Despite Faculty Skepticism: Lessons from a Graduate-Level Seminar in a Hybrid Course Environment

Despite the fact that online education continues to grow, the vast majority of faculty remain skeptical that online courses can yield the same student learning outcomes as traditional face-to-face courses. In an effort to determine if online graduate courses can be effective, in this study we explore the extent to which qualities commonly found in graduate-level seminars can be replicated in hybrid graduate-level courses. A course for students in a higher education graduate program titled “The American Community College” serves as the study case. The course was developed as a hybrid with synchronous, asynchronous, and in-person elements intended to foster highly interactive exchanges of information, deep analysis of subject matter, and advanced means of communicating one's ideas; all elements of a successful graduate-level course. Web technologies including wikis, blogs, and podcasting provided creative and varied pedagogical tools, which could be fully realized only when students were immersed in the onl...