Hybrid Courses and the Future of First Year Composition in the American University: Mistakes of a

First Year HyC Instructor

This paper addresses the startling lack of research and theory surrounding the teaching of writing in Hybrid
Courses (Hyc) and investigates implications of that lack for the present and future of Composition in the
American university.
The field has been quick to experiment with the hybrid classroom but correspondingly slow to study its
implications. Meanwhile, more and more writing courses are now offered at American universities in
hybrid formats, and administrative and programmatic calls for hybrid writing course offerings grow louder.
And, yet, the basic nature and functions of HyC in Composition are staggeringly under-researched and
under-theorized.
I suggest, based on analysis of data from hybrid writing courses, and by analyzing the discourse of hybrid
teaching in Writing Studies, that many of our basic assumptions about the nature of HyC are anachronistic,
incorrect, and directly exemplify our own pedagogical mis-take, an extension of Bawarshis discussions
of genre uptake applied to composition instructors own transfer of pedagogical skills and knowledge
about course genres, mis-taken between pedagogical activity systems. Analyzing a Freshman Writing and
Rhetoric hybrid offered recently at the University of Colorado as an example, I interrogate three common,
problematic assumptions about HyC teaching and their implications for Composition.
1) A Hybrid Course in Composition is, by definition, simply a type of writing course that pairs Face-toFace (F2F) with online delivery and instruction.
This assumption is out of date and limiting. As American universities often mandate that we use some
form of LMS (e.g., Blackboard or Desire to Learn), Composition instructors now rarely teach courses that
do not pair writing instruction and activities done in a physical classroom with others presented online.
Based on this assumptive definition of hybridity, most composition courses are already hybrids of a F2F
classroom and a website. Research and experience teaching HyC in Composition tell us, however, that
hybrids are different, more complex animals, and we currently lack a sufficiently functional and
contemporary definition of HyC in Composition Studies to engage productively in a real debate about the
hybrid teaching of writing, to adequately respond to institutional calls for us to offer writing instruction in
HyC formats, and, most importantly, to direct our attention toward more innovative constructions of
hybridity (of which there are several already in use).
2) HyC offerings in Composition are desirable for obvious reasons.
This assumption, or bundle of assumptions, is simply incorrect. The three most commonly cited grounds
for the desirability of HyC are that a) the model is in-line with current higher educational zeitgeist, b) it is
easier and more effective to teach writing in hybrid formats than solely online, and c) the model saves
writing programs, and the rest of the university, money.
However, most composition courses are already hybridic, if not full hybrids; anecdotal evidence
consistently suggests that teaching writing in HyC formats is, in fact, more difficult than doing so online,
and there is little conclusive research on the efficacy of hybrid courses in general and virtually none on the
efficacy of hybrid writing courses in particular; and, finally, while it may be argued that HyC saves
institutional resources by reducing the number of physical classrooms required to offer the same number of
courses to students in a given term, these savings are radically offset by the requirements of increased
spending on technology and network resources, necessary professional development support for faculty
hired to teach those hybrids (as most of us have had little training in hybrid pedagogy, let alone in much of
the technology involved), and the hiring, training, and provision of office space for the considerably

increased staff of instructional designers and technicians needed to support and manage the transition from
a primarily F2F to a largely HyC campus.
3) The lack of research and theory on HyC pedagogies in Composition is unproblematic.
Obviously, this is not an articulated assumption in the field, but our collective engagement with HyC has
largely moved toward implementation prior to research. This has occurred for three reasons. First, while
the F2F and Online Course genres are now fairly established, HyC is still seen (and practiced) as being
relatively experimental in Composition. It makes sense to experiment, given the lack of models to observe
and data upon which we might ground our practices, relative to the ubiquity of research focusing on F2F
and Online writing courses. Second, the need to keep pace with broader trends in higher education, with
the work of colleagues at other institutions, and, in many cases, the growing call for increased HyC
offerings at our own universities, exerts pressure. We may need to do something about hybrids, even if we
are not certain what that something ought to be. And, third, we are, like our students in FYC, subject to the
difficulties of transfer and genre uptake. Understanding hybrids as simple pairings of pedagogical genres
with which we are already familiar (F2F and Online), rather than as a new genre in their right, leads us to
pedagogical mis-take. Like a student who mis-takenly assumes s/he knows how to write a paper in a
new rhetorical situation, having learned to write a paper in another, many of us who attempt to develop
and teach HyC courses in writing and rhetoric quickly discover that the activity systems in which we
learned the F2F and Online Course genres are not necessarily those of the hybrid.
Not only does the lack of research and theory on HyC writing instruction call for immediate and broad
action in the field, but, given the increasing awareness and call for more HyC offerings, the researched
positions we prepared able, or underprepared, to take may have considerable impact on the future of
Composition in American universities.