Every assignment is online, everything is due at the same time, and you are scrambling to get a week’s worth of school work turned in on Sunday. 

In many cases, hybrid learning, also known as blended learning, is associated with disappointment like this and failure to meet desired results. 

The first recorded instance of any type of distance learning was noted to be in the 1840s. Sir Isaac Pitman launched a distance learning course, where he would send assignments to students through mailed postcards, with his students having to send them back after they were done, to be graded. Even though at that point computers were not yet invented, Pitman found a way to educate his students with something that somewhat resembles the learning many students do at our school. 

Eventually, as computers were invented, the modern idea of hybrid learning as we know it came about. Students would participate in an in-person class several times a week, and the rest of the week they would work at home individually on assignments given by the teacher through Canvas. 

The original purpose of this type of learning was to ease students into fully online education. Today, we use it as a way to keep learning going through the world pandemic, for students who decide that a partial face-to-face option is more beneficial than a fully remote option. 

Many students including myself have found hybrid learning to be a challenge, possibly even more difficult than fully remote.

The big plus of hybrid is that you get to do work whenever you want. However, when you are at home, would it not be a distraction from doing your work? At home, there’s a tv, your phone, the fridge, so many different things that are way more interesting than homework.

If you’re anything like me, you would also struggle with this environment. 

Almost every week since we have been in hybrid learning, I have turned in all my assignments on the due date of Sunday. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but let’s imagine a scenario where a student is not home all week. A student who has a part-time job, in order to get any amount of money to support their family during the pandemic. The student comes home from work, nearly at the brink of pure exhaustion to the point they don’t even have the energy to take a shower. Homework is not a priority to them at this moment. Then, after working all week they are left with the weekend, which they can’t spend relaxing because they need to do a week’s worth of assignments. And the cherry on top, they have to clean the house. That’s what I have to go through every week. 

For some people, it may be easy to do their homework early on in the week, but for someone with unique circumstances, it’s much harder. When you are left on your own to get your work done, procrastination happens all the time. I don’t mean to procrastinate, but I do it because it’s my coping mechanism for stress. Being stressed has been a constant state of mind, and getting school work done just hasn’t been the most important priority.