By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
With the university’s push towards incorporating more online teaching, “blended” courses (courses in which some classroom time is replaced by online material) have appeared. In my faculty (Public Affairs), the blended model was rolled out as a half-and-half model (with classroom meetings 1.5 hours/week rather than three). Last year, I was one of a few instructors who received a competitive grant to test pilot the format.12
Some instructors who use a blended model use formal online “modules.” I used the blended format in my Israeli-Palestinian relations course as an opportunity to assign more material, including scholarly books and articles, op-ed articles, graphic novels, and some excellent feature and documentary films.
Knowing students were reading and watching a variety of high-quality materials from a variety of perspectives, I eased off the formal lecture format and instead used class time to lead a back-and-forth discussion of the various themes and problems raised weekly — what some refer to as a “flipped” classroom.
The results were mixed. On one hand, making the classroom experience more interactive with less perceived need to “fill” the students with “information” enabled us to have a broad-ranging, analytical conversation, particularly around what can be the sensitive topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
On the other hand, some students complained about the additional independent work they were asked to do in lieu of the in-class time. Not all students seemed to realize that the course was in “blended” format (or didn’t realize what “blended” meant) when they registered. Neither were the pedagogical goals entirely clear to me. I was of the understanding that the push towards blended offerings was aimed at accommodating students’ off-campus employment schedules, and to partially alleviate the crunch on classroom space. Neither of these are pedagogically driven in a pure way, but both — particularly the former — can contribute to more content students trying to balance multiple demands. And in the big picture of creating an intellectual community, that — to my mind — is a worthy goal.
This year, I will run a blended model in two courses. One is an intensive writing seminar. There, students will be required to write multiple drafts outside of class on which I will give regular feedback. In that course, owing to the frequent writing exercises, I hope students will be more willing to embrace the blended format. In the Israeli-Palestinian course, realizing that 1.5 hours of reduced class time doesn’t necessarily translate to 1.5 hours of additional efficient reading time, I plan to trim the syllabus — both by reducing the reading load and reducing the frequency of written responses required.
Owing to the principle of academic freedom, we don’t tend to calibrate our reading and writing requirements across courses in any precise sense. This means that working out the optimal blended-format course structure is proving to be a trial-and-error process. I hope that providing a slightly condensed reading list will alleviate some pressure on students for whom 90 minutes of independent reading feels like “more work” than 90 minutes of in-class time.