Blended courses combine in person class meetings with online instruction. This fall, the College placed no limits on the combinations instructors could adopt. To provide more structure and predictability this spring, the College will be asking instructors teaching blended courses to commit to a fixed weekly schedule of in person, synchronous, and asynchronous engagement. Moreover, instructors teaching blended courses will be required to hold at least one in person meeting each week for each of their students.
Although the above constraints place some limits on your pedagogical options, the College is also introducing a number of new options not possible in the fall. More specifically, it will now be possible to adopt blended modalities without rotating cohorts. Instructors are still free to adopt rotating cohorts (and may find it necessary to meet space constraints), but it will now be possible to adopt blended schedules that fall into one of two broad categories:
- Blended with Whole Class Cohort
Instructors meet with their entire class in person, but less often than they normally would. The rest of the instruction takes place online but, again, with the entire class participating.
- Blended with Rotating Cohorts
Instructors divide their class into two or three cohorts and meet with those cohorts in person on a rotating schedule. When students are not in person, they complete the remainder of their work online. Student feedback and the capabilities of Banner have led the College to adopt two new constraints for blended courses with rotating cohorts this spring: instructors will be unable to rotate cohorts within a single class period or to rotate in person cohorts of different sizes across the week.
As with in person courses, instructors teaching blended courses must be prepared for a pivot to online/remote learning at any point the university may need to suspend on campus operations.
