Instructor and Student Workload Considerations

There's no denying that designing and executing a blended course may require more heavy lifting from both instructor and student compared to some other types of courses. However, with adequate time, support from an educational developer from the Centre for Learning and Teaching or a peer, and consultation with the resources on this website, a blended course can be very rewarding and well-worth the effort. Moving to a blended model may also be a natural next step for some Dalhousie faculty who have already spent time and energy re-designing their courses for pandemic online teaching.

As noted in Integrating Online and In-person Activities, scattering a few in-person opportunities across an online course without considering alignment between outcomes, activities and assessments will produce a course that lacks cohesion. It will also most likely lead to the "course-and-a-half" phenomenon — a common trap when designing online or blended courses. Indiscriminately adding things on to an online course in order to make it blended will increase the workload for both instructors and students. Similarly, adding significant online components to an in-person course without decreasing the in-person requirements can also increase workload. This can be avoided with a thoughtful design process.