My course experience

The first thing that popped up when I searched hybrid or blended courses was a site for UW Milwaukee. It characterized these courses by web-based learning activities to complement face-to-face work, reduced seat time, though not eliminated altogether, and web-based and face-to-face components designed to interact pedagogically to take advantage of the best features of each. One way that this is different from LIS201 is that an example is a course that has online, recorded lectures.

In my personal opinion, I thought that I was a more effective student in the physical world. there was a disconnect between the online portions and the in-person portions of the class. I don't feel like I got to know my peers in this class very well because everyone had two different identities and it was very difficult to keep straight, and I got to know them best by face to face interaction. However, I do have a better understanding and am more comfortable with online resources, but I believe that UW instructors should proceed with caution.

I do think that online course components work differently in a course that wasn't all about the information society. The online components in this course were used as another means to learn new material. In other courses, in math for example, online components are used to reinforce material as opposed to teach new material. The transition to online content will definitely be interesting to watch how courses change over the next few years, and is something to look out for.

Hybrid Course

When searching for other examples of hybrid courses, I came across UWM which listed a few of there hybrid coures. I did notice that while reading some of UWM's class descriptions of these hybrid courses, they were similar to our LIS201 class in a sense that it was a lot of online work involving discussions and editing. However what I found a little different in some of the descriptions was that some of UWM' courses take the discussions that were formed online (through their blog posts) and continued them in the classroom. Although we do talk about the posts about the authors of the articles, I don't believe we incorporate our online pages with our discussion sections as much as UWM courses do.

I felt as though I was a more effective student because I was able to express myself physically and virtually. I believe my classmates were able to see the way I really act on a day to day basis because they experienced both my physical and online presence. With that, I believe that I was able to learn a lot about my classmates for the same reason. I physically was able to experience their "in-classroom presence", along with how they act online. I also feel a lot more comfortable with wikis and blogging. This course incorporated the blog and wiki a lot, making me so much more comfortable with this type of interaction.

The course lectures and readings definitely brought a better perspective to my own online experiences. I believe that now I hold myself a different and more mature way on the internet (when pertaining to posts and such). Gaining all of this knowledge on the information society has helped me not only better navigate the internet, but also communicate with others in a more sophisticated way. This course has helped me with face-to-face interactions along with interacting with others online, which I really enjoyed because it was a lot different course than other courses I've taken at the university.

Hybrid Course

The University of Milwaukee has a page explaining the hybrid courses that they offer.  Overall, many of their hybrid courses dealt with technological topics.  For example, they offer a hybrid course about online advertisement/shopping.  They all seem to utilize a similar discussion panel format like LIS, offering face-to-face discussion which is complimented by online discussion. This allows students to participate without having to be in class.

I think that this hybrid course model is effective in taking advantage of current technology to facilitate class interaction, but this takes away from the face-to-face interaction that adds value to the class.  I think I would have had more meaningful interactions with the class if we had more in person interaction.  With that being said, this format obviously has a multitude of positive aspects to offer.

I thought the course lectures were extremely interesting, but I do not think they added much to the class content.  I also thought the second part of the class that dealt with more of today's technology was much more interesting.  Learning the history behind the information society was necessary to get a good background on the topic, but the most interesting topics were about recent technology.

My Online Experience

Next semester I am taking Stats 371, except it is the online version. It is different from this class because it has no lectures, but there are optional discussion sections. We received and email from the professor explaining how the class would be structured. Instead of lectures, the material would be self-taught with  lecture supplements. I am excited for my stats class, and I feel like all of the online learning for this course will prepare me for it.

I think that the online portions were very beneficial to this class. It helped give real world examples of the information society, and it helped with my understanding of the material. Before this class, I have never blogged. Now, I might start blogging in my free time. Since online participation was required, it helped me be more active on our blog. Instead of just posting our opinions and leaving it at that, we had to comment on another blog post, which meant we ultimately had to read other opinions. Sometimes, this challenged my opinion, and it helped me see things from different viewpoints. I think online portions should be considered for classes, but not all. There are some courses that could benefit from online participation, but it would be very dependent on the course and also the material being presented in the course.

When I first signed up for this class, I was not sure what it would cover. As far as the course material, I liked that we learned about a variety of topics. I think I would have enjoyed the readings more if they weren't so lengthy. Once I got myself to sit down and finish an article, I realized that they aren't so bad after you get into them. The blog posts made me stay active within the course, and they helped me better understand the material. I really enjoyed the lectures. I liked that they weren't stuffed with material. I did not take notes because I found it better for me personally to listen and comprehend the martial being presented, rather than quickly trying to write everything down.

Reflection

I became aware of hybrid/blended class when I was a junior in high school. My school was turning a lot of classes into online or hybrid classes. I never signed up for these courses because I did not trust myself to spend the time outside of school to do the work. I knew once I got home, I would want to focus on sports or relaxing so I figured if I had to be at school, there was no point of these courses.

I think hybrid courses are a better option for students in college because we are not required to spend 8 hours a day in school which means we have more time outside of class to work on assignments. For the most part, I enjoyed the hybrid approach to LIS 201. I learned a lot about the many different varieties of online resources and I feel a lot more comfortable using them in the future. I thought the use of online material helped connect to the readings and lecture to really understand the full impact of technology in the information society. The readings and online activities helped get an overall picture of the positives as well as the negatives of the advancement of technology. After taking this course, I realized how important it is to meet face to face. Since discussion sections only meet once a week, it took a while for me to match names to faces. I knew everybody’s names from the blog posts but I wasn’t sure who was who in the class for a while.

I tried finding other hybrid classes through UW-Madison, but the only one I know of is Business Law and that is because I have to take it next semester. I did a Google search of blended/hybrid courses and there seems to be a wide variety of universities offering these courses.

I think universities should take caution in implementing hybrid/blending courses. I think for they are really beneficial for a technology and information class but I don’t know if I would sign up for a math or science class in this format.

Reflection of the Hybrid Class

When I searched the hybrid courses on Google, I found a lot of different types of colleges and universities offering the hybridity that LIS 201 offered. However what really differentiates LIS 201 from these other classes is the blogging and different medias that we were able to use. I really think that the online portion and the discussion really went well together. However, some of the things covered in lectures seemed somewhat disconnected from the discussion subjects. I really think the important portion of the class is the discussion. I learned a lot more from the discussion than any other part of the class.

After taking this course I am much more comfortable with my online presence and ability to navigate different online resources such as blogs and wikis. I think that online components are really helpful for students in the sense that they really connect to the lifestyle of the students.

I found a scale of usefulness in the information presented in the different readings. Some of them really pertained to my everyday life and connections made in discussion and some of them really seemed not all that useful in connecting to the material. I think that the online portion of the class really was useful due to the nature of the class. I don't know how useful some of the things we did online would be if the course was about something completely unrelated to the networking world.

Reflection on Class

When I searched other classes that were hybrid like LIS 201, it was difficult to find since classes that were all online tended to show up. I did see that a class I need to take, MHR 300 involves a lot of work online, and I think that this class will help being prepared for it. It is not so much blog posts though, but more like the wiki.

I think that throughout this course, the in-class and face-to-face portion was more helpful and gave me more insight to each individual than the online portion did. The blog posts were so structured that everyone's looked pretty much the same, whereas in discussion, it was easier to understand each person's views and thoughts on a certain subject than a written post. I do, though, feel more comfortable using online sites such as the wiki and blogs as I have never used either before this course. I think that while online course work could be helpful for some classes such as LIS since the material connects to it, it may not be beneficial to all classes because I think more learning occurs in person.

The lectures and readings made me understand the online world we live in more and made me see where it all came from and where it is taking us. I do think that the online work was necessary for this course, though it would not be for other classes not all about the online world of information.