South Texas College's Research and Analytical Services Department conducted a research that measured the grades of all students during the spring 2009 semester. The research, published on the College's website in September 2009, showed that students who took hybrid classes performed overwhelmingly better compared to the students who took traditional, face-to-face classes or online classes. Dr. Brenda Cole, director of STC's RAS Department said that hybrid courses helped reduce costs because South Texas College didn't have the funds to build more buildings immediately. Furthermore, none of the analyzed data indicated the lack of quality in hybrid course delivery.
A professor at the University of Houston's Laboratory of Integrated Physiology, Brian McFarlin started an experiment to measure the strengths and weaknesses of hybrid courses. The experiment lasted from 2004 to 2007 and used a total of 658 final grades to evaluate the relation between course-delivery format and academic performance. McFarlin's experiment showed that grades of the students who had courses in hybrid format were 9.9 percent higher than grades of the students who had traditional courses. "When I started, I just wanted to make sure that students did as well in the hybrid version of the class as the traditional. I quickly learned that technology is powerful when used properly," said McFarlin.
Research conducted at the University of Missouri gave more balanced results. The research evaluated a health course that was delivered in two different formats, one in a traditional and the other in a hybrid format. According to the researcher, director of the Respiratory Therapy Program at the university's School of Health Professions, Shawna Strickland, students performed equally well. However, the study, published in the Journal of Allied Health reported that some students in the hybrid course stated they were confused about assignments and mechanisms of the course. The students who took traditional classes gave a more positive evaluation.
The University of Wisconsin organized a project in 2002 that transformed a traditional course into a hybrid course. Participants of the project were instructors from five campuses of the University of Wisconsin. The instructors worked on the process of designing the hybrid course in order to observe all differences between the face-to-face and hybrid courses. The professors at the Teaching for Technology Center, Alan Aycock, Carla Garnham and Robert Kaleta, wrote their conclusions from the project in the article "Lessons Learned from the Hybrid Course Project." According to the professors, the project showed that there is no unique rule that says what should be the face-to-face ratio to online time distribution in the hybrid course. Students require more time to adjust to the new model but hybrid courses increase student interaction. However, every traditional course takes time to be redesigned properly in order to create an effective hybrid course.