January 31, 2023, by Helen Whitehead
Hybrid Teaching – a year on
A lot can happen in a year! It does not seem that long ago that we hosted the workshop ‘Hybrid Teaching and Learning in HE: a futuristic model or a realistic model for the future’ that was attended by more than 150 staff across the sector. That was actually 12th January 2022 and (as with everything else it seems) developments have been rapid and have kept us on our toes. If you want to look back, the workshop sessions were recorded and we’ve now made these recordings available, along with other resources and a link to a JISC mail list. we hope to encourage attendees and the wider HE community to continue discussions and make connections with other staff who have an interest in hybrid Teaching and Learning.
Teaching Here and There podcast
Towards the end of last year, our workshop host (and Digital Learning Director) Dr Cecilia Goria joined Rachelle O’Brien, Senior Digital Learning Designer at the University of Durham, for an episode of the Teaching Here and There podcast. The THAT podcast series is hosted by Dom Pates, James Rutherford and Dr Ivan Sikor and explores emerging practices in hybrid teaching in higher education. It’s well worth a listen. In episode six, Cecilia and Rachelle talk about their experiences and reflections of Communities of Practice in the hybrid space. There is also an episode with Professor Brian Beatty (San Franciso State University), author of the Hybrid-Flexible Course Design book, and one of the founders of the The HyFlex Learning Community, that has lots of upcoming events scheduled in 2023 for those interested: https://www.hyflexlearning.org/
QAA collaborative project
In the summer of 2022, we embarked on a collaborative project with UoB (The University of Birmingham, UK) funded by the QAA. While this represented a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun and I personally learned a vast amount by working with colleagues at Birmingham (Matt Turner, Head of HeFi – the Higher Education Futures institute, and Gabi Witthaus, Senior Digital Education Developer). The project aim was to explore what pedagogical rationales for, and models of, hybrid teaching could be identified, to inform the development of inclusive and sustainable education for the future. You can read the resulting report on the QAA website.
The findings won’t come as any surprise to most of us working in the HE sector, but when conducting such research, I think it’s important to consult with as many stakeholders as possible. It’s always good to see that there are no obvious factors missing in our understanding before proceeding with any plans.
A prominent theme was to ensure that decisions about hybrid teaching are not rushed through without proper staff consultation or consideration given to the practical or pedagogical implications. With this in mind, a cross disciplinary working group was formed at Nottingham with representation from across the University. The working group feeds into the key committees that set the strategy that results in new or updated policy. The working group is led by Cecilia Goria and so far we have been reflecting on past experiences of Hybrid Teaching and Learning, exploring current developments (both internally and externally) and exploring potentials for the future.
Initiatives within the university
A recent initiative has been the installation of a dedicated Microsoft Teams room in a large lecture theatre here at Nottingham. It aims to provide a seamless virtual/physical lecture space as a proof of concept, with support for full interaction between participant groups. This will be the subject of a case study that will be published more widely, as will developments in our Global Classrooms tri-campus initiative that links together students and staff at our three campuses in a highly popular module ‘The Silk Road’. Watch this space for more about these developments.
We’d really like to know what has been happening for you, so please feel free to drop us a line by emailing cecilia.goria@nottingham.ac.uk; or join the JISC mail list.
This post written by Sally Hanford.
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