Across the US, there were more than 4.6 million students enrolled in at least one online course in the fall of 2008; here at Baruch College we were a little slower getting started. In fall 2009, Baruch offered only four small classes in hybrid or online teaching mode, of these three were online and one partially online. In fact, during all of academic year 2009-2010, only 197 Baruch students were enrolled in HOT classes, all of these in the Zicklin School. Barely two years later, by fall 2011, a total of 2,246 Baruch students were enrolled in HOT classes; of these 1,964 were in Zicklin School classes. You might say that things are really heating up at the Zicklin School.

A hybrid class is one in which 33 - 67 per cent of instruction occurs online. This can be scheduled in a variety of ways, e.g., in one- or two-week modules, for some time each week throughout the semester, or in some other arrangement. A class is considered online when at most one-third of the class is delivered in face-to-face (FTF) mode. Hence, students in a "fully" online Baruch College class can still be required to come into school for exams, labs, problem sessions, review sessions, etc.

These strong numbers, which continue in current enrollments and future offerings, may be related to a flurry of HOT activities that not only kept us busy over the past two years, but also improved offerings to our students and perhaps, in some small way, changed the way we see curriculum delivery here at the Zicklin School. Some of these activities include:

Summer Seminar: It all started during the summer of 2010, when faculty representing the various disciplines of the Zicklin School met regularly in several full-day sessions for the purpose of learning more about the teaching of hybrid and online classes and exploring issues related to this modality.

IT Fellows: We have two Zicklin Instructional Technology Fellows, doctoral students with specialties in this area who help faculty with online course materials and ideas. We are very grateful to Baruch CIO Arthur Downing, who funded these positions from Baruch’s student technology fee. These IT Fellows are charged with training faculty and supporting them in their efforts to develop course materials for online and partially online course delivery.

HOT Website: A website containing many HOT faculty resources at http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/HOT 

HOT Workshops: We hold one-day faculty development workshops twice a year. Each workshop has a different theme. Past workshops have focused on best practices, social media and, most recently, our own HOT faculty reporting on their experiences in the virtual classroom.

Online HOT Workshop: A two-week Blackboard-based online course for faculty who want to be HOT faculty, offered twice a year. This course uses a fully online and asynchronous method of delivery and has been offered twice before, with successful results. The goal of this course is to help faculty walk the bridge from FTF to HOT course delivery by providing them with their own first-hand experience of how the daily activities in an online course unfold. At the end of this course, participants have a first draft of their online course syllabus and course website as well as a clearer idea of how online course activities work. The next online workshop will take place from June 4 through June 20, 2012.

STA 2000 Research Project: Since the summer of 2010, Baruch College and the Zicklin School of Business have been working with Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit whose mission is to partner with academe to take advantage of today's information and communication technologies, to study the use of open courseware in partially-online Statistics classes. Towards this end, we participated in a multi-campus research project, Online Learning in Public Universities, examining student learning and satisfaction in hybrid classes vs. FTF classes of STA 2000. The online portion of the course is asynchronous, that is, students and instructor do not ‘meet’ virtually in real time. Rather, the online portion of the class uses open courseware, developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Group, and available to anyone anywhere who wishes to study or brush up on statistical analysis. In a summer 2011 study, students self-selected into either hybrid or traditional classes; in the fall 2011 experiment, participating students registered for a particular day and time and then were randomly assigned to either a hybrid or traditional version of the class during that time slot.

HOT Teacher Award: The Zicklin School Hybrid & Online Teaching (HOT) Award is designed to recognize instructors who adapt instructional technologies in innovative ways in support of student learning and the university's mission to broaden the use of technology in the academic environment. Nominees submit a personal statement and supporting materials like student evaluations, sample course materials, etc. Selection criteria are based on breadth of technology adoption for student learning and engagement; original and creative use of technology for the given curriculum; use of diverse technologies in the (real or virtual) classroom; and enthusiasm, i.e., a clear interest in and passion for teaching with technology, particularly in the service of hybrid or online courses. The first award, with a prize of a Kindle e-reader, was made at the November 2011 Hybrid & Online Teaching Workshop to Allison Lehr-Samuel of the Management Department.

Online Student Evaluations: Since fall 2010, we have been piloting and testing online student evaluations for online courses.

CUNY Hybrid Initiative: We now participate in the CUNY Hybrid Initiative, having joined in the second phase, upon acceptance of our successful proposal “Short-Term Faculty Incentives to Increase Hybrid Class Offerings.” Fifteen fulltime members of the faculty were able to receive fully loaded laptops to support them in their online coursework, as an incentive to teach a course in hybrid delivery mode. Participation in the Zicklin Hybrid Course Laptop Incentive Program required applicants to specify the course and semester in which this class would be offered and to complete a survey at the end of the course to share their experiences with other instructors interested in hybrid instruction.

These activities and more are listed on our HOT Timeline at http://aux.zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/aa/hottimeline.pdf, with some data points along the way. The HOT Timeline document also includes links to reports and documents of the various committees and events mentioned here.