Hybrid Courses

I was surprised how many results hybrid college courses returned. I found an initiative from UW's School of Engineering to integrate hybrid courses into their curriculum, but I couldn't find any specific course numbers of Engineering courses that have followed through since the initiative was proposed in 2010.

I think that schools are on the right track with hybrid courses, since having digital literacy is going to be so key in the job market in the future. I think that it's a good start, but professors and TA's need to understand that in online discussion forums students know that what they say and write is easily monitored by the professor and all the others and at least in my experiences with hybrid courses I think that has hindered the discussion. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it's shyness, because its like speaking in front of the class but recorded for all eternity and everyone can see it and review what you said, which sounds awful now that I think about it.

I have taken at least one other course with a hybrid component on this campus and it was an Anthropology course where the students collectively maintained a wiki that was our notes from week to week. It led to certain people contributing a lot and certain people not contributing, but other than that it worked really well and I would like to see more of that type of thing, where there is a collective effort by the class, but also work that's separate so students who do pour their time and effort into it don't get shafted by those who don't.

I think this course prompted me to look at certain parts of the Internet differently and to go to some sites I wouldn't have thought to go to, like Manpower Inc for example, but I don't think that the course influenced my views about information technology in either a positive or a negative way.