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Blended Teaching Policy & Process

UMass Dartmouth offers in-person programs primarily at the Dartmouth campus and fully online programs through Online and Continuing Education. The primary teaching modality for in-person programs is fully face-to-face. Nonetheless, since teaching via a blended modality can offer some distinct pedagogical advantages, some coursework may be offered in a hybrid or blended modality. In recognition of this, UMass Dartmouth has adopted a blended teaching policy along with guidelines for implementation of this policy.

Blended Teaching Policy

In Spring of 2023, the Faculty Senate recommended the following policy for blended teaching at UMass Dartmouth; this recommendation was approved by the Chancellor:

  1. Faculty members who wish to teach a blended course are required to clearly articulate the specific pedagogical rationale for offering the course in a blended format. This rationale should provide justification for the course schedule and should also state how the blended modality advances course learning outcomes. This rationale should be submitted to the department chair as part of the department’s scheduling process, and shall be shared with the dean.
  2. A department is not required to offer courses in a blended format; however, should a department or college choose to offer blended courses, then the department should also offer courses in additional modalities, such as online and face-to-face courses, from which students can choose.
  3. Faculty members who wish to teach a blended course are required to provide the weekly schedule of blended classes to the department chair when schedules are due. This could be a percentage (30%, 50%, 75%) of classes that are blended or a weekly schedule (e.g., MW-F2F, Friday Blended). Upon request, these shall be shared with the dean.
  4. Faculty members who wish to teach a blended course are required to design the course such that the percentage of class meetings conducted online (either asynchronously or synchronously over Zoom) falls within the 25% - 75% range, as recommended in the blended learning literature.
  5. The committee acknowledges that there may occasionally be temporary departures from the course’s designated modality (e.g., for the purposes of instructional continuity), but we recommend that faculty notify their department chairs and students when these occur and that these departures be the exception, rather than the rule.
  6. Current processes should be used to enforce these rules. The committee also recommends that additional training, such as the three-week online training course previously required of all UMD instructors teaching blended courses, should be required for faculty members who want to list a course as “blended.” There are implementation issues here that are beyond the scope of this committee’s work.

Process for proposing to teach a course in blended modality

To schedule a blended modality course, the instructor will be asked to submit the information listed below to the department chair and to acknowledge acceptance of expectations concerning teaching in this modality. All steps of the approval process (see below) must be completed prior to the start of the registration period, including completion of Blended Teaching Certification, or the course will automatically default to face-to-face mode. No changes in modality will be allowed after the start of student registration.

Although the specific mechanism for submission may vary from college to college, instructors proposing a blended course should submit the information listed below to the chair, and the chair should include this information when they submit course schedules to their dean’s office

  1. A copy of the proposed syllabus and a specific pedagogical rationale for offering the course in a blended format. The rationale should include the justification for the course schedule and how this modality advances student learning outcomes. This rationale should also describe how the blended time will still meet the Federal Course Credit Hour requirement.
  2. Detailed weekly meeting pattern denoting modality (e.g. M F2F, W Blended, F F2F). Additionally, specify whether the online activity is planned to be delivered synchronously or asynchronously.
  3. List of other course(s) offered in fully face-to-face modality that a student could use to replace this course (e.g., alternative for a given University Studies category)
  4. Documentation of completion of the Blended Teaching Certification through the UMass Dartmouth Instructional Development team. For more information on how to obtain certification, please visit the Instructional Development page on teaching blended courses which includes the available options for certification.

As part of the submission process, the instructor must acknowledge the following expectations for the delivery of a blended course:

  1. I will provide a full schedule delineating which classes are to be taught in person and which are to be taught online (including details of synchronous versus asynchronous sessions), and I will include the schedule in the syllabus at the start of the semester.
  2. I understand that any departures from the modality schedule as published at the start of the registration period must be reported to the Chair, who will, in turn, report changes to the Dean.
  3. Teaching a course in blended modality will not impact my on-campus presence, including the requirement for in-person office hours three days a week.