Abstract:

In our university college "University College Leuven-Limburg" (UCLL) hybrid learning is explicitly and resolutely chosen as a didactic design principle within the university-wide educational vision. This educational vision is in line with the 'Moving Minds' philosophy of UCLL: our university college wants to motivate people and set ideas in motion. It wants to get students to look beyond their borders, create open minds for the future and, together with students and teachers, break open established frameworks.

Within our university college, we maintain a very broad definition of the didactic design principle of hybrid learning. Hybrid learning concerns a well-considered, varied mix of different dimensions, adapted to the diversity of the target group, the program vision and the program-specific content. It involves an integration of the following dimensions:
- Online and face-to-face learning
- Asynchronous and synchronous activities
- Organized and casual learning
- Individual and group learning

In order to realize this design principle in all study programs, a support and professionalization model was developed that each program can go through to achieve excellent instructional design.

1) Developing a vision and corresponding strategy at the level of the program.
As a result of the corona crisis, study programs have been forced to switch to online education. Programs had to experiment with new ways of teaching, seeking and maintaining connections with and between students... However, study programs often had too little time to make well-considered choices regarding the switch to our broad vision of hybrid learning. As a result, the focus was too often on "the means" rather than the end. In the coming years, we will support programmes to reorient themselves towards the goal: what is the ambition of the programme and how can hybrid learning contribute to this?

2) Setting up a professionalization process.
The strategic actions to put the vision into practice usually include an element of professionalization. We have contained the broad professionalization offerings in a node network, of which hybrid learning is one of the zones in the node network. The teacher, in consultation with the program manager, draws a personal learning journey in the node network. The personalized pathway can be started by the teacher alone, in a group or even with the entire program. The learning units are open to every teacher in our university college and thus also form a meeting place for teachers across courses and programs.

3) Supporting and coaching teachers in developing hybrid courses.
In the university college, we can count on a strong ICTO+ team (ICTO: ICT in education) in which a great diversity and complementarity of profiles is available. For example, there are junior staff members working in this team: these are recent graduates who constantly keep the student perspective in mind when providing support. In addition, there are senior staff members present in the team who are linked to a specific campus and its programs. In this way they can respond quickly, hands-on and tailored to the needs of the team. Finally, the team includes both educational technology and teaching expertise. Through the intense cooperation of all these profiles in the team, we succeed in supporting and coaching teachers and teams of teachers in developing and realizing hybrid education.

Keywords:

Vision development, blended learning, hybrid learning, professionalization, coaching.