Hybrid teaching workshops: Upskilling educators to deliver hybrid classes

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally challenged teaching and learning practices in higher education. In early 2020, the University of Sydney Business School joined many other institutions in rapidly pivoting to online teaching in response to social distancing requirements. While online and blended delivery modes were practised pre-pandemic, more traditional face-to-face teaching methods were the ‘norm’. The School’s educators rose to the challenge of delivering most classes online by the end of year. In early 2021, continually changing strategic and financial circumstances posed a new challenge–some courses required delivery in a hybrid mode. Hybrid teaching requires an educator to manage on-campus and remote students simultaneously (Baker et al., 2020). The majority of staff at the Business School had limited experience and understanding of hybrid delivery. The Business Co-Design (BCD) team, a mix of educational developers, learning designers, and learning technologists, was approached to meet the challenge of preparing academic staff for teaching in hybrid mode. Two of us–an educational developer and a learning designer from BCD–were tasked with delivering experiential workshops on hybrid teaching that were tailored to the needs of our academic colleagues in the Business School.