Final Post: Hybrid Class

When I searched "hybrid classes at UW-Madison" what came up in the search was a description of courses at UW-Milwaukee. They describe a hybrid class like this, "In "hybrid" classes, a significant amount of the course learning activity has been moved online, making it possible to reduce the amount of time spent in the classroom. Traditional face-to-face instruction is reduced but not eliminated." After reading this I feel this is very similar to how LIS 201 was ran, but not exactly the same. We still met in person twice a week, and I still feel a majority of the class learning was done in the room, with some extra done online outside of it. 

Having online assignments every week was able to create a true classroom environment. Instead of just seeing your discussion once a week, you heard from them multiple times a week. It was a way to get to know everyone, which is something most classes don't provide. I feel I was a more effective student in the physical world, but only because the virtual world prepared me for it. Reading everyone's blog posts prepared me for what would be said in discussion, which led me to contributing often. I also was able to learn a lot more about each of my classmates online. We wrote multiple posts about our personal lives, and they included things that we otherwise never would have gotten to learn about people. Before this course I had never wrote on a blog before, now I am proud to say that I am very comfortable using blog format along with a wiki. When it comes to whether or not to increase the online components of this course I would be for it as long as the class still meets at least twice a week. I feel you still need face-to-face interaction for these hybrid classes to work. 

Overall the course material and the readings were extremely informative. This class allowed me to realize things about the online world that I never would have thought of. I know see concepts that we learned in this class everyday. This type of learning would probably a little different if it wasn't a class all about the online world, but I still feel it would work. Hybrid classes have proved to have worked, which is seen with this one, so I feel they would work with almost any course topic.