Primary characteristics, such as age, gender, and ethnicity, and secondary characteristics, such as employment, income, and marital status, can have implications for a student's persistence. Most online students are married and work full time, making time management crucial as they juggle family, work, and school responsibilities. As a middle school teacher, it is important to understand both the primary and secondary characteristics of my students, so that I can plan my curriculum accordingly. I teach in a very diverse school, which means I have to plan a variety of activities so I can involve all my students. The ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of students in each class is enormous. I often find that it is necessary to communicate content in different ways within the same class. This places importance on personalized instruction and individual pace, something that the online component can address. Transforming my traditional classroom into a hybrid classroom would allow more of my 210 students to be involved in the learning process. A student's ability to interact with others and attitude toward learning can have a profound impact on student achievement. According to the Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scales (Grasha, 1996), six categories – independent, dependent, competitive, collaborative, avoidant, and participating – are used to describe students' learning styles. These different learning styles affect the amount of support the instructor must provide. Additionally, understanding students' learning styles is important so that instructors provide plenty of opportunities for students to feel comfortable in their class. Understanding how learning styles impact student participation helps explain w...... middle of paper... ...offer my students varying levels of self-direction through the use of My Big Campus, the new online learning platform we are using in my school. I hope that this combination of support and flexibility will allow my students to advance through the ranks as I teach them to be more confident, self-directed learners throughout the year. Works Cited Grasha, A.F. (1996). Teaching with style. Pittsburgh: Alliance Publishers.Grow, Gerald O. (1996). Teach students to be self-directed. Adult EducationQuarterly, 41 (3), 125-149. Expanded version available online at http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow. Hannifin, M., Land, S., & Oliver, K. (1999). Open learning environments: foundations, methods and models. In CM Reigeluth (ed.), Theories and models of instructional design: a new paradigm of instructional theory, 2, pp. 115-140. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.