Congratulations to Li-chin (Crystal) Huang, who successfully defended her dissertation at the lab this past Friday. Her dissertation, "Preferences, Pedagogical Strategies, and Challenges of Instructors Teaching in Multiple Delivery Formats within A 2-Year College Context," examines general education instructors’ preferences, pedagogical strategies, and challenges in delivering face-to-face (f2f), hybrid, and online multiple delivery formats (MDF) at a 2-year technical college. Her goal was to produce a detailed description of instructors’ MDF experiences, provide recommendations for improving MDF teaching, and better inform relevant stakeholders about the cultural contexts and practices that affect MDF implementation.

In Huang's case study, four selected faculty members participated in a two-hour face-to-face interview with the researcher following a semi-structured, open-ended questionnaire. They also completed the Conti teaching style inventory to examine their pedagogical adjustments and for data triangulation purposes. A follow-up collection of relevant data in the form of syllabi, learning plans, and assessments was conducted after the interviews were transcribed. Huang also collected data from documents generated within college and departmental meetings and from informal conversations with her colleagues regarding MDF issues and experiences.

Six main themes emerged from Huang's research: (a) learner characteristics were the major pedagogical concern of participants across all different delivery formats; (b) the f2f mode was the most effective and favorite format, and the hybrid mode was the least; (c) the hybrid format was time-consuming and entailed a clear teaching-learning framework; (d) learners’ personal life circumstances involved in learning; (e) MDF faculty needed to be competent at integrating technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge; and (f) faculty members’ time was spread too thin over multiple MDF delivery preps.

The two most recurring themes in the individual cases were that the participants’ experiences were determined primarily by learners’ characteristics and that they worked within in an unclear hybrid framework. The suggestions for improving MDF practices were provided.

Huang's committee was chaired by Dr. Susan Walker from Family Social Science, and her advisor was Dr. Aaron Doering from LT. Her other committee members were LT's Dr. Cassie Scharber and Dr. Angel Pazurek. Congrats, Crystal!