How to Make Hybrid Teaching Work for You

Hybrid teaching strategies will be the new norm this fall in light of regulations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education, experts weigh in on how to make hybrid teaching work in the classroom.

Jenae Cohn, an academic-technology specialist for the program in writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, and Derek Bruff, director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, answered questions from instructors about how to make hybrid teaching work to their advantage. The pair fielded questions on topics ranging from learning names while students are wearing masks to integrating active learning.

Bruff also described his experience testing out hybrid teaching strategies on faculty who posed as students. “(P)erhaps my biggest takeaway was that most everything an instructor needs to do in a hybrid and physically distanced classroom is going to take more time and mental effort. There’s a new workflow to even the simplest of teaching activities, and the learning curve for that workflow will be different for each instructor,” Bruff said. He recommends being open and honest with students about this process and soliciting feedback to make hybrid teaching more effective.