Can Hybrid Course Formats Increase Attendance in Undergraduate Environmental Science Courses?

A major problem for large-enrollment, introductory college courses in natural resources and life sciences is poor attendance. To ameliorate this problem, we designed a hybrid course (part online, part face-to-face) to incorporate the advantages of online learning while retaining benefits of face-to-face instruction. We taught a hybrid introductory college science course (containing online assignments) simultaneously with a traditional lecture course (containing passive lectures). Completion rates of online homework were greater than attendance rates to passive lectures, and this difference increased with higher class rank. Our results suggest that hybrid course formats might be effective for increasing student attendance, particularly upperclassmen, in introductory life sciences and natural resource courses. MOST INTRODUCTORY COLLEGE COURSES in the natural resources and life sciences are large lecture courses (100 to 400+ students). Introductory courses for science majors are foundational courses of the discipline. For nonscience majors, introductory courses fulfill general science requirements, and more importantly, often represent the only opportunity for these students to learn how the natural sciences inform and impact their own disciplines. Unfortunately, large introductory courses are usually poorly attended (Feldmann and Carney, 1998), and performance and learning suffer (Moore, 2003). Since the advent of the World Wide Web and internet technology, web-based teaching methods have proliferated. Webbased learning environments may be more student-centered, interactive, and flexible than many traditional course formats, but they may also fail to provide adequate face-to-face interaction with instructors and classmates (Yazon et al., 2002). However, courses that combine both classroom and online activities (hybrid courses) have the potential to capture benefits of web-based environments while retaining benefits of traditional classroom environments. Because hybrid courses retain high-quality student-faculty interaction (Navarro and Shoemaker, 2000; Riffell and Sibley, 2003) while enhancing learning outcomes (Tuckman, 2002), they are becoming an increasingly popular option (Young, 2002). We developed a hybrid course to improve the low attendance of resident students in large, introductory science courses at Michigan State University. These introductory courses are offered through the Center for Integrative Studies, and they satisfy general science requirements for a wide variety of nonscience majors. We hypothesized that students would be more likely to “attend” online activities (attendance defined as attempting at least half the problems in an online assignment) compared with passive classroom lectures for two reasons. First, web-based technology is an increasingly familiar environment for undergraduates. Second, students may be more likely to “attend” class activities when they have more control over the time and place they participate (i.e., online assignments) compared with passive lectures, which must be attended at set times and places (St. Clair, 1999; Friedman et al., 2001). Because we wanted to avoid the pitfalls associated with wholly online courses, we retained 1 hour per week of faceto-face instruction. To evaluate the impact of the hybrid course format, we compared attendance rates in a traditional, lecture-based environmental biology course and a hybrid version of the same course. Evaluation of online learning has focused on either student perceptions and/or academic performance of students (Dewhurst et al., 2000; King and Hildreth, 2001; Tuckman, 2002; Yazon et al., 2002; and many others), but the effects of hybrid course environments on foundational outcomes such as class attendance in higher education have not been reported. Understanding the effects of hybrid course formats on attendance rates is important because attendance rates have been repeatedly demonstrated to predict academic performance (Launius, 1997; Gatherer and Manning, 1998; Moore, 2003). If hybrid environments can improve attendance rates, then instructors could have an effective tool for increasing attendance and consequently, performance in poorly attended courses in natural resources and life sciences programs. DESCRIPTION OF THE HYBRID COURSE Our course, Applications of Environmental Biology, focused on applications of basic biological (e.g., photosynthesis, logistic population growth), ecological (e.g., energy flow, predator–prey interactions), and sociological processes (e.g., economic growth) to understanding major environmental issues (e.g., global warming and forest management). The hybrid course incorporated two primary components. First, active lectures met once per week in the lecture hall, and focused on cooperative, group activities for learning core skills and concepts. Second, online assignments were biweekly, webbased homework problem sets. Each week of the course, one online assignment was due the night before the active-learning lecture (Fig. 1). A second online assignment, due several days after the active lecture, reinforced and extended concepts dealt with in class.