An Experience Report on Teaching a Large Introductory Programming Course in Hybrid Mode

As COVID made both students and teachers familiar with online teaching, it seems appropriate to explore a hybrid approach to teaching, in which the lectures are delivered in class but are simultaneously streamed online. An introductory programming course for an incoming cohort is frequently taught by having multiple sections, each being taught by an instructor, as colleges often have modest-sized classrooms that cannot accommodate the entire incoming cohort. Hybrid teaching can reduce the need for multiple instructors to teach different sections by having one large class. It also provides uniformity in instruction, which is hard to achieve with multiple sections. This poster shares our experience teaching a large introductory programming course in hybrid mode. The experience indicates that while in-class and overall attendance decline over the semester, online attendance is relatively steady and that most students attended a good fraction of lectures online. The data from in-class active learning quizzes also suggests that learning in lectures is similar for online and in-class students. Student feedback indicates that while a large fraction of students prefer in-class lectures for learning, a significant portion feels that both in-class and online are similar, and a fraction of students prefer online. Students' performance was somewhat correlated with total attendance but not the fraction attended in class or online. Overall, hybrid teaching of the introductory programming course has the potential advantage of increasing attendance and performance.