Can Hybrid Learning Save Higher Education?
Colleges and universities have been hard hit by the pandemic, with massive losses in revenues and student counts. A great disruption that was already underway—questions about the value and cost of four-year higher education, the high stress of student debt, increased use of distance learning—has accelerated during COVID 19 and created a generation of students looking for something new, yet still hungry for the collegial experience of in-person interaction and community. How can their needs be addressed, and help schools survive, by hybrid learning approaches that are fast accelerating in the wake of the pandemic?
As we fnd ourselves washed ashore after the global COVID shipwreck, the frst step is to acknowledge and understand this moment of crisis and opportunity. Hybrid or blended ed spaces used to mean the “fipped” curriculum in which class lectures are viewed online, and classrooms are used for active, hands-on, lab type activities. While that may still apply, a more broadly implemented hybrid learning approach now offers a path to reaching more of the under-served, expanding the student population, bolstering college revenues, and making far more effective use of in-place learning environments. It’s not simply a matter of using more on-line curricula, but a comprehensive blooming of creative learning options that is far more responsive to the diversity of student needs and means.
