An Introduction to Online, Hybrid, and Remote classes

During the summer quarter, Highline is offering classes in one of four modes: Virtual, Hybrid/Virtual, Online, and Correspondence. Today’s snack will look at some key decisions and strategies.

The Checklist

Review the college definitions of Online and Hybrid Courses.
Take a look at the Highline Remote Pathways Links to an external site., and decide which best meets your teaching style and goals.
Sketch out your ideas for your course (yes, even use paper and pencil! Old school for the win!)
Plug your course materials into the workload planner to see if you meet the guidelines for student work.
Connect with Instructional Design and your discipline colleagues to talk strategy for your online or hybrid course.

Remote, Hybrid, and Online Courses

Online and Hybrid Courses

Teaching these modes is very different from face-to-face. Many in-class activities won’t translate well to an online or hybrid class. This is particularly true for interaction and engagement with students. As many of you learned in Spring Quarter, trying to replicate a face-to-face class in the online mode can be challenging.

In online classes, one of the big challenges is the loss of real-time interaction. We address that by building more interactive activities into the course. Another challenge is delivering content. Structuring content into smaller chunks helps; alternating between content delivery and activities can help students stay engaged. And finally, creating a highly structured class helps students stay on track.

In a hybrid class, deciding which activities occur online or in Zoom is one of the biggest challenges. For many instructors, interactive activities happen during the face-to-face (or Zoom) portions of the class. Other activities and especially delivery of course content happen online. Helping students connect online/out-of-class activities with the in-class activities is key.

(See Plan - What are Online and Hybrid Classes?, Plan - Hybrid Courses: What's Online and What's Not?, and Build - Face-to-Face, Hybrid, and Online Courses for more.)

The remaining pages in the Al Fresco Summer will delve into the particulars about teaching online and hybrid. Keep in mind these three categories: how to deliver content, how to create interaction and engagement, and how to help students succeed in a new mode.

Highline Remote Pathways

Let’s take a look at some options for the classes. Highline Remote Pathways Links to an external site. describe three options for sharing content and interacting with students. Consider which of the three best describes your approach and goals as an instructor. Keep in mind:

Online courses don’t have real-time interaction, so Zoom works well for Office/Student Hours or review sessions, but not for lectures.
Listening to a long lecture can be difficult. Consider how long it takes for your attention to stray on a Zoom call or webinar… shorter sessions are generally better.
You’ll supplement these with other tools, such as Canvas Discussions and automatically graded quizzes for the online parts of a hybrid, or to build interaction into an online course.

Which Pathway will you take?

How much work should be in the class?

One of the more common struggles for instructors is the Goldilocks Problem: "Is the amount of work in my course too little, too much, or just right?"

For every hour students are in class, they should be spending two hours working on the course outside of class. This is the federal law minimum. (See Plan - How Much Work Should Be in My Course? for more.)

In a face-to-face 5-credit course for a 10-week quarter, students are spending about 5 hours in class each week. That means students should be spending about 10 hours outside of class working just on that course, e.g., doing assigned reading, studying for exams, completing writing assignments. (For summer, it's about 19 hours per week, since the quarter is shorter.)

For online classes, all 15 hours of work occurs online or independently.
For hybrid classes, the hours should be split accordingly. If a student spends 3 hours in class each week, there should be 12 hours of work online. (Again, for summer quarter, that's a bit higher.)

If a student is taking 15 credits, that totals 45 hours per week. This is why 15 credits is considered a full-time load; it's the equivalent of working a full-time job.

Estimating workload

"Yes, but how do I know what, say, 15 hours of work means?" I hear you. Use this course workload estimator from Wake Forest University's Center for the Advancement of Teaching to gauge how much work is in your course.

Keep in mind that how much time a particular course activity takes will vary greatly by student.

For example, students who are not native English speakers and who are still building their vocabulary will take longer to do a reading assignment than a native English speaker with strong reading skills.
Someone with limited tech access might take longer to do activities like completing a quiz or a paper.

In the interest of transparency, be clear with your students about how much work is expected in your course.

In this sample syllabus text, the estimated number of hours for each activity were calculated using the course workload estimator Links to an external site..

How much time should we set aside to work on this online course? [Adapt as needed for hybrid and remote courses]

Federal law states that for every credit a course is worth, students are expected to spend 3 hours working on the course. For a 5-credit course, set aside 15 hours each week to work on it. (Set aside about 19 hours each week for a summer course since we need to wedge 5-credits worth of work into eight weeks instead of ten.)

That's also why three 5-credit classes is considered full-time. If you are taking three 5-credit courses, you are expected to spend about 45 hours a week working on those courses. (That's 56 hours each week in the summer.)

You will have about 3 hours of recorded lecture to watch each week. About 3 hours (5 in the summer) will be spent reading the textbook and thinking about what you are reading. Another 9 hours (11 hours in the summer) will be spent responding to the write-to-learn assignment questions and participating in discussions. That works out to an average of 15 hours (19 hours in the summer) per week.

In this video Sue Frantz uses one of her 5-credit online courses to walk you through how the Course Workload Estimator works.

[The webcam background was created using xSplit VCam. The highlighting was done using Epic Pen.]

Connect with Instructional Design

This part of planning your course is really particular to your course. Connect with us; we’re all experienced online teachers, and can discuss everything from how to decide what's online and what's in Zoom, to correct font size for the text. Book a one-on-one appointment with us Links to an external site. or drop in to CanvAssistance Links to an external site. to talk it through.

Learn more

Plan - What are Online and Hybrid Classes?

Plan - Hybrid Courses: What's Online and What's Not?

Plan - How Much Work Should Be in My Course?

Build - Face-to-Face, Hybrid, and Online Courses

Watch:What should I expect when taking an online course? Links to an external site.