One of the major projects in the Center for Teaching and Learning for the past two years has been to collaborate with and assist the Spanish department in redesigning their elementary Spanish program (1201 and 1202) to be a hybrid course according to the methodology provided by the National Center for Academic Transformation (a hybrid courses replaces a portion of in-class seat time with online activities).  During this process, we have met with colleagues at Chapel Hill, who had completed a similar project already. 

I now see in Inside Higher Ed that UNC-CH is changing their hybrid course to go fully online.  The driving force is to save money.  They also rebut student objections, saying that the evaluation "data revealed that while students in traditional courses said they thought they mastered the material better than their peers in hybrid courses, a comparative assessment of learning outcomes showed no difference between the two."  [Hmm...no significant difference, you say?  Interesting.]  They expect the evaluation data of the fully online version to closely mirror these results. 

So do I.

Garvey

J. Garvey Pyke, Ed.D. | Center for Teaching and Learning | UNC Charlotte