The six courses are designed as hybrid courses that combine a mixture of face-to-face learning activities in a conventional classroom with online learning activities that take place in a computer lab, at home or both. The design teams are considering the strengths and weaknesses of online and in-class instructional activities as they apply to the particular disciplines, courses and learning outcomes. Some general considerations are given in the table below.

Learning Activities	In-Class	Online
Strengths	Multi-level communication Deep engagement Thoughtful analysis	Available 24/7 Instant responses Collects and organizes large amounts of information
Weaknesses	Limited access Expensive Uneven quality	Shallow responses Limited pattern recognition

The hybrid design has the advantage of engaging public school teachers to facilitate the courses when offered for concurrent enrollment credit. USHE institutions are encouraged to use the course materials and assessments in their regular college courses. In this way, the common course materials and assessments can provide a close connection between concurrent enrollment and regular college courses to ensure a seamless system of course articulation and transfer credit.

To help ensure participants consistently achieve desired outcomes, the course designers first identify the essential skills, abilities and knowledge targeted by each course, then develop an appropriate assessment instrument (such as an exam, a written term paper, a multimedia project or a portfolio) and a rubric to be applied uniformly regardless of institution or class section. Finally, learning activities and resources (i.e., software, textbooks, equipment and supplies) that support the learning outcomes and assessments are chosen. Working "backward" from outcomes to activities and resources helps to ensure that the courses are aligned with the goals of the Technology Intensive Concurrent Enrollment program.

Note that the aggregated results of the common assessment will be publicly available for each course, along with a description of the assignment and the scoring rubric, enabling students, educators and the general public to readily understand the learning expectations and how student performance measures up to those expectations.

Before offering the courses to students, the design teams will hold a series of professional development workshops for higher education faculty and public school teachers to familiarize them with the course design and to demonstrate the use of suggested materials and methods for offering the courses.  In some cases, the traditional lecture style of teaching may be moved to the online environment (e.g., as a series of video tutorials), enabling teachers to use classroom time for answering questions, providing additional instructional support for concepts that are poorly understood, individualized instruction and administrative functions.  This will require a high degree of pre-class preparation on the part of the students, as well as an effective system of formative assessment to identify key areas where the instructor can provide additional support to the students.  Most faculty and teachers have only limited experience with methods of teaching hybrid courses, so extensive preparation and professional development will be essential for success.

The funding for this project came available on July 1, 2011 and the the design teams are building the courses.  Our plan is to have demo sites for most courses available for public exploration by the end of 2011.  We also plan to have a series of short video clips available to describe the goals, structure and design of each course.  Registration for concurrent enrollment courses takes place in February, and the courses will be offered to students for the first time in Fall 2012 semester.