occur, bend when things aren’t
working but enforce your policies in an effort to be fair to those who uphold them
Use your students as resources
Reward yourself for taking risks, even if they fail...
• risk taking is paramount to innovation
21

22. Tips for a Successful Start
Consider a pre-class email to all students with syllabus attached
• Articulate your class philosophy (prepare them for something different)
• Identify all technologies that will be used
• Identify dates/schedule of in-class/online meetings
Week One: Laying the Foundation for Success
In your first unit, include:
F2F: Syllabus overview, explain relationship btw technology & learning
OL: An online ice breaker to begin building community. You participate too!
And be sure each student is engaged/replied to at least one time.
Poll students: “Who does not have internet at home?”
• Communicate on-campus computer lab hours to students without
internet access at home. This is “transportation to class.”
22

23. Identify What isn’t Working and Try
Something New
• My instructional problem:
When teaching an art history survey class, understanding significant
contributions made by women artists is an important outcome, yet only one
important outcome. Students can spend countless hours memorizing
information about artists’ lives that is not relevant, losing critical time for
fostering other key skills (like visual analysis).
• I want my students to understand the contributions made by women
artists.
• I don’t want to tell them what they should know.
• I want my students to critically identify which achievements are significant
and then explain why.
23

24. My Experiment: The Wiki Challenge
• Bridge between the classroom and virtual learning space
• Rotate students to summarize class discussions on wiki
• My role: evaluate and guide the wiki content
• We used the student-generated wiki content as (some of) the
content students were assessed on
• Places a critical priority on in-class discussion
• Students used books and mobile devices to access content in
class
• Students become content creators, take ownership of quality
• Learning becomes active, relevant and focused
24

25. Wiki - “homepage”
25

26. Wiki - sample “Artist’s Life” Page
26

27. Wiki - sample “Artist’s Life” Page
27

28. Wiki Challenge - Outcomes
1. Fosters 21st century skills
• collaboration (working in groups in class to identify achievements)
• problem solving
• critical thinking
• find, select, evaluate information
2. Promotes student-centered learning, formation of knowledge (vs.
memorization of information delivered by instructor)
3. Worth the experiment!
28

29. Experiment.
29

30. Take this opportunity to
change your learning
paradigm...
30

31. for your students.
31

32. “Insanity: doing the same thing
over and over again
and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein
32

33. “Information is not knowledge.”
- Albert Einstein
33

34. Michelle Pacansky-Brock
email: mpb@teachingwithoutwalls.com
blog: http://mpbreflections.blogspot.com
34