In the online seminar Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design, Ike Shibley, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State – Berks, explained how to successfully transform a traditional course into a blended course, and dispelled a number of teaching myths along the way.

“This is not the only way to approach [blended design] but I am going to suggest that you want to still use the face-to-face time as the central focus of the online time, and look at how you can get students prepared for face-to-face time and how you can help the students after they’ve been in class,” Shibley said. “So you start with the face-to-face and then think about using the online component for the other times the students interact with the material. In order to do that, you need to throw away all preconceived notions and start from scratch.”

One of the keys Shibley talked about was to use the ADDIE process to guide the design of your blended course. Here’s a brief summary of how to use ADDIE, which stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation.

Analysis:

• Review prior course evaluations for guidance on where students struggle.
• Identify the most difficult concepts for students and focus on those.

Design:

• Create detailed learning objectives. Use strong action verbs and avoid terms like “know,” “understand,” and “learn.”
• Divide course into F2F and online components.
• Match learning objectives with technology.

Development

• Start early – at least a semester, preferably a year, in advance.
• Create an ideal course then start with the most important elements in the next step.
• Create a shell with the intention of refining and improving over several semesters.

Implementation

• Start with a smaller course if possible (summer is a good time).
• Launch the entire course once completely designed rather than piecemeal.

Evaluation

• Assessment is critical for course improvement and accreditation.
• Leverage technology to collect data (think about this in the design stage).
• Utilize evaluation data to ‘close the loop’ to improve the course for next time.

In addition to using ADDIE to guide design, Shibley explained how to divide your course content in a way that creates opportunities for learning before class, during class and after class; how to assess student learning; and how to use technology to support learning. While the before-class activities typically introduce students to the content and include low-stakes grading, in-class activities tend to focus on higher-order thinking, collaboration and high-stakes grading. After-class activities then provide opportunities for working with the content, higher-order thinking, and grading in the mid-to-high-stakes range.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar:

Learn more about Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design »

Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design

There’s good news for college administrators agonizing over online learning versus face-to-face instruction. With a blended course design, you can get the best of both worlds, a synergistic combination that can help you reduce costs while improving the quality of learning.

Blended courses combine online learning and F2F instruction, and you can discover how to make it work at your school by participating in the video seminar Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design.

During the video seminar, presenter Ike Shibley, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State – Berks, outlines and explains why blended course design is an effective option for today’s educational institutions, faculty and students:

• It solves physical space issues. With capital construction projects put on hold, blended course design can help you work effectively with the space you have, while allowing for enrollment growth.
• It enables students to work more and enjoy greater flexibility. Tuition costs continue to increase, which is driving more students into the workplace. Blended course design provides them with the flexibility they need to hold down a job while still pursuing an education.
• It provides today’s most effective education model. A 2009 Department of Education report suggested that blended course design offers the greatest change for student success in a course.
• It is an expected choice for a new generation of students. Today’s student is online, and expects their services to be on-demand. This is a format readily accepted and expected by new students.

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The use of blended course design allows instructors to imaginatively redesign any course to fit the needs of the learner, while reducing the space constraints of an institution. By the end of seminar, you’ll be able to:

• Decide which courses are good candidates for blended course design.
• Transform your current courses into blended courses.
• Understand which learning activities work best online and which are most effective F2F.
• Create a class guide to help organize the course.

Blended courses are the natural result of a changing educational landscape. With careful planning and an up-front investment of time and expertise, blended learning delivers a cost-effective, quality-laden educational model for the present and the future.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar:

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

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Who Will Benefit
This seminar is designed for any college or university. Key staff members to invite include:

• Instructors
• Course Developers
• Instructional Designers
• Administrators

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Many discussions about blended learning, however, focus not on learning but on blending. “Blended” is an adjective and “learning” is a noun; why has our focus been directed at the adjective? Do we assume, as is often done in the teaching paradigm, that learning is automatically assumed? I think that blended learning has become widely established enough that attention can now be paid to the learning portion of the name.

In higher education learning must be the focus—the push for learner-centered teaching is a noble, pedagogically defensible goal. Improving the cost-effectiveness of teaching should play only a secondary role. An instructor should not begin a blended design by asking how many face-to-face hours are really necessary, even though some administrators may use reduced hours as a starting point. The course should be designed to maximize learning.

Blended learning course design
In designing a blended course, a simple way to start is to imagine a discrete unit of learning, for example, a particular topic or a chapter of the textbook. Here is a three-step process:

1. Establish clear learning goals for the topic.
2. Design activities to help students meet the learning goals.
3. Sort the activities into two categories: online and face-to-face.

None of these steps is particularly easy. Writing effective learning goals is a skill that teachers must constantly hone. Designing activities requires a creative mind that is pedagogically grounded. Addressing the third step could be the easiest of the required actions but requires much pedagogical savvy. In considering each step, the following questions might help:

• What do I really want students to learn?
• How can I ensure that students read the book prior to class?
• What lower-level activities can student complete online prior to class?
• What higher-level activities can be accomplished during class?
• What higher-level activities can students complete after a topic has been discussed face-to-face?
• Which activities require a grade and which activities will students do because they can immediately see the link to other graded activities?

As small decisions are made about individual topics and the instructor decides the balance between face-to-face and online learning, the bigger picture will emerge. The teacher must start with small decisions then step back to see the picture that is emerging about the course, in much the same way that we step back from pointillism to see the picture that is created from thousands of small paint dabs.

Ike Shibley, PhD. is an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, a small four-year college within the Penn State system.

From Putting the Learning in Blended Learning. Online Classroom, February 2009, 1,8.

Muriel Oaks is dean of the Center for Distance and Professional Education at Washington State University. During the recent seminar titled New Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty, she offered an in-depth discussion of ways to convince administrators, faculty, and students of the value of blended learning, including:

When talking to administrators, point out that blended learning…

• impacts the entire institution.
• offers a learner-centered pedagogy.
• may integrate with the strategic plan.
• improves classroom utilization.
• can help match delivery to academic need.
• can help fill under-enrolled courses and programs.

When talking to faculty, point out that blended learning….

• gives them access to new resources.
• introduces them to online learning.
• is an opportunity for faculty development and lets them experiment with new pedagogies and techniques.
• helps meet student expectations and build student skills.
• allows for more flexible scheduling.
• retains the face-to-face aspect faculty may cherish.

When talking to students, point out blended learning…

• meets their expectations for utilizing technology.
• develops independent learning skills.
• offers increased flexibility and convenience.
• provides better access to those with job, family, or distance barriers.
• helps reduce educational costs.

Offering blended learning requires more than just setting up an LMS and telling the faculty to integrate it into their curriculum. Institutions must understand the variety of delivery modes available, investigate their potential audience, learn about the competition, and provide adequate support for both students and faculty.

New Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty

Mention the phrase “blended learning” to a group of faculty, and here’s what they hear … More work. Endless e-mails. A depersonalized learning experience. Their carefully honed teaching style tossed out the window.

You know that blended learning can do great things … not just for your institution, but for students and, indeed, for faculty themselves.

So how do you convince a skeptical audience that “blended” doesn’t mean “inferior”?

Our new online video seminar will provide you with a wealth of effective strategies. In News Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty, Muriel Oaks, PhD will provide ideas for winning over reluctant faculty and contributing to the growth of blended learning at your institution. Dr. Oaks, dean of the Center for Distance and Professional Education at Washington State University, has been a leader in continuing and distance education for nearly three decades.

Drawing on her extensive experience, she explains:

• How to develop your “sales pitch” for academic colleagues.
• How to effectively communicate the benefits of nontraditional delivery methods.
• The distinctions between blended and hybrid learning.
• How blended courses can become new revenue sources.
• How to establish best practices for developing and delivering hybrid and blended programs.
• How to help faculty build both synchronous and asynchronous elements into courses.
• How to determine whether a course fits comfortably into an “all-classroom,” “all-online” or blended delivery mode.
• And much more.

If you’ve been struggling to demonstrate how blended learning can enhance pedagogy without burdening faculty or cramping their teaching style, this seminar provides the insight you need.

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Who will benefit:

• Distance learning administrators
• Course designers
• Institutional administrators
• Academic faculty
• Department chairs

This seminar will help transform your faculty members from blended learning skeptics to enthusiasts!

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Now José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, challenges this assumption by asking his faculty to put their lectures online and devote face-to-face classes to discussion. His logic is impeccable. Lecturing is simply delivering delivery, and not much different from reading a textbook in this regard. If so, then why must lectures be held in class? An instructor could just as easily record his or her lectures and put them online for students to view at their leisure. Better yet, the time freed up from delivering the same lectures year after year, course after course, could be spent putting together rich multimedia content that combines narrated PowerPoints, podcasts, Prezis, videos, VoiceThreads, etc.

In fact, why should faculty create their own lectures at all? Bowen notes that our system of faculty creating their own lectures is a bit like having every instructor write his or her own textbook. If faculty wrote all of their own textbooks, most textbooks would be terrible. Why not just use the best lectures that have been posted on iTunesU, TED, etc. for content?

I tell faculty that their real value is not the information stored in their head. After all, nearly all of that information is publicly available in books or journals. A faculty member’s real value is in their interaction with students. The back and forth with students in discussion, or commentary on their assignments to improve their writing, for example, is what gives them value. Faculty should focus on this aspect of their teaching and automate as much as possible the simple content delivery part. Yet most faculty have it backwards—clinging to their lectures as their most important function.

Teachers can test the waters of Bowen’s teaching model by putting one or two of their lectures online and devoting the subsequent class to discussion of the topics in those lectures. I’ve done this with wonderful results. But the secret is to avoid the all-too-easy mistake of falling back into lecturing during class time. As faculty, we think that lecturing is our primary duty, and it is hard to break ourselves of this habit.

One option is to assign students to come to class with one question about the lecture content written on a sheet of paper that the instructor collects to initiate discussion. To avoid embarrassment, have the students crumple up their sheets at the beginning of class and throw them around the room for 30 seconds. Then have each student pick up one of the pieces and start reading them in order to guide discussion.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works.

Resources
This video features an interview with José Bowen as he explains why he removed technology from his classroom, and the resulting benefits. Watch it here »

Lecture sites

• TED—Wonderful compilation of short lectures on interesting topics. http://www.ted.com/
• Free Video Lectures—over 18,000 free lectures. http://freevideolectures.com/
• Video Lectures—Great lecture exchange site. http://videolectures.net/
• iTunesU—Must download the player to access the lectures. http://www.apple.com/education/ipodtouch-iphone/

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

Organizing Blended Courses for Optimal Student Engagement

Time and space are at a premium on college campuses these days. Blended learning courses allow institutions, and students, to make better use of both. By combining the best of face-to-face instruction with online learning technology, blended approaches can reduce time on campus while contributing to better learning outcomes.

There are three times when students should be learning. Before class. During class. And after class.
Traditional face-to-face courses focus mainly on what happens during class. That leaves a lot of time underutilized.

In Organizing Blended Courses for Optimal Student Engagement, Dr. Ike Shibley of Penn State will inspire professors to think about how to use blended courses to more actively involve students with the course material.

In this 90-minute session, Dr. Shibley presents the specific strategies he recommends using with students before class meetings, during class time and after class is over.

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This seminar covers:

• Preparing class guides that help students learn prior to class
• Using student response systems to create a more active classroom
• Writing quiz questions to increase rehearsal and involvement with course material
• Ways to reach higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy with clicker questions
• Teaching challenges for before, during, and after class
• How blended learning makes assessment easier

Who will benefit?

This seminar is designed for college educators and for those who train and supervise faculty members, including:

• Instructors
• Course Developers
• Instructional Designers
• Administrators

There’s never been a better time for blended learning. Prepare for the upcoming semester by enrolling in this strategy-filled seminar today.

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White Paper: Blended Learning Course Design

Blended learning, which combines the benefits of face-to-face instructional time with the conveniences of asynchronous, individualized online learning, offers many potential advantages for faculty and students.

It also can be challenging to get just the right mix of activities to maximize student learning and engagement, without creating an organizational nightmare for instructors.

In Blended Learning Course Design, you will learn the 10 steps Dr. Ike Shibley of Penn State used to transform his own courses with blended learning strategies that increased student performance and improved course evaluation ratings.

He even reduced his workload in the process. Now, that’s something to get excited about!

This new 22-page white paper is loaded with practical, solution-focused information you can use right away to effectively create a hybrid course that brings together the best of both worlds. You will learn:

• The factors essential for successful blended courses
• Which learning activities should be moved online
• When face-to-face communication is necessary
• How to use online grading opportunities to reduce your workload
• Why it makes sense to use high- and low-stakes grading in a blended course
• How blended learning facilitates higher order learning
• How blended courses can help students learn

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This white paper is based on one of Magna’s most popular seminars ever, originally delivered by Dr. Ike Shibley on March 11, 2009.

Dr. Shibley became involved in blended learning as part of a project to redesign the curriculum at Penn State and discovered that students in his blended learning courses achieved an average GPA almost 25 percent higher than students receiving traditional instruction. Here’s your chance to get true insider information on the right way to do blended learning.

Blended learning is revolutionizing college classrooms across the country. If you are thinking about getting started with blended learning or if you are struggling with fine-tuning an existing course, Blended Learning Course Design will point you in the right direction and save you from making frustrating and time-consuming mistakes. Get your copy today!

Cost

You can download the PDF of this white paper, or get the print version mailed to you.

A Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to load the white paper onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

Order this White Paper

“When you see how well blended learning fits with established pedagogical paradigms, creating a synergistic blend of what works best in face-to-face and online, why wouldn’t you want to at least try it?” – Ike Shibley, assistant professor, chemistry, Penn State.

It’s for this reason that blended learning, grounded in sound pedagogical theory, is creating converts among faculty and administrators alike. One such convert is Ike Shibley, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State University-Berks, who says the students in his blended courses are not only more engaged when they come to class, but are performing better on their final exams than his previous, traditional classes.

In the recent online seminar, 10 Ways to Improve Blended Learning Course Design, Shibley provided a blueprint to help faculty transform their face-to-face courses into hybrid courses, as well some of the communication tools he finds effective. Shibley’s strategies for creating a blended course are:

2. Create Ways for Students to Learn Before Class: Assign work that addresses the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy prior to class so students have some exposure to the topic.

3. Create Ways for Students to Learn In Class: When you’re face-to-face, build on the knowledge gained through pre-class assignments with more active learning exercises in class.

4. Create Ways for Students to Learn After Class: Activities include short writing assignments, homework problems, and online quizzes – anything that encourages meaningful interaction with the material.

5. Use Multiple Forms of Communication: Students need to feel connected to their instructor and fellow students. Create ways to blend online and in-class communication.

6. Encourage Collaboration: Students can get frustrated by collaboration projects, but the more your assignments encourage effective collaboration, the more cohesive your course will feel.

7. Utilize Online Resources: Given students’ comfort level with online tools, and the proliferation of relevant online resources, it’s wise to embrace everything from research databases to You Tube videos.

8. Utilize Both Low and High Stakes Grading: All courses benefit from multiple assessment measures, but blended learning courses offer the widest array of choices.

9. Seek Assistance from Professionals: Creating your first blended learning course can feel overwhelming at times, but you don’t have to go it alone. Ask for help from your school’s web and IT professionals, instructional designers, faculty developers, librarians and colleagues.

10. Stay Organized: A blended learning course has a lot of different parts, and it’s easy for students to get confused about what’s expected of them without proper communication and complete transparency.

While Shibley cautions that creating a blended learning course does take a fair amount of time upfront, and it may not be appropriate for all courses or all instructors, it’s proven extremely effective for him and his students.

“When you see how well blended learning fits with established pedagogical paradigms, creating a synergistic blend of what works best in face-to-face and online, the question becomes why wouldn’t you want to at least try it,” says Shibley.

Students at Peirce College (whether they are face-to-face or online students) are required to take a one-credit online course that gives an overview of how the college works and helps develop students’ time management and study skills. The course uses eCollege, the same course management system used for online, hybrid, Web-supported courses at the college.

By the time students enroll in their regular courses (which are accelerated seven-week courses), they have a working knowledge of eCollege and a good idea of what to expect. But managing expectations needs to go beyond using the technology.

1. Post the course syllabus on the Web. Part of managing expectations is letting students know up front how the course is organized.
2. Administer a learning-styles inventory. For each of her courses, Gould uses a learning-styles inventory as an icebreaker activity, and because group work is a required component of her courses, she has students share their results of the inventory.
3. Explain the importance of group work. Because some students may object to working in groups, students need to see how they will benefit from group work. “We have to try to get students to focus on why we want them to work in teams. We’re not just putting them into teams because we want to make them suffer. [Teamwork] is a critical skill that students need to learn so they are functional when they get out and work,” Padavano says.
4. Use team contracts. Major obstacles to group work are finding the time for students to work together and defining each group member’s roles and responsibilities. Gould has each group develop a team contract that outlines how and when the group will work together. Interaction options include e-mail, threaded discussion, text-based chat, document sharing, and audio bridging.
5. Use a variety of assessments. Points should be spread evenly across different assessments because some students might not perform well on tests while others might not write very well.
6. Be flexible. “I might have guidelines and even assignments prepared, but depending on the makeup of the class and students’ learning styles and personalities, I might have to adjust some things,” Padavano says. “If you find that the class is quiet, you can become more active. If you find that the students are very active, you can step back. You can facilitate based on the way that the students are participating in the course.”
7. Provide frequent interaction. Instructors need to be responsive to students’ needs—Padavano recommends a 24-hour response time to students’ questions—but interaction is not solely the responsibility of the instructor. Students also need to interact with each other and with the content.

Excerpted from Online Classroom, vol. 6, no. 5.

10 Ways to Improve Blended Learning Course Design

If you’re on the fence between teaching in a traditional classroom and teaching online, you might be in exactly the right place. Increasingly, faculty are finding that “traditional versus online” is no longer an either/or proposition. The best teaching today may involve a bit of both. As a result, blended learning (or hybrid learning) is seeing a huge surge in popularity.

Blended learning brings together the strongest elements of face-to-face and online teaching, creating a uniquely rich learning experience. The benefits are not only pedagogical … there are some practical advantages to blended learning, as well.
Whether you’re interested in developing blended-learning courses or are seeking new ways to enhance your current efforts – you won’t want to miss 10 Ways to Improve Blended Learning Course Design. During this 90-minute video seminar, Dr. Ike Shibley of Penn State University shows you how blended-learning courses can produce benefits for faculty, students and institutions alike.

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Get an inside look at the key elements of blended learning, including:

• Factors necessary for successful blended courses.
• What learning activities are best accomplished in a classroom, and what makes the most sense online.
• Which courses are the best candidates for blended design.
• How blending contributes to a learner-centered course.
• When and why to choose face-to-face versus online communication.
• How to structure blended courses that meet less often than traditional ones, with better or comparable results.
• Steps involved in redesigning an existing face-to-face course to work as a blended one.

You’ll also have the opportunity to review a carefully selected group of case studies from other institutions, giving you a real-world perspective on what works (and what doesn’t) in blended-learning courses.

Who should attend:

• Faculty members
• Academic deans
• Instructors
• Course developers
• Instructional designers
• Administrators

The time is right to embrace blended learning, and this seminar is a great place to start!

Order this seminar

1. Save trees and time. Professors commonly pass out course outlines and discuss class policies, and then ask students to sign a contract or agreement that they will honor those policies. Here’s an opportunity to save paper and to simplify record keeping. Instead of handing out a syllabus, tell your class where to find it online and ask them to submit an acceptance form electronically.

2. Don’t show everything. A website can be confusing if it presents too much information. We’ve found that if we put too many items on a screen, students tend to surf through them instead of working on the lesson at hand. By hiding inactive lessons, we can make sure that students can’t “smorgasbord” through the course.

3. Keep students on track. There are a variety of content organizational methods that can be used; however, the week-by-week method allows you to use your calendar and your learning modules together. You can limit each learning module to a single week’s work and install links in your calendar.

5. Reinforce lessons with online discussion tools. Although you’ve already engaged the class in a discussion, you can reinforce that discussion on the bulletin board. After the class discussion, you can require students to post their thoughts. Then you can jump into the forum and ask the students to respond to other postings. This practice engages students who aren’t very active in class but who may have valuable input. As a bonus, sometimes these quiet students start participating more in class discussions.

6. Make use of text blocks. WebCT features the ability to publish headers and footers. You certainly can use this feature to design a page with standard banners like the name of the course. In addition, you can use the text block feature to publish urgent messages.

7. Provide tips for new online learners. Adding a direct link on the home page that provides “tips for new online learners” can eliminate initial confusion and provide students with a clear understanding of what the online learning environment is all about. These links might include tips on Web etiquette, where to go for help, thinking ideas through before responding, creating a private and positive working environment to study, and other helpful information.

Lori Norin is an assistant professor of speech communication at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Tim Wall is an instructor in the English/Rhetoric department.

Excerpted from Trial by Fire: Online Teaching Tips That Work, October 2007, Online Classroom.

Initially, when our speech department was asked by our dean to put our basic course online, we resisted. In fact, our course was the last required general education course to go online. When we finally agreed to a Web-enhanced course, it was a disaster. It felt like our content took a backseat to the technology platform. Student feedback was mostly negative. Faculty members were frustrated. And one point the department recommended dropping the online course entirely.

Making the Switch to Hybrid Courses
As a last resort, we attempted to restructure the course by creating a hybrid offering that was half online and half on campus. The results were amazing. Student feedback was much more positive, and retention and assessment scores both shot up. Student retention improved 8 percent the first semester we switched to the hybrid course, while post-test scores jumped an average 20.5 percent. There was also a clear decrease in student and professor frustration.

Having found a delivery method that seemed to work well, we began to look seriously at strategies, tips, and techniques for using WebCT that would simplify and enhance the teaching experience. We frequently discovered we were “overworking” the course management system. There were so many tools at our disposal that we were tempted to use them all. Frankly, that just confused everyone—professors and students.

We decided to look for ways to make the presentation less busy, falling back on a lesson that all teachers learned a long time ago: sometimes less is more. At the same time, however, we didn’t want to simplify so much that we excluded useful techniques. Eventually, by trial and error, we found the right balance.

In the process we also learned how to use feedback mechanisms to enhance teaching. For instance, we discovered that a threaded electronic discussion on a subject like plagiarism puts students on record as knowing what it is. After that, the standard excuses for plagiarism pretty much went away. Similarly, a quick personal email is a handy way to find out what gaps there might be in student learning.

These are only a couple of effective ways in which judicious use of software enhances teaching without getting in the way. The trick, we found, was to use the software without becoming slaves to it.

Lori Norin is an assistant professor of speech communication at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Tim Wall is an instructor in the English/Rhetoric department.

Excerpted from Trial by Fire: Online Teaching Tips That Work, October 2007, Online Classroom.

Motley, who teaches faculty and staff how to develop online content for hybrid courses, says that one of the biggest challenges of developing a hybrid course is deciding which materials and activities to deliver online and which to deliver face to face. “It’s something that each instructor must decide for him- or herself, working with an instructional designer or someone on campus who can help them think about the consequences of putting something online,” Motley says.

Motley offers the following advice for creating a hybrid course:

1. Consider how much time you have to create the online portion of the course, including how long it will take for you to learn how. 
2. Consider the students’ needs and skills. Will working online be an obstacle for some students?
3. Use a course management system if possible. A course management system has the tools to make the online course content interactive. If your institution does not have a user license for a course management system, consider one of the several free, open-source course management systems that are currently available.
4. Reuse materials. Creating online education materials can be time consuming. In addition to reusing content-related materials, whenever possible, reuse messages or announcements.
5. Manage your time. Teaching a hybrid course means you will be online more than you normally would. Plan accordingly.
6. Provide an in-class orientation to the online portion of the course. This is a luxury that is often not available to instructors teaching totally online courses. Still, you should provide in the syllabus all the information students will need to know about working online. 
7. Use class time for lectures. This can help reduce the time it takes to develop online materials, because posting lectures online is often the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of creating hybrid courses, Motley says.
8. Encourage online interaction. The online portion of the course can be an extension of what occurs in the classroom. Students can work in groups to build on the interaction begun in the classroom. Motley recommends tying interaction to grades.
9. Remember that just because students are working in two environments and are free from some time constraints does not mean that students should be expected to do twice the amount of work as in a comparable face-to-face class.

From Online Classroom, March 2007.