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Higher Ed Deep Dive
3 HyFlex lessons from the pandemic and what's next
As colleges took classes online, some adopted an emerging delivery
model that lets students participate on their own terms. But it has
limitations.
Hallie Busta
Feb. 5, 2021
As the coronavirus pandemic forced college classes online, the higher
ed community was buzzing about an instructional model called HyFlex.
The concept wasn't new. In its truest form, HyFlex, sometimes called
hybrid-flexible, calls for courses to be created in a way that gives
students complete control over how and when to participate, either
in-person or online. A small subset of schools was using this format
before the pandemic. But the effect of the health crisis on instruction
brought new attention to it, as more schools saw its potential to
address the uncertainties affecting course delivery.
Many colleges that pursued the approach during the pandemic have come
up short of full-on HyFlex, however, online learning experts say.
That's in part because the crisis is limiting how much choice students
have in how they participate in a HyFlex class.
Still, they say, institutions can learn from how HyFlex was used during
this period, should they want to make it a bigger part of their
offerings going forward.
Pure HyFlex isn't an easy win
Colleges can deliver HyFlex courses in at least two modes: in-person
and online. The online piece can be synchronous or on-demand, and some
schools provide it both ways.
Hyflex experts encourage colleges to keep a few principles in mind as
they develop the courses: students should have a choice in how they
participate, and they should have the tools and ability to access all
course modes. It's also important that each mode offers an equivalent
learning experience and includes many of the same course elements.
"If you consider (the principles) to be slider bars, none of them can
be at zero" to call a course HyFlex, said Kevin Kelly, a higher
education consultant and instructor at San Francisco State University.
Still, Kelly added, "different flavors" of HyFlex emerge as campuses
address their own limitations and considerations around offering the
course model.
During the pandemic, for instance, restrictions on in-person gatherings
— or students' and faculty members' varied willingness to engage
face-to-face — could hamper a school's ability to offer the in-person
component of a HyFlex course.
Others include whether faculty members have enough pedagogical
knowledge or instructional design support to produce a HyFlex class
that fulfills the required learning outcomes and offers the same level
of learning across modes.
Whether schools have the technology to provide students with a
real-time online experience and whether learners have the internet
bandwidth to access classes off campus are also concerns, though
experts say they generally can be designed around while sticking to
HyFlex principles.
Asynchronous online options are key
Before the pandemic, faculty using HyFlex tended to build an online,
asynchronous version of the course and used that to teach in the
classroom, sometimes adding synchronous online instruction, said Brian
Beatty, a HyFlex pioneer who is credited with laying out its core
principles.
But instructors and schools shifting classes online due to the pandemic
have gravitated to synchronous online instruction, said Beatty, who is
also a professor at San Francisco State. That's at least in part
because it's not as labor-intensive as a fully asynchronous online
course.
"It's an easier approach to HyFlex in the minds of many," Beatty said.
Beatty urges colleges considering HyFlex for the long haul to invest in
the asynchronous online component, saying it gives them more
flexibility to serve students and prepare for situations in which
synchronous instruction isn't possible.
David Rhoads, director of teaching excellence and digital pedagogy at
Vanguard University, in California, recommends colleges start with an
asynchronous online course based on the learning objectives and add the
in-person experience, which would be mostly activities-based. This
structure, he said, ensures all modes offer an equivalent learning
experience
MSU Billings was piloting the HyFlex model before the pandemic as a way
to give its largely nontraditional student body more options while
streamlining course offerings.
"We were limping along trying to offer two sections of all these
classes," said Joy Honea, a professor and president of the school's
faculty association. "And what would happen is the online (section)
would fill up immediately and have a huge waiting list, and then the
face-to-face section would maybe have eight or 10 people in it."
The university plans to expand its use of HyFlex as more faculty are trained to teach that way.
Already, online courses at MSU Billings must be asynchronous, and the
school expects it will require HyFlex courses to include that mode,
Honea said.
"There's not going to be a one-size-fits-all modality, at least for our
student body," Honea said. "We're going to need to have a mix, and
HyFlex is a model that allows you to mix several things."
Faculty need support
Instructors at MSU Billings must participate in course design training
before they can teach a HyFlex class, which Beatty delivers and for
which they get a $1,000 stipend. They can receive $2,000 to develop and
teach their first HyFlex course, which is reviewed by a team of
instructional designers. However, Honea notes, they can forgo the
payment if they are concerned about their intellectual property rights
to the course they develop.
As colleges moved classes online last spring, many turned faculty
development into overdrive, striving to help instructors understand at
least the basics of remote teaching. Although many MSU Billings faculty
have been experimenting with elements of HyFlex on their own, the
institution wants a "much more systematic rollout" to ensure what they
are doing is of quality and "that it's actually HyFlex," Honea said.
So far, about four dozen MSU Billings professors have completed HyFlex
training — more than a third of its full-time faculty. The school used
$51,000 from the first round of federal coronavirus relief money to
fund the stipends, though Honea said administrators pledged financial
support for such training before the pandemic.
Training early adopters to teach HyFlex classes could pay dividends.
"With a small amount of faculty development and a little bit of support
— some time or some money, right — they're willing to invest a lot more
into this," Beatty said. "Once they've got that success, then it's
easier for the institution and for other faculty to kind of piggyback
on that expense or on that success."
That's the plan at MSU Billings. Honea said the university is
developing a system through which faculty members with ample HyFlex
experience review proposed courses that use the model.
HyFlex advocates acknowledge that switching to the model creates more
work for faculty, though they say most of that is in building the class.
"It's a paradigm shift," Rhoads said. "It's like two big huge things
having to happen at the same time. ... They're flipping the classroom
and seeing their lecture time not as lecture anymore but as active
engagement."
Administrators, in turn, need to provide support, including money for
training, Rhoads said. "They can't just say, 'Let's flip this school to
HyFlex,' and give them a semester. They're going to have to have a
strategic plan that includes HyFlex," he said.
What's next for HyFlex?
Several colleges have shared their experiences using HyFlex during the
pandemic. But Erin Lynch, associate provost of scholarship, research
and innovation at Winston-Salem State University, in North Carolina,
sees an opportunity to figure out what are the core elements needed to
make the model work.
She and a research team plan to examine its implementation across a
small group of minority-serving institutions, primarily historically
Black colleges, that represent a mix of public and private, and
research and non-research, schools. Winston-Salem State is one of them.
"We need to disseminate that information now so that people can use the
model and the components ... that we know are the defining factors for
HyFlex," she said. "That way you don't have everybody doing their own
version of something and thereby decreasing the actual validity of the
model and its efficacy."
The pandemic has disproportionately impacted low-income households and
Black and other people of color, raising concerns about diminished
educational access for those groups. The majority of students at HBCUs
receive the Pell Grant, which is given to students with the greatest
financial need. Meanwhile, HBCUs are important drivers of college
degree attainment for Black students, particularly in STEM fields.
"If we don't get this right, what does that mean for our students going
out into the workforce? What does that mean for our national economy if
our institutions," particularly MSIs and HBCUs, " ... have a dip or a
lull in achievement because HyFlex was not done right," Lynch said.
Beatty thinks offering multiple modes of instruction, including an
asynchronous online option, can help schools address equity concerns by
enabling them to serve more students. Whether that happens comes down
to implementation.
"There are issues of equity in every single one of those areas," Beatty
said of the HyFlex modes. "And so the question is, well, what are the
equity issues and do the alternative ... paths actually help solve
those equity concerns ... or do they exacerbate the problems?"
Read this and other stories at Higher Ed Dive
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