4.2 Hybrid learning environments
Use of social media like Facebook (Chu et al., 2019) and SnapChat (Faulkner, 2018) have previously been shown to be effective online collaboration spaces because many students are already familiar with the platform for personal use and unlike many of the online education platforms (like Moodle) these social media forms have apps for mobile devices allowing them to engage/interact anywhere, anytime (Chen & Chiou, 2014; Chu et al., 2019; Gleadow et al., 2015; Singh, 2017). The recent advancement of collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams (used here) has included the development of accessible apps capturing this anytime, anywhere flexibility that can be used for enhanced learning environments using professional platforms (and university usernames).
Hybrid classes have been reported to have a stronger sense of community than those in traditional classrooms (Chen & Chiou, 2014; Singh, 2017). Once students see themselves as belonging to a group, they feel trust and comfort in the community (Chen & Chiou, 2014), a possible explanation for why our students responded within their own small teams to comments/questions posted on the whole class Team. In our class, the sense of belonging is likely to be enhanced be a ‘shared suffering’ from lockdown, a sense that ‘we’re all in this together’. Similarly, using video calls from their homes may have further strengthened the sense of belonging. It has also been suggested that the convenience of hybrid methods alone are enough to increase the ease of interactions (Chen & Chiou, 2014).
Although some studies have found that learning is improved and higher grades obtained in hybrid learning environments (Chen & Chiou, 2014; McFarlin, 2008; Singh, 2017), it is very important to keep in mind that context is important and that diversity across courses is important. Kizilcec et al., (2020) found that scaling behavioural science interventions across many learning contexts can dramatically reduce their effectiveness. So while the video task presented here has been demonstrated to work across first and third year students in two countries, we are not suggesting these same strategies be applied to multiple levels within a single degree program. It is still important that students have training (via assessments) in more traditional tasks like scientific writing, posters and PowerPoint presentations. We predict that mixing these with non-traditional tasks and embedding the tasks within online collaborative spaces like Microsoft Teams will have the greatest benefit to the most students. To achieve this via resilient and inclusive methods, horizon scanning is important (Gleadow et al., 2015; McFarlin, 2008). No-one could have foreseen the COVID-19 disruptions, however using Microsoft Teams from the beginning of semester, despite the challenges of being an early adopter, created a resilient learning environment that withstood floods and pandemic.
Our findings that explicit training of team skills (including virtual collaboration) enhances the student experience is also supported by wider studies of communication skills (Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel, 2016). They also make the point that explicit interventions will only be successful if sustainable (Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel, 2016) which depends on the academic acknowledging the importance of the skill to student learning and the ease of implementation (Mercer-Mapstone & Kuchel, 2016). The team training exercise here has been designed for ease of implementation, centred on 4 team training sessions that take no more than 30 minutes each (https://www.arlab.co.uk/teaching-teams.html). Additional scaffolding was provided via instructions on how to use Microsoft Teams (Supplementary Material S2) and in-class time was allocated to self-directed team assignment work (in the presence of the academic) so any issues could be easily resolved. The unusual COVID-19 educational circumstances have demonstrated that this scaffolding is adequate to ensure students have the tools to succeed in a virtual team environment.