Also known as blended education, hybrid refers to a learning experience that happens partly online and partly face-to-face. In terms of Coldeway’s quadrants, this type of distance learning is a mix of ST-SP and the DT-DP. Hybrid courses lend themselves well to topics that have portions that can only be experienced face-to-face (technique practice, lab work, studio work, clinical work, etc.) as well as portions that can be delivered online.

Hybrid courses typically have anywhere from 25 to 75% of instruction occurring face-to-face (F2F) and generally everything else occurring online. Best practice call for the online component to spell out the F2F parts (what, where, when, how) and to include all administrative components (syllabus and grades).

F2F time can be used for lectures, learning activities, and learner interactions (i.e., discussions, group work, and presentations/demos/experiments), and assessments.

The online portion of hybrid courses can be measured by the:

• Quality Matters (QM) rubric
• Chico rubric
• OLC pillars
• OLC quality scorecard.

For more information on hybrid courses, please read this Vanderbilt University article.

See also: distance learning, face-to-face, web-enhanced, and eLearning.