The Flow of Blended/Hybrid Courses

About the toolkit

Documentation of the process and goals of this project has been published as an EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Brief entitled Innovating with Purpose: The Blended Flow Toolkit for Designing Blended/Hybrid Courses. Links to an external site.This article was also highlighted in the 2019 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report Links to an external site. Short-Term Trends section.

How to use these resources

2023 NOTE: Due to the Marketing & Communications Seattle University web site content freeze and transition to a new web site, some materials are currently unavailable and will be transitioned to a different format. If you have urgent need of any materials on this site please contact cdli@seattleu.edu. 

We have pulled together some resources to help you plan the "flow" of your activities as they alternate between online and face-to-face sessions. This is arguably the most difficult aspect of designing hybrid/blended courses. We are happy to sit down with you and walk through the material below or feel free to peruse these resources on your own and let us know if you have any questions. Just contact CDLI to set up a consultation or find answers to your questions.

The first resource we created is the Flow Map Links to an external site.. It lets you consider what elements you will need in a given module. The map begins with four basic stages of exploring a topic and then breaks those stages into steps. Each step includes is a list of activities you might use and each activity includes an explanation of how that activity would work in an online setting or the classroom. We've also included tool suggestions for every activity.

Once you have gotten some ideas from the Flow Map you can use our online Flow Toolkit Links to an external site. to plan out your Canvas modules. The Flow Planner allows you to choose which stages and steps you will include and which activities you will incorporate. It also lets you indicate whether those activities will be done online, in class or both. There is room in the planner for notes, tool resources and other ideas. The best part of the Flow Planner is that you can print it when you are done -- links and notes intact -- and use it as an outline as you build modules in Canvas.

Trade ideas with other faculty

You shouldn't have to do this alone. Designing hybrid/blended courses is a new territory and we believe that trying out these ideas works best with the support of a group. If you are interested in participating in a hybrid/blended faculty work group let us know. We will try to set up one or two work groups a quarter so that we can accommodate everyone's schedule as much as possible. Contact CDLI if you are interested in being part of a faculty work group.

Gain insights from other faculty

A number of SU faculty have already wrestled with creating hybrid/blended and we have asked them to share their insights about what worked, what didn't and what they might do differently in the future. You can see what they said on the Faculty Insights page.

Read more

In the CDLI library we have a number of books about teaching in blended/hybrid formats that you might find useful. We've put them together with some relevant articles on this Selected Readings page.