Experience from Hybrid Remote Delivery Approach

Introduction

Many surveys conducted worldwide have shown that many institutions still believe that online or distance learning is inferior when it comes to the quality of teaching and the actual outcome of those teachings (Jaschik & Letterman, 2014). During the COVID-19 pandemic period, almost all schools were forced to embrace online learning as their primary approach. In our school, the service was named Hybrid Remote Delivery, which means that the lecturers prepared learning materials and delivered the content to the students remotely through zoom or its correspondents. Below are my experiences concerning the questions asked?

What did you experience as someone who experienced a change in the delivery method? What were the different aspects? Indicate what feelings you experienced in addition to the specifics of your actual experience. The specifics might include actions, approaches, tactics, and strategies used.

As we began our school journey, we had several face-to-face classes planned, which had to be canceled immediately the COVID-19 pandemic became severe. Hybrid remote classes replaced the face-to-face classes. It is, therefore, easy to say that there were some new things experienced during this period. First, I experienced that the length of the content increased. I am saying this because the lecturer covered the main points in class but left the other notes to read on our own. I felt overworked by this as I had to spend much time reading notes. I noticed that the number of daily attendance was high as compared to the normal face-to-face class. I was happy to see most classmates being able to use the technology used to do the Hybrid Remote Delivery.

What parts of this experience were an improvement to normal in-person lecture-based classes?

As a student, I noticed that so many things changed compared to the normal in-person lecture-based classes we used to have. There are two main things that I noted as an improvement to the normal in-person lecture-based classes we used to have. First of all, since all students attended the classes at home, the attendance was improved as most of our classmates who rarely come to class managed to attend these online classes. This approach even allowed sick students to attend the classes as they were not required to walk to the campus. Secondly, another essential improvement I noticed is that the overall time taken in normal classes reduced when it came to remote classes. This resulted from the fact that it was believed that long time teaching could strain the students in terms of internet resources. Also, long time teaching could render the students bored, and could even leave the class before time.

If you were an instructor designing and delivering a course, what two things would you do differently, and why?

If I were an instructor designing and delivering a course, I would do two important things. First, I would change the format of the course. I could review the existing program and ask myself if they could still work in the new virtual teaching format. The answer is likely to be a no. for example, when doing a face to face teaching, it could be easy to split students into groups to work on exercises as a team. This cannot work in the virtual format since everyone is in a different location. Since it is hard to hold remote people’s attention, I could consider changing the length of the content covered per lesson. Secondly, I would build a strong communication habit with every student in my course. I would encourage my students to get in touch with each other frequently to ensure they are always reminded of school matters. I could also allow students always to contact me at any time of the day to ensure all their issues and questions are attended to at the right time.

References

Jaschik, S., & Letterman, D. (2014). The 2014 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes to Technology. Washington DC: Inside Higher Ed.