Summer and winter sessions are condensed, intensive terms that must be carefully planned and delivered to meet course learning outcomes. Since 2005, the Office of Summer, Winter & Special Programs has encouraged academic departments to offer hybrid and online courses as an alternative to in-person courses. The number of hybrid and online courses offered in the special sessions has grown steadily, and currently, 30 – 40% of the courses scheduled in summer or winter sessions are hybrid or online.
Over 100 faculty members from a variety of disciplines have participated in UMBC’s Alternate Delivery Program (ADP). The ADP provides financial, technical, and pedagogical support to faculty who agree to redesign an existing face-to-face (F2F) course for online or hybrid (part online, part F2F) delivery in summer or winter session.
The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) has identified six different models for course delivery. The six models represent different points on the continuum from a fully face-to-face course to a fully online course. The ADP program focuses on two of these models:
The Replacement (or Hybrid) Model – The replacement model reduces the number of in-class meetings and a) replaces some in-class time with out-of-class, online, interactive learning activities, or b) also makes significant changes in remaining in-class meetings.
The Fully Online Model – The fully online model eliminates all in-class meetings and moves all learning experiences online, using Web-based, multi-media resources, commercial software, automatically evaluated assessments with guided feedback and alternative staffing models.