English 895: Blog 2

Helms, Marilyn M. and Mary Jo Jackson.  “Student Perceptions of Hybrid Courses: Measuring
      and Interpreting Quality.” Journal of Education for Business.  84.1 (2008): 7-13. ProQuest.  
      Web. 21 May 2012.

Helms and Jackson review research on the effectiveness of hybrid education and describe a study they performed to measure student perceptions of quality in hybrid courses.  From their results, they argue that contrary to some earlier research, rather than “minimizing the weaknesses of distance learning,” hybrid instruction is “stuck in the middle of two disparate pedagogies or extremes and appears to suffer from both the strengths and weaknesses at either extreme...the best and worst of both formats” (11).

To define quality regarding hybrid instruction, they apply business-related “quality management” philosophy to education and review three categories of elements that affect the quality of distance education proposed by Miller and Husmann (1996), which include learner’s responsibility (student responsibility in acquiring specific competencies), educator’s responsibility (design and delivery of course material), and administrator’s responsibility (technical considerations of the course) (8).  These categories include the specific elements of course delivery, instructional quality, course and program administration, student participation, and the learning and teaching cultures (8).  They then explain how they use a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), which has been typically employed in business-related “strategic management,” and argue this type of analysis is useful “as a first step in organizing the large number of issues that often surround complex problems and decisions” (8).  They surveyed both traditional and non-traditional students in business classes at a public college about their experiences with hybrid courses and apply Miller and Husmann’s three categories to classify the student responses (8-9).  They then review sample student responses and summarize and categorize the patterns of responses according to the SWOT categories (9-11). 

Students mention the flexibility, potential for increased revenue, added course offerings, and more degreed individuals in the workforce as some of the pros of hybrid instruction, while common negative responses include the perceived threat of a substandard education that may be viewed a “diploma mill” by members of the outside community and some employers (11).  Though the authors cite some other studies and theories that have highlighted the benefits of online and especially hybrid instruction, their survey suggests that the pros and cons cancel each other out through an equal number of strengths and weaknesses (11).

This article does include some useful information, including students’ views of the quality of hybrid instruction and a review of relevant research about online and hybrid instruction, but the article has too much of a business focus for my taste.  They even refer to students as “student customers” at one point (11).  The utility of their results seems somewhat questionable as well.  For example, they don’t consider student success rates in these classes as compared with similar traditional or fully online formats.  Perhaps the most useful aspect of this analysis is to make online educators aware of some of the weaknesses of hybrid instruction from the students’ perspective so that we may try to mitigate these problems in our courses.