Volume 125 Issue 117
kansan.com
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN UDK
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GRADUATION
Your guide to planning Commencement
CAMPUS
University experiments with hybrid classes to engage students
MARSHALL SCHMIDT
mschmidt@kansan.com
Sleeping through a boring lecture is not an option for Colleen Cesaretti, a freshman from Naperville, Ill., during her Infomania class in the journalism school, where she learns about the subject of information management.
Taught by Doug Ward, associate professor of journalism, Infomania is one of the new breed of courses known as hybrid classes. This up-and-coming classroom format combines students learning material through online resources and working on group projects during class time.
John Griffin, a freshman from Dallas, sits in class Tuesday afternoon in the commons in Spooner Hall. Griffin has been working in a group in associate professor Doug Vard's Infomania class. The group is creating a KU survival guide for incoming freshman.
Each week, Cesaretti and a group of six summarize assigned readings into websites to connect each week's readings together and demonstrate their progress for Ward.
"This class is very technologically oriented and really promotes collaboration and teamwork within our group," Cesaretti said. "It is refreshing to be able to come to class and not have to sit and just look at Powerpoints all day. The class style is very conversational, and I feel that this makes students more likely and willing to talk and contribute their ideas."
Along with online and lecture styles, hybrid (HB) classes will be available to University students as an official designation beginning this summer, said Julie Loats, director of the Center for Online and Distance Learning. Loats said 10 classes are marked as HB for summer, which will expand to 36 in the fall.
"In those large format lecture courses, we see potentially high drop, fail or withdrawal rates."
TRAVIS YOUNG/KANSAN
Loats said. "The University has a keen interest in helping to lower those rates by making sure students are successful in moving through those courses because a lot of time that's their first experiences at KU"
Through collaborating on her group's project focused on curating information Christina Ostmeyer, a freshman from Colby also taking Ward's Infomania class, said she has learned a lot through working with her fellow classmates.
"I definitely feel that my retention of the material has improved through the format that the class is presented in," Ostmeyer said.
By putting readings online, Ward said his class encourages students to take an active role in their education, compared to the passive learning style of traditional lectures.
"It's the least effective means of teaching there is," Ward said of classroom lectures, despite being used for the past 150 years. "Are students learning? Sometimes. They may be looking out the window. They may be doing the crossword puzzle. They may be doing a whole lot of things. It doesn't mean they're learning."
After teaching both online and lecture classes before, Ward decided to put class material online and reserve class time for small group collaboration. Ward said students learn best by interacting in small groups.
"When students were away from fifth grade desks and were at tables in their groups, they started talking to one another," Ward said.
While John Griffin, a freshman from Dallas, appreciates the personalized learning experience of Infomania, it took some effort for
him to adjust to the hybrid format.
"At first it was definitely tricky," Griffin said. "When you're given a lot of freedom like we've had, you actually end up wanting some direction to make sure you're doing things right."
Milton Wendland, assistant professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University, has also found the format challenging as he prepares to teach Studies in Intersections of Identity as a four-week hybrid course this summer.
"The reduced face-to-face contact time is problematic because so much learning takes places because of personal interactions in the classroom," Wendland said. "Using discussion boards and even video-conferencing will never replace in-
class time."
Wendland still recognizes the convenience of the format for students, and plans to maximize the productivity of the in-class portion of the class.
Now in the final week of classes, Colleen Cesaretti has been collaborating more than ever with her group as well as the rest of the class on their final project, which is
focused on digital collaboration.
"The hybrid format of this class really does help me retain material that we have learned because we do so much discussing and connecting of the overall ideas," Cesaretti said.
Edited by Dylan Lysen
CLASSIFIEDS 7
CROSSWORD 5
CRYPTOQUIPS 5
OPINION 4
SPORTS 8
SUDOKU 5
All contents, unless stated otherwise. © 2013 The University Daily Kansan
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Today is the 563rd anniversary of Jack Cade's revolt against King Henry VI.
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