Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Audio In Hybrid Courses

Abstract

The prevalence of either completely online or hybrid courses has continued to increase over the past decade, but properly designing the delivery mode of these courses remains a challenge. Whereas fully online institutions of higher education may focus on a purely online delivery format, more traditional colleges and universities have the challenge of balancing online and traditional classroom instruction using the hybrid course format. Whereas basic hybrid courses may have relied more on visual aids of instruction, this paper focuses on the effectiveness of enhancing these hybrid courses with audio lectures. Hybrid courses were created using PowerPoint slides consisting of a mix of visual and audio instructional delivery modes, and student surveys were subsequently administered at the conclusion of the semester to determine the ultimate effectiveness of audio enhancements. This paper presents the details of this case study, the corresponding statistical analyses and interpretations, and general concluding recommendations for audio-enhanced course design. Overall, the addition of the audio component to the hybrid course structure made the hybrid course experience more effective, increased the likelihood that the students would take or recommend future hybrid courses that contained audio enhancements, and made it more likely that the students would prefer a hybrid course to a traditional classroom-only course. Continued research is necessary to provide a more active learning experience and class community during the online components, and synergistically utilize classroom time more effectively to truly capture the benefits of both online and traditional instruction using the audio-enhanced hybrid course format.