“Hybrid courses,” or courses that deliver part of their instruction in a traditional lecture manner and part in an online environment, are becoming increasingly popular among schools and colleges. Proponents of the concept say it capitalizes on the benefits that both face-to-face and online learning can provide—and now, there is some evidence to suggest that hybrid courses can help students learn more effectively.

Brian McFarlin, a professor at the University of Houston’s Laboratory of Integrated Physiology, decided to conduct an experiment in one of his classes to observe the strengths and weaknesses of hybrid courses. The project was partly funded by a faculty development grant from the university’s office of educational technology.

McFarlin found that final student grades were 9.9 percent higher (an increase of one letter grade on a standard grading scale) when the course was administered in a hybrid format.

A total of 658 final grades were used to evaluate the effect of the course-delivery format on academic performance. All exams used the same question bank for each course format.

“When I started, I just wanted to make sure that students did as well in the hybrid version of the class as the traditional. I quickly learned that technology is powerful when used properly,” said McFarlin.

Though the sample size is too small to draw any definitive conclusions, it raises some interesting questions to explore more fully.

Supporters of hybrid instruction believe that combining face-to-face instruction with online reflection and discussion can engage students in the content more effectively, while customizing the course to students’ needs and fostering a higher degree of interactivity than is possible in a large lecture format only.

These potential benefits were largely what inspired McFarlin to try a hybrid format.

“Students … had varying levels of background prior to taking the class, meaning that when I taught basic materials, [some] students needed more assistance than others—so essentially it would benefit some and bore others,” he explained.

Another reason he wanted to try a hybrid course was the increasing difficulty of trying to manage a continuously rising class size that reached up to 200 students.

Course format

McFarlin’s class was Physiology of Human Performance. Three hundred forty-six students took the course in the traditional face-to-face lecture format from 2004 to 2005. Three hundred twelve students took the course in a hybrid format from 2006 to 2007. The hybrid design included 1.5 hours a week online and another 1.5 hours a week in a traditional classroom setting.

In the traditional format, course lectures were administered using PowerPoint slides and Flash media-based animations whenever possible. Because the course had a large number of students enrolled, there was minimal interaction between the professor and the students.