Notions of hybridity: a deeper dive into the theory

A companion piece to Dr Michelle Morgan, Dr Thandi Gilder and my HEPI Weekend Reading article 

Our HEPI Weekend Reading explored question:  

The COVID-19 pandemic is no longer impacting undergraduate students entering university – or is it? 

You can read the full article here: 

WEEKEND READING: The COVID-19 pandemic is no longer impacting undergraduate students entering university – or is it? 

That article focuses on the findings from the first national pilot of the Pre-arrival Academic Questionnaire (PAQ), funded through the Office for Students Innovation Fund and led by the University of East London, Jisc and Advance HE. The findings suggest that, although educational processes formally returned to something resembling pre-pandemic normality in 2022, the experiences of students entering higher education have not necessarily returned to the same starting point. 

The question that follows is what we do with that knowledge. 

One response is to think differently about learning design. This is where the concept of hybridity becomes particularly interesting. This supplementary piece takes a step back from the PAQ findings and explores some of the theoretical thinking that sits behind concepts for designing learning differently.

Into the hybrid – extract from the introduction in ‘Hybrid Learning Spaces’  

Recall your favourite science-fiction books or films. 

They are usually extraordinarily imaginative when it comes to transportation: hoverboards, teleportation, spaceships and time-travelling DeLoreans. They can imagine radically different approaches to communication, work, entertainment and even social relationships. 

Yet when it comes to education, the imagined future is remarkably conventional. 

Students still physically congregate in a dedicated space. A teacher – whether human, alien or artificial intelligence – stands at the front and teaches them. 

Now compare this with contemporary reality. 

We have all witnessed situations where some students are at home, others are in a classroom, and perhaps others are participating from a café, a workplace or somewhere else entirely. The teacher may be somewhere different again. 

Technology has not simply given us another place in which teaching can happen. It has begun to intermix our physical, digital and social spaces. 

A student sitting at home may be learning alongside someone in a classroom. A family member, child or pet might unexpectedly appear in the background of a synchronous session. A student may be physically alone but socially connected to a community of learners distributed across different locations.

The boundaries that previously appeared relatively stable – classroom/home, university/community, teacher/student, formal/informal learning – have become considerably more permeable.

This is the starting point for thinking about hybridity. 

Hybridity is more than online plus face-to-face 

The concept of hybrid learning spaces asks us to think about the relationships between different dimensions of learning. Gil, Mor, Dimitriadis and Köppe (2022) describe a landscape in which learning can be simultaneously physical and digital, formal and informal, individual and collaborative, synchronous and asynchronous. 

The important point is that these are not necessarily separate categories. 

A student might attend a face-to-face seminar, continue the discussion in an online space, watch a recording later, collaborate with students who were not present, access resources created by another institution and then apply their learning in a workplace or practice environment. 

Where does the learning “take place”? 

The answer is increasingly difficult to locate in one physical or digital space. 

This is why considering the term  hybrid learning spaces is a more useful framing for the student experience than thinking simply about “blended learning” or “online learning”. The emphasis shifts from the delivery mode to the learning ecosystem. 

Gil et al. (2022) argue that the hybridity of learning involves the blurring and interconnection of different dimensions of educational experience. In other words, hybridity is not simply about adding technology to an existing model of education. It invites us to reconsider the relationships between people, places, technologies, activities and practices. 

From spaces to practices 

This becomes particularly important when we think about what students actually need to learn. 

Students do not simply need access to content. They need to learn how to participate in the practices of their discipline. A nursing student needs opportunities to practise clinical decision-making. A student teacher needs to develop professional judgement. A business student needs to learn how to work collaboratively, communicate and make decisions in uncertain situations. A researcher needs opportunities to question, analyse, interpret and construct knowledge. 

These practices are social. 

They develop through interaction with others, through observation, participation, feedback, rehearsal and increasingly independent performance. This is where the theoretical discussion about hybridity intersects with the practical concerns raised by the PAQ findings. 

If students arrive at university with different levels of confidence, different experiences of collaboration and different expectations about learning, simply providing them with access to online content does not address the challenge. 

Instead, would it be more helpful to ask: 

What spaces and relationships enable students to practise becoming university learners, disciplinary practitioners and members of academic communities? 

This is one reason why the idea of intersubjectivity raised in the response to our HEPI article is so interesting. Learning is not simply an individual process. Students develop shared understandings with peers, teachers and professional communities. They learn what counts as appropriate participation, how to communicate within a discipline, how to interpret feedback and how to position themselves within a community. Hybrid spaces can potentially extend these opportunities – but only when they are intentionally designed. 

Hybridity and the post-pandemic student 

This brings us back to the question posed in the HEPI article. 

If students' educational experiences were disrupted during formative years, should we design university education differently for them?

My answer is yes – but not because I believe we have a fixed “post-pandemic student” type. 

This is an important distinction. 

Students who experienced disrupted schooling are not permanently defined by the pandemic. They are not a homogeneous generation with fixed characteristics that universities must accommodate indefinitely. 

Rather, they may arrive with particular experiences and starting points. 

The PAQ findings provide an opportunity to understand some of those starting points: confidence, belonging, assessment, attendance, wellbeing and expectations around learning. 

These should inform our design decisions, but they should not become labels. 

The purpose of education is, after all, transformation. 

We should therefore think about dynamic fit rather than fixed fit. 

The question is not: 

How do we design university to accommodate the characteristics of a post-pandemic generation? 

It is: 

How do we design environments in which students can participate, practise and develop the capabilities they need for higher education and professional life? 

The hybrid as a zone of possibility 

This thinking connects with work I have undertaken previously with John Cook, exploring hybrid learning through the lens of the Zone of Possibility (Cook and Holley, 2022). 

The concept is useful because it moves us away from seeing technology as simply a delivery mechanism. 

Instead, technology, physical space, social relationships and pedagogical activity can combine to create new possibilities for participation. 

The “hybrid” therefore becomes less about choosing between online and face-to-face and more about asking what becomes possible when these environments are deliberately connected. 

For example, a physical session might provide the social interaction and practical experience that students need. The digital environment can then provide preparation, resources, rehearsal, reflection and continuity. 

Or the relationship might work in the opposite direction. 

Students might first encounter a concept digitally, practise it through simulation, discuss it with peers online and then bring their developing understanding into a physical learning environment. 

The important thing is not where the activity happens. It is whether the combination of spaces creates the conditions for meaningful learning. 

The boundaries are changing 

The implications go beyond university classrooms. 

Consider the increasingly porous boundaries between formal, informal and non-formal learning. A school student can take a university MOOC. A university graduate can return to online learning without enrolling on a conventional degree. Students can supplement their university curriculum through courses provided by other institutions. They can collaborate with geographically distributed peers through online communities, hackathons and competitions. Students can undertake research using remote laboratories, interact with simulations and immersive environments, create digital artefacts and participate in professional communities long before they enter a conventional workplace. 

These activities complicate our traditional understanding of where learning belongs. 

They also complicate the idea that the university is necessarily the sole provider, organiser and gatekeeper of knowledge. 

The common feature across these examples is hybridity: different modes, spaces, relationships and forms of participation becoming interconnected. 

What is new is the scale, normalisation and technological affordances through which these connections can now occur.

The pandemic accelerated this process dramatically. Emergency remote teaching was not, in itself, hybrid learning. Much of it was a rapid attempt to maintain educational continuity under extraordinary circumstances. But the experience exposed possibilities – and limitations – that we can no longer easily ignore. 

Designing the connections, not just the components 

This leads to perhaps the most important implication for learning design. 

We should not simply ask: 

What should happen online? 

or: 

What should happen face-to-face? 

Instead, we should ask: 

What should happen where, why, with whom, and how should these experiences connect? 

That requires a different kind of design thinking. 

The digital environment should not become a repository for lecture slides. The physical classroom should not simply reproduce an online presentation. Nor should students be given “flexibility” without the structure, interaction and support necessary to make that flexibility productive. 

Hybrid design requires us to consider the connections between spaces. 

A virtual learning environment might prepare students for a face-to-face activity. A face-to-face activity might generate questions that are subsequently explored online. A simulation might allow students to rehearse professional practice before encountering it in the real world. Peer discussion might enable students to develop confidence before contributing publicly. The spaces become part of a connected learning journey. 

From crisis response to educational design

This is why we posited the notion that hybrid learning should no longer be understood primarily as a pandemic response. 

The pandemic may have forced us into hybrid and digitally mediated learning environments, but the underlying question is much larger. 

What should higher education look like when learning is no longer confined to a single place, time or mode? 

For me, the answer is not to abandon the campus. 

Nor is it to move everything online. 

It is to become much more intentional about what different environments can make possible. 

The physical university remains enormously important for relationships, belonging, practical activity, serendipitous encounters and the development of social and professional identities. 

Digital spaces offer different possibilities: continuity, flexibility, access, communication, rehearsal, collaboration, resources and connection beyond geographical boundaries. 

The challenge is to design the relationship between them. 

Relationships are the real learning: between people, places, technologies, practices and communities. 

The most interesting consequence of hybridity is that it changes the question. 

We began with: 

How do we teach students after the pandemic? 

We might instead ask: 

How do we create learning environments in which students can develop through participation in meaningful academic, social and professional practices?

That question takes us beyond technology. 

It takes us beyond the idea of a “post-pandemic generation”. 

Perhaps the future of hybrid learning is not a binary future in which some students are online and some are in a classroom. Perhaps it is a future in which the distinction matters considerably less – because we have become much better at designing learning across, between and through different spaces. 

For those interested in exploring the theory further

The collection edited by Gil, Mor, Dimitriadis and Köppe provides a useful starting point: 

Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) (2022) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer. 

The introduction is particularly helpful for understanding the conceptual foundations of hybridity and the different dimensions of learning that can become interconnected. 

A freely accessible version of the introduction is available through Utrecht University: 

Read the open-access introduction to Hybrid Learning Spaces 

For a more practice-oriented exploration, see: 

Fawns, T., Markauskaite, L., Carvalho, L. and Goodyear, P. (2022) ‘H2M pedagogy: designing for hybrid learning in medical education’, in Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer, pp. 61–76. 

And for an exploration of hybrid learning through the Zone of Possibility: 

Cook, J. and Holley, D. (2022) ‘Covid-19 lock-down: hybrid learning cases using the lens of the Zone of Possibility’, in Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer, pp. 77–94. 

A repository version is available through Bournemouth University Research Online. 

Read the Cook and Holley chapter through Bournemouth University Research Online 

References 

Cook, J. and Holley, D. (2022) ‘Covid-19 lock-down: hybrid learning cases using the lens of the Zone of Possibility’, in Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer, pp. 77–94. 

Fawns, T., Markauskaite, L., Carvalho, L. and Goodyear, P. (2022) ‘H2M pedagogy: designing for hybrid learning in medical education’, in Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer, pp. 61–76. 

Gil, E., Mor, Y., Dimitriadis, Y. and Köppe, C. (eds.) (2022) Hybrid Learning Spaces. Cham: Springer. 

With thanks to Professor John Cook, formerly of Goethe University and University of the West of England.