Stuart Blythe teaches writing courses at Michigan State University that are officially listed as in-person only. But he makes it clear to students that they can join any class session remotely via Zoom if they can’t attend on a given day.
It’s a practice that began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many students were quarantined and needed ways to continue learning remotely. Now, having gone to the trouble of designing course resources that can be accessed remotely and becoming accustomed to turning on a webcam in the classroom, he has continued to adopt a teaching practice known as “HyFlex,” an acronym for hybrid and flexible. .
“For example, this morning I taught a web design course and one of my students has epilepsy and said, ‘I feel like something is coming up, so I better not come out today,’” Blythe says. “Things come up in students’ lives and HyFlex gives them the ability to remain part of a class even when things get in the way.”
But not all educators who tried some form of hybrid teaching during the pandemic continued with it. Even vocal proponents of HyFlex admit that it is not very popular among college professors.
“It’s a pendulum swing that we need to get people back into the classrooms,” says David Rhoads, director of hybrid and emerging pedagogy at Vanguard University in California, who considers himself an advocate of HyFlex teaching. He says instructors who felt forced to quickly allow remote options or teach remotely are now eager to return to what they consider normal.
“Teachers are saying, ‘I’m back in the classroom where I want to be,’” he says, admitting that HyFlex is being taught less now than during the pandemic.
Rhoads maintains that students often feel differently than the people at the podium about returning to the default all-in-person teaching. “Students discovered flexibility,” he says, “and now they demand it.”
Some data seems to support this: A tech-innovation/teaching-learning/2023/06/21/student-and-faculty-perspectives-digital-learning#:~:text=More%20than%20half%20of%20faculty,professors%20are%20split%2050-50.” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>survey earlier this year from Tyton Partners found that nearly seven in 10 students said they preferred courses with at least some virtual component, while more than half of teachers said they preferred in-person teaching.
Still, hybrid teaching advocates are pushing to build on the experience so many educators gained teaching online during the pandemic. Last week, for example, supporters of this approach celebrated a workshop and HyFlex practice teaching sessions at the Educause conference in Chicago, and a group called HyFlex Collaboration celebrated a National conference about teaching HyFlex over the summer. And they point out a Recent Educause Horizon Report which included HyFlex as an emerging practice in part due to a growing demand from students for greater flexibility in accessing higher education.
Will their efforts succeed? And how much flexibility is best for balancing convenience and high-quality teaching?
Built for flexibility
The first known course was called HyFlex emerged in 2006, at San Francisco State University, taught by Brian Beatty, professor of instructional design and technology. And one of the main factors was surprisingly mundane: the traffic jams that routinely prevented students from getting to class on time.
The goal was to employ a high level of course design from the beginning, so that the instructor created all course material for students to use live during a class session (online or in-person) or as modules under demand for those who can will not be there at the agreed time.
“Teachers say it’s more work for them to do that,” Rhoads says. “And 100 percent it’s more work.”
But it’s worthwhile work, Rhoads maintains, as it opens up course material to students even when they are sick or unable to attend, and the material can be easily reused over time.
“The question that often comes up is, ‘I don’t have enough time or enough money.’ Which is totally 100 percent valid,” she says. That’s why Rhoads argues that institutions should invest in making courses more flexible rather than simply leaving the work to those who teach the courses.
One of the biggest complaints about the HyFlex model is the logistical challenge for the teacher to serve those in the physical classroom, as well as those logging in remotely on Zoom.
Michigan State’s Blythe says he’s gotten better at juggling it over time, and it’s now pretty routine for him in his classes of about 20 students. He says he organizes his computer so that his notes are open on one half of the screen and the Zoom screen on the other, “so I can look at the students in front of me or look up at the computer screen and see them.” . “
But he admits that when he walks into the classroom every day, he has no idea how many will join him in person and how many he will see only as a small box on a screen.
“I’ve had days where I had two people in the room and everyone else was online and vice versa,” he says. “It probably feels a little strange if it’s just me and another student, but I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”
While Blythe feels it is worth the extra effort to help students, many professors argue that trying to serve everyone, even those who can’t attend, makes the experience worse for everyone. As one instructor wrote in a test last year, “everyone lost something in the HyFlex courses. “In-class students, remote students, and the instructor all felt they were given short shrift.”
What is the ‘gold standard’?
Proponents of HyFlex classes often present a broader argument against the standard lecture teaching model that is the norm in universities.
Rhoads, for example, says that complaints about hybrid formats often arise “from the belief that the traditional way of delivering education is the gold standard. I do not believe that.”
He argues that the process of redesigning a course to be delivered in various formats (online or in-person) pushes instructors to rethink how best to help students achieve learning outcomes.
“I would love to ask teachers, ‘Do you know of any research on traditional education that shows its effectiveness?’” he says. (Lectures, for example, do not hold up well in some studies.)
And for those instructors worried that no one will attend an in-person class if the online option is offered, he maintains that “if you design an experience that students can’t get any other way than in person, then I think we’ll come.”
However, HyFlex is not the only way to make courses flexible.
At the University of Central Florida, officials say that while some instructors teach HyFlex, they have seen more acceptance for so-called “blended” courses, where some sessions are online and others are in-person. Unlike the HyFlex model, where students can choose whether or not to come to a given class, the blended model means that, for example, for a class that meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Tuesday sessions will take place on person and Thursday sessions. It will be online.
“We train teachers to take advantage of in-person moments to do things that can only be done in person,” says Thomas Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning at the University of Central Florida. As a result, he says, “those classes have the highest student ratings, earn the highest grades, and have the lowest dropout rates.”
Rhoads, the HyFlex advocate at Vanguard University, hopes the pendulum will begin to swing back in line as educators have time to properly design flexible classes.
“Teachers are a little exhausted coming out of the pandemic,” he says. “We have to cool them down and say, ‘Shake it off for a minute.’ “I think a lot more teachers really know what they need to do – they need to do more to be flexible.”
