Hybrid/ Blended Courses

            “Hybrid” or “blended” courses are often referred to as courses “that are traditional face-to-face ‘seat time’ has been replaced by online learning activities.” The online activities reinforce those face-to-face lectures that are given.

            I found a list of 6 hybrid/ blended courses offered at UW-Milwaukee:

                        Advanced Nursing Practice Interventions

                        Buy Me! Ads and Shopping in American Culture

                        Cross-Cultural Study of Religion

                        Survey American Literature, 1865-1940

                        Management Analysis

                        Site and the Public Space

There are a wide variety of courses offered, and I’m sure in the future many more will be offered, considering the information society that we are in.

            I think this class was a good mix of online activities and physical lectures. The online activities nicely related what we talked about in class, further expanding our knowledge on the subject matter and allowing us to contribute our opinions and see what others has to say. The lectures were a good way to explain and clarify information from the readings, but didn’t create as much discussion as the online lectures did.  

            This course definitely made me more comfortable with using blogs and wikis. I never blogged, or even read other blogs, until taking this course. I really enjoyed it because I feel like blogging is more personal, and informal, which makes it easier to write what you think. I would recommend other courses to have some online component, like this class, but nothing more extensive than what we did. I think having too much of a course online could cause students to fall behind and not keep up on their work.
             I think the reading we did in class were a major way we were able to learn the concepts. Since the readings were so heavily focused on the Internet and society, I thought that the online components were a great addition. However, I don’t think it would be any different for a course that didn’t focus on the Internet. The hybrid/blended course offered at UW-Milwaukee don’t have to do with the Internet, yet are still effectively taught with an online component.