Surviving the Rumble: Advancing a Student-Centered Curriculum for a 2-Year Hybrid Doctor of Physical Therapy Program

There has been rapid growth in hybrid health professional education over the past several years, yet evidence-based curricular guides and resources have not kept up with program development. Most evidence on hybrid teaching and learning  is at  the individual course level and does not address the collective curriculum at the program or department level. Faculty are left with minimal guidance on hybrid curriculum design that leverages opportunities for collaboration across faculty, addresses the student experience across courses, optimizing curricular efficiencies, managing student well-being, and balancing faculty priorities. This session will explore revision of program and course credit hours to reflect hybrid learning using best-available resources, balance course design to optimize timing of material delivery versus needing to wait until a standard topic course is to be presented in a curriculum, and overlay the programmatic requirements with student expectations for workload. 

The interactivity for this session will be: 

1. Attendees developing and sharing for discussion a list of opportunities for curricular enhancements based on the presentation, as well as potential threats to achieving these enhancements

2. Attendees exploring student workload across a hybrid week, and how collective faculty may be engaged in shared governance to enhance student well-being. 

Takeaways from this course will be:

1. Appreciation of student workload in a hybrid health professional education program.

2. Evaluate current curriculum for student-centric opportunities and threats.

3. Utilize academic leadership skills to create a collaborative environment for shared curriculum revision.