So, You Enrolled in my Hybrid Course? Let’s Scrimmage!

In my experience teaching quantitative courses, students often do not know how to practice or learn outside of class at the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. It is often uncomfortable or challenging, so students avoid it and focus on lower levels of the learning taxonomy as they study on their own. When I have students in the room with me, I can coax, nudge, and/or push them to do it. Since this is no longer the norm, it is time to up my game.

 In a recent hybrid course, around mid-term, students started asking for a tutor and I happily volunteered for the job! Because I was meeting with multiple students at a time, I invited the whole class to these weekly sessions and participation was terrific. While I was happy to answer questions, students knew that I was not planning to re-teach material and that they would be put to work during the sessions that I started referring to as "scrimmage games."  Students were grateful and attributed these sessions to an improvement in their learning as well as their grades. I plan to formalize this approach in the fall semester and invite like-minded faculty to share their success stories, offer some coaching advice, and help develop the scrimmage game rules and expectations.