Blended Courses Overview

Blended courses integrate a combination of classroom and online activities. Most blended courses replace 25% to 50% of classroom time with online activities through myCourses. These courses allow for more active learning and flexible scheduling, while maintaining the face-to-face contact characteristic of the classroom.

Depending on the course goals and content, the schedule of alternating online and face-to-face components of a blended courses vary from one section to the next. Here are some examples of different schedules:

A morning course that ordinarily meets Mondays and Wednesdays could meet both days during Weeks 1, 2, and 11, but met on Wednesdays only during Weeks 3-10 in order to accommodate the online learning activities.
For a practicum or capstone course, Weeks 1-4 and 10-11 could be completely face-to-face, with Weeks 5-9 solely devoted to online learning activities
An evening course that would normally meet face-to-face for four hours once a week could reduce each on-campus class by one or two hours (25-50%) and require students to complete assignments online in lieu of maintaining the full four hours of class time.

Just as the schedule of a blended course can differ, so too can the structure of learning activities. Here are some examples of different blended structures:

Three days prior to their next on-campus class, students are given a question or problem to discuss online. During the face-to-face class, the instructor projects the online discussion thread, then continues the discussion with a group of participants who are now better prepared and more engaged.
The instructor creates a private online discussion area (a "journal") for each student in the course; students post questions and drafts of their work, and get feedback from the instructor.
Students research and prepare aspects of team projects online, post them to online discussion boards for debate and revision, then present them to the on-campus class for final discussion and assessment.