Common Pitfalls in Online Course: A Hybrid Perspective

The “5 pitfalls” essay addresses the need to view the hybrid course as an opportunity to increase engagement with the student as a step towards enhancing their learning. It is very easy to lose sight of the person on the other side of the screen . The new learning platform is fraught with technology challenges for the student and the professor. Further, the technology development itself is evolving and we have to play a role to understand some of the limitations and work with the development team to fix it. Just like there are skills to be gained in order to be effective in the traditional classroom; one has to accept that there is a learning curve to excel as a teacher in a hybrid environment. This is particularly true for a generation that has not been raised on interacting with gadgets from an early age. All this implies that there is a fairly large lead time to develop, implement and refine a successful hybrid course and it may take several iterations to get it right.