Inclusive learning development practices: the consequences of flexibility and choice in the hybrid era

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the move to online teaching and learning, has provided opportunities for the learning development (LD) community to find new and innovative pedagogical approaches to providing a more inclusive learning environment. Many of these opportunities are now being incorporated into a new hybrid era of teaching, which seeks to build the ‘best of both worlds’. To embrace this new era of flexibility, hybrid learning and teaching strategies need to be developed rather than merely being a reaction to a global health emergency. Based on the experiences of two learning developers at different UK institutions, this paper reflects on the benefits and disadvantages of a hybrid mode of delivery of one-to-one tutorials, one of the cornerstones of LD provision. Within this paper we define hybrid teaching as a combination of online and physical environments (Gamage et al., 2022).

Student engagement in hybrid approaches to teaching in higher education

“…Although hybrid teaching affords flexibility in student attendance and therefore might support inclusiveness in university teaching, current hybrid teaching situations challenge an equal student attendance and interactions for both on-campus and online students (Kantcheva & Bickle, 2023). From the findings of the current study, it becomes clear that the student experience in the studied hybrid teaching situation is not the same for on-campus and online students.…”