With the beginning of a new spring semester, students across YU’s campuses are dipping their toes into new classes and learning to navigate the different tides of unfamiliar teachers and departments. Amidst the routine changes brought by a new semester, some Yeshiva and Stern College students are feeling even more significant differences than usual. A number of students are enrolled in classes that are based on a “blended learning” model. This means that while a portion of class occurs in the classroom with a teacher standing in front, another segment occurs online via PowerPoint and other multi- media methods.
These classes are the result of a new Yeshiva University initiative called “YU Global,” which, according to their website, aims to create engaging, innovative, and rigorous learning experiences for students on YU’s existing campuses and around the world in online certificate, degree, and ‘life-long learning’ (meaning learning without credit) programs. As of last year, blended courses were offered in such departments as Hebrew, English, Computer Science, Economics, Accounting, and Marketing. Next semester the History department, amongst others, will offer blended courses as well.
The introduction of these courses and the plan to introduce more of them next semester is in part the result of a decision made in mid- September when the board of trustees directed the academic side of the university to balance the budget. One of the solutions concocted during that meeting was a plan to incorporate more blended courses. The logic is that smaller departments, such as the History department, will be able to offer more courses with fewer teachers. For instance, if a teacher generally teaches a course at Stern on both Monday and Wednesday mornings, using the new blended method the professor and students will only need to be in the actual classroom on Monday morning, with an online component to be completed sometime during the week. Therefore, the professor now has Wednesday morning open to offer another class either on the Stern or YC campus. This would help the budget in the sense that it requires fewer teachers without needing to decrease the amount of courses in the department.
According to an article written by Avi Mendelson in the December issue of The Commentator, blended learning has met mixed reviews from students and teachers. Following the meeting in mid- September regarding the budget, all department heads were made aware of the blended learning plan and were told to figure out ways to incorporate it into their departments. While some professors are open to the new model with few reservations, like Professor Gillian Steinberg of the YC English department, many professors, like Professor William Hawkins of the YC Economics department, are still very skeptical.
According to a study conducted by Harvard University based on the blended courses they offered in 2013, blended learning has what to offer, but does not beat the setting of a traditional classroom in terms of academic advantages. The study results observed that students responded more to the course structure and execution of blended learning than to the actual online and blended elements; that is, having a very structured class and schedule worked well for students but the actual online, at-home material was not favorable.
Additionally, students were found to cut- corners when it came to the online components, such as skimming through the videos and PowerPoint slides, or not looking at them at all. This in turn affected actual valuable class time, for large portions of the classes were spent covering material that the students were meant to cover on their own. A student at YC in a blended learning economics class expressed this very complaint in Mendelson’s article as well.
The Harvard study also found that the students valued the ability to learn at their own pace, which blended learning provides, but craved meaningful in-person interactions, which were even more limited as a result of having only one class per week. The study indicated a qualitative difference between having to take time out of one’s schedule in order to ask a question or have a discussion with a teacher, versus having that opportunity built in during a class. Additionally, a big component of asking questions is having not just the teacher, but the presence of fellow students to respond and offer their own input, an opportunity that is minimized with blended learning due to less class time.
The blended learning model clearly has costs and benefits; the question is how to balance them. According to a study in the Journal of Educational Technology and Society published by the International Forum of Educational Technology and Society, “it is important to construct equilibrium between e- learning and face to face environments, in view of the advantages of both methods, during the process of designing a blended learning environment.”
Perhaps Yeshiva University and YU Global will be able to strike that balance.