To learn more about student and faculty expectations of and experiences in hybrid and online classes at Baruch College, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) distributed student and faculty surveys at the beginning and end of the Spring 2015 semester. All surveys were created and disseminated using the College’s Qualtrics software. Using course codes from CUNYFirst, the Baruch Computing and Technology Center (BCTC) generated a list of students enrolled in and faculty teaching hybrid/online classes for the Spring 2015 semester. The January surveys were completed by 417 students and 32 faculty members. The second surveys, on experiences, were sent out in May to the same groups of students and faculty; 442 students and 43 faculty completed the May survey.

The January surveys were designed to assess expectations for hybrid/online classes. The student survey gathered basic academic data and employment information, and asked students whether or not they had previously taken a hybrid/online course. The survey also asked students about their expectations for their upcoming course, including questions about anticipated workload, instructor and peer interaction, and access to technology. The January faculty survey gathered data about departmental affiliation and employment status (full or part-time). The survey also asked specific questions about previous training for teaching and hybrid/online classes, and expectations about  technology, assessment, learning goals, communication, and student engagement.

The May survey followed up to assess whether or not the hybrid/online course fulfilled student and faculty expectations. Since the student survey in January revealed that 50% of respondents were transfer students, the May survey asked these students to provide the name of the school from which they transferred.

It should be noted that the results of these surveys can be interpreted in a number of ways. Since many questions asked faculty and students to evaluate hypothetical situations (for example, if they would have experienced a different outcome had the same class been taken or taught in a face-to-face setting), the results reflect participants’ attitudes and presumptions and do not offer empirical evidence about learning outcomes. The CTL reads these surveys as snapshots of student and faculty attitudes and understandings about hybrid/online courses, and will use the results as entry points for more substantive research.

The following sections present aspects of the surveys that we feel significantly impact hybrid/online learning at Baruch College:

• The Introduction to Student Survey Findings gives a broad overview of the results of the January and May student surveys.
• Academic Challenges for Transfer Students in Hybrid/Online Classes discusses how the different demographics and potential digital communication disruptions of transfer students may affect their performance in hybrid/online classes.
• Working Students: Preferences for and Performance in Hybrid/Online Courses hypothesizes about the experience of working students in hybrid/online courses.
• Student Expectations and Experiences in Hybrid/Online Classes details students’ self-reported assessments of their hybrid/online courses.
• The Introduction to Faculty Survey Findings offers a broad overview of some results from the faculty survey, including how faculty prepared and trained for their hybrid/online courses.
• Pedagogy and Technology offers insight into the faculty experience in terms of adjustments faculty made to their teaching practice and their self-evaluations of technology and support.
• Moving Forward offers suggestions and recommendations for future research, student outreach, faculty development, and training seminars based on the results of these preliminary surveys.

Next section: Introduction to Student Survey Findings

The student surveys uncovered several aspects of hybrid courses that, if improved, would likely increase student satisfaction and success. Specifically, areas related to rewarding learning experiences and meaningful instructor and student communication warrant further consideration.

In January, a majority of students agreed that:

• a hybrid course would allow them to learn as much as a face-to-face course,
• they would interact with the instructor sufficiently (as compared to a face-to-face course), and
• they would be able to find the needed tech support on campus.

The May survey revealed a slight drop in agreement in each of these areas. Results indicated that compared to a face-to-face course:

• 33% of students felt they did not learn as much,
• 47% of students felt that they were learning on their own,
• 42% of students felt that they did not interact sufficiently with their instructor, and
• 30% of students felt that they were not able to network with peers.

Since one-third of students indicated that they felt they may not have learned as much in their hybrid course as they would have in a comparable face-to-face course, these results warrant deeper investigation. Interpreters of this data should bear in mind that these are self-evaluated responses based on student suppositions and can be analyzed in a number of ways. More research is needed to make reasonable conclusions about student learning outcomes in hybrid/online courses.

To more effectively assess student satisfaction with these courses, additional investigations should attempt to pinpoint whether certain classes drive student dissatisfaction or whether discontent exists across a range of courses. Additionally, on a more general level, gathering specific information about students’ experiences could help illuminate why certain students felt that they were “learning on their own” and why a significant minority of students did not feel they learned as much in their hybrid/online courses. Future surveys might also ask students to specify what kinds of materials they engaged with in their hybrid class to further investigate students’ learning experiences in hybrid/online courses. Knowledge of students’ experiences can help gauge the effectiveness of hybrid/online pedagogical practices, and assist the College in further developing high-quality hybrid/online courses. Future course and faculty development initiatives should foster implementation of these best practices.

Next section: Academic Challenges for Transfer Students in Hybrid/Online Classes

 

Transfer students face specific challenges that may impact their success in hybrid/online courses at Baruch College. In the January survey, 50% of all respondents identified themselves as a transfer student and in the May survey, 54% of respondents identified themselves as a transfer student.

In the May survey, 51% of transfer students reported that they had transferred from a community college. 84% came from another public institution, and of that number, 79% relocated to Baruch from another CUNY school. Within that population, 62% of students reported that they transferred from a CUNY community college.

Baruch College Transfer Students

Students who transfer to Baruch from the CUNY community colleges may face more academic challenges than students who begin at Baruch as freshmen. While the CUNY community colleges have open enrollment, the senior colleges are selective. However, according to information provided on the admissions page of the CUNY website, graduates of a CUNY community college with an Associates degree in Arts, Science, or Applied Science are guaranteed a placement in a CUNY senior college (although not necessarily their top choice) as long as they have a cumulative grade point average of 2.0 or better and have taken one Math and one English class in which they received a grade of C or better. In contrast, according to the Baruch College Admissions website, the average high school GPA of entering freshmen is 3.2 and the acceptance rate is only 26%. This disjuncture suggests that transfer students to Baruch from the CUNY community colleges may be less academically prepared than students entering as freshmen directly from high school.

Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds tend not only to have a more difficult time getting into college, they also tend to graduate at lower rates than students from more privileged backgrounds. According to the 2014 CUNY experience survey, CUNY community college students have lower household incomes and are more likely to be the first in their families to attend college than students at the senior and the comprehensive colleges.

A May 2015 report from The National Center for Education Statistics, based on data gathered from 2002-2012, affirms that “students from families with a low socioeconomic status (SES) are less likely than those from families with a higher SES to obtain higher levels of postsecondary education.” Moreover, in a 2012 paper in the journal Community Investments, Stanford University professor Sean Reardon states that “ the link between parental educational attainment and family income has grown stronger in recent decades, as the wage returns to educational attainment have increased since 1979.”

The charts below graph data from the 2014 CUNY experience survey. The data is broken up by income range, but, overall, 58% of CUNY community college students, and 47% of all CUNY students, have household incomes below $25,000 per year. The second chart graphs family educational attainment. While 22% of community college students were the first in their entire families to attend college, 49% were the first generation to attend college.

Family Income and Education

These recent findings about the exacerbation of existing achievement gaps have relevance to hybrid/online courses. In 2013, Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggers from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University conducted a large-scale study intended to measure differences in academic performance between face-to-face and online classes for a broad variety of students. They found that “students with stronger academic capacity tended to be less negatively affected by online courses, while students with weaker academic skills were more strongly negatively affected. The interaction also indicates that the gap in course performance between high and low-skill students tended to be stronger in online courses than in face-to-face courses.”

Socioeconomically disadvantaged students are also less likely to have access to technology off campus and may even be less technologically proficient when compared to their more privileged peers. In the article “Commuter Students Using Technology” published in Educause Review in September 2014, professors Maura Smale (New York City Tech) and Mariana Regalado (Brooklyn College) analyzed the results of their study of CUNY undergraduates and technology. They found that for many students, “economic constraints imposed real limits on their access to and use of technology off campus. Because such technologies can be leveraged for scholarly uses as well as for communication more broadly, these constraints have serious implications for students’ academic lives and beyond.” Students in lower income brackets had less access to hardware, software, and reliable data plans than their more affluent peers. Moreover, the issues went beyond access and also affected skill attainment. As Smale and Regalado point out, “mere access to technology does not tell the whole story. . . students’ experience of and preparation for using technology in their academic work was uneven — not just in their online research skills but also in their proficiency with basic productivity, word-processing, and presentation software.” College students need more than access to technology; they also require opportunities to learn competence on these technologies. Generally, competence is borne from practice, which requires steady access. Students from more well-to-do educational and family backgrounds have a marked advantage in terms of technological skill attainment over students from impoverished circumstances.

The CTL January and May surveys also revealed that transfer students may experience more disruptions in communicative technologies than other students, such as not having access to their Baruch email addresses and Blackboard sites. Transfer students to Baruch are likely not familiar with a popular platform for hybrid/online courses, Blogs@Baruch, which freshmen learn in their required Freshman Seminar course. This setback can impact adjustment to the College when students are at their most vulnerable. This is especially impactful in hybrid/online courses, where it is crucial to establish a routine and protocol in the first two weeks.

Transfer students may also not be aware of how to find and enroll in hybrid/online classes, if they are interested in doing so. Since our surveys revealed that over half of students enrolled in hybrid/online classes at Baruch this semester did not realize that they had registered for a hybrid/online class, this is an issue that the College should address as a whole.

Next section: Working Students: Preferences & Performance in Hybrid/Online Courses

In the January survey, 66% of the survey respondents identified as working students, and in the May survey 62% of working Baruch students reported taking hybrid/online class because it fit their work schedule. Yet, according to the 2014 CUNY Student Experience Survey, 52% of Baruch students reported that they did not have a job outside of school. This data indicates that a higher percentage of working Baruch students may be taking hybrid/online classes.

Additionally, the following bullet points imply that working students who answered the CTL Spring 2015 surveys work more hours than Baruch students as a whole.

• The 2014 CUNY Student Experience survey reveals that only 22% of Baruch students work more than 20 hours per week;
• 66% of CTL survey respondents reported working more than 20 hours per week.
• In the 2014 CUNY Student Experience survey, 8% of all Baruch students reported working more than 35 hours;
• The CTL survey indicates that 22% of Baruch students taking hybrid/online classes reported working over 40 hours per week.

The self-evaluation of working students in our surveys complicates the commonly held belief that working students suffer from lower academic performance than non-working students, particularly in hybrid/online classes. Working students were asked to provide a self-assessment of their performance in their hybrid/online course:

• Across all the working hours categories, most students estimated that they performed comparably in their hybrid/online classes and their face-to-face classes,
• 35% of students who worked over 40 hours per week estimated that they would perform better in their hybrid/online courses than in their face-to-face courses, and
• The highest percentage (29%) of students who thought they had performed  worse in their hybrid/online class were the students who worked the least (1-10 hours).

The graph on the right details students’ responses in the May survey’s question about how working a specific number of hours per week affected their perceived performance in hybrid/online (H/O) classes, when compared to their face-to-face (F2F) classes. The goal of this question was to gain insight into working students’ perceptions of and confidence in their performance in hybrid/online courses. Since students filled out this question at the end of the semester, they likely had some sense of how they performed in the course and could recall the challenges and opportunities they faced in their classes. Since no two classes can ever be the same, no matter the mode, the comparison is difficult to assess, which may affect the credibility and transferability of this qualitative data.

The preliminary data suggests that working students believe that hybrid/online courses may benefit their performance. While more research on working students’ performance in hybrid/online classes is needed, it is clear that working Baruch students demonstrate interest in taking hybrid/online classes and that even students who work full-time have confidence in their ability to perform as well in hybrid/online classes as in face-to-face classes. Future surveys are needed to investigate whether or not students actually perform better and illuminate potential reasons behind any performance differences.

Next section: Student Expectations & Experiences in Hybrid/Online Classes

The January survey asked students about the  workload they expected in their hybrid/online course as compared to a similar face-to-face (F2F) course, and the amount of work they expected to do outside of class. The survey also asked students to anticipate whether or not they thought they would learn as much in the hybrid course, gauge whether they thought they would  sufficiently interact with the instructor of the course, predict whether they would feel comfortable with the technological components of the course, and assess their ability to find technical support for their hybrid course. Additionally, the January survey asked students to identify specific worries they had about taking a hybrid course.

The May survey followed up on these questions to assess if expectations were met and to evaluate students’ experiences in their hybrid course. The May survey also inquired about drawbacks to the hybrid/online course; these questions mirrored the questions about student worries on the January survey. Additionally, the May survey asked students whether or not they felt they had done better or worse in the hybrid course as compared to their possible performance in a similar face-to-face course.

1. Workload Expectations and Experiences

Prior to taking the hybrid course, over half of the students who responded to the survey felt that the workload would be similar to a comparable face-to-face course and 38% of students felt that the hybrid course would entail more work. Additionally, prior to taking the course, over half of students felt the hybrid would require more outside-of-class work and 38% of students expected the hybrid course would require the same amount of outside-of-class work. Only 9% of students felt the hybrid class would be less work and 10% expected the hybrid course to require less outside-of-class work.

After taking the hybrid course, more than half of the students surveyed reported that the assignments in their hybrid course were similar in difficulty to assignments they might encounter in a comparable face-to-face course; one fourth of students felt that the hybrid course assignments were more difficult. 47% of students felt that the homework or outside-of-class work was similar to what they would expect from a comparable F2F course. However, 46% of students felt the hybrid course required more outside-of-class work; only 7% of students felt the hybrid class required less work.

2. Learning, Faculty Contact, and Support: Expectations and Experiences

January survey results indicate that prior to taking a hybrid course:

• 55% students felt they would learn as much in the hybrid course as compared to a similar face-to-face course,
• 58% of students felt they would be able to interact with the instructor sufficiently,
• 71% of students felt comfortable with the technology requirements of the course, and
• 29% of students reported that they did not know where to find technical support on campus.

May survey results revealed that after taking a hybrid course:

• 51% of students in hybrid courses reported that they felt they learned as much in their hybrid course (as compared to a similar face-to-face course),
• 55% of students felt that they sufficiently interacted with the instructor of the course,
• 74% of students reported feeling comfortable with the required technology, and
• Only 9% of students reported that they still did not know where to access technical support for help with their hybrid course.

Table 1. Course Expectations and Experiences for a Hybrid Course

	January		May
Question	Agree	Disagree	Agree	Disagree
I (will learn/learned) as much in my hybrid class as in a       face-to-face course	55%	17%	51%	22%
I (will be able to interact/interacted) sufficiently with               my instructor in my hybrid course	58%	20%	55%	22%
I (will be comfortable/was comfortable) with the technologies in my hybrid course	71%	11%	74%	7%
I (will be able to/was able) to find technical support on campus for my hybrid/online course	48%	29%	44%	9%

The drop in percentages in certain categories between January and May might signal student dissatisfaction specifically related to learning and instructor interaction. However, it is important to note that students were only asked to indicate their expectations and satisfaction with their hybrid/online course and were not asked to indicate the specific course they took. Therefore, we know neither the specific courses students are reporting about nor the course structure. It is possible that specific courses may have been more successfully transitioned into the hybrid/online mode; courses that were not as effective in the hybrid/online format could have driven the slight changes in percentages. In the future, the CTL would be happy to support individual course instructors and work with departments to help design surveys that collect more course-specific data.

Moreover, it is also important to note that a majority of students agreed that they learned as much in their hybrid/online class, were able to interact with the instructor sufficiently, and were comfortable with the technological requirements of their hybrid/online course. These results appear promising as Baruch College continues to create more hybrid/online courses throughout all schools and departments. Moving forward, various changes can be made to increase student satisfaction, including making improvements to structural conditions within the college and focusing on pedagogical aspects of hybrid/online learning.

 3. Student Concerns About Hybrid/Online Courses

Although students who took the January survey reported some anxieties about time and technology, the May survey results suggested  that many of these worries did not persist. This drop could be attributed to the differences between assumptions and  experience, and the emotional perspective of facing a new semester with an unknown course platform at the outset of the semester versus the relief in May of having the semester completed. Ultimately these data suggest that students who responded to the surveys experienced less stress in their hybrid/online courses than they had anticipated.

The following bullet points detail the survey data for these questions.

• In January, 45% of students worried that their hybrid/online course would take too much time;
  • In May, only 31% of students felt that the time the hybrid/online course took was a drawback.
• In January, 23% of students reported being worried about struggling with the technology;
  • In May, only 11% of students actually felt that the technology requirements were a drawback.

About one-third of students were worried about being able to effectively network with their peers, and after taking the hybrid/online course 30% still reported this as a concern. In January a majority of students were worried about having to learn course material on their own. In May 47% of students reported that they felt this way after taking the hybrid course, indicating that a significant portion of students in a hybrid/online course experienced this issue. Additionally, it seems that a significant portion of students (30%) remained concerned about networking with their peers. Each of these data points can inform future CTL faculty development and collaborations with other units at the college whose participation is crucial for the effective delivery of online and hybrid courses.

Overall, student responses suggest that  hybrid/online courses are effectively meeting their expectations. The May survey indicated that of the students who work, 56% felt that their performance in the hybrid/online course was comparable to what it may have been a similar face-to-face course and 26% of students felt they performed better in the hybrid/online course. Additionally, of the 361 students who responded, 74% indicated that they would take another hybrid/online class.

Next section: Faculty Survey Findings