HyFlex Courses: Supporting Student Learning, Equitable Access and Enabling Instructional Continuity

HyFlex courses have been in use at San Francisco State University and many other institutions since at least 2005. The term HyFlex is a simple portmanteau of two words, 1) Hybrid – combines both online and face-to-face teaching and learning activities and 2) Flexible – students may choose whether or not to attend face-to-face sessions … with no “learning deficit”. The development of the HyFlex course design was driven by several important institutional, faculty and student factors. Institutional factors include the location, instructional history, and enrollment characteristics of the university. Faculty factors include the capacity and capability to teach online and in the classroom and the motivation to try something new to better serve students. Student factors included the academic interests, technical abilities and time and location constraints/restraints of the current student enrollment. (See https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex)

Benefits of HyFlex
From the beginning, it was clear that allowing students access and choice among several participation options was providing more than just access to classroom instruction to those who could not attend classes in-person. Potential benefits include:

• Enroll more students (increase access)
• Graduate more students… and faster (increase curriculum schedule efficiency)
• Support working (busy) students (day-day schedule control)
• Support busy faculty (travel-related schedule control)
• Reduce demand on facilities (teach more with same/less space)
• Reduce impact on environment (reduce commuting)
• Leverage the power of hybrid environments (provide more learning opportunity to students; potentially improving learning)
• Develop online teaching (faculty) and learning expertise (students) with built-in “comfort” of face to face environment as a backup
• Allow students freedom to choose how they participate (supporting student-directed learning)
• Build online capacity step-by-step within an institution or program
• Facilitate faculty development (faculty as learners who also need flexibility)
• Use emerging communications technologies to support teaching and learning
• Create new, customized models of instruction to fit emerging needs

And then, 2020 Happened!

The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the landscape of worldwide education at all levels in the spring of 2020. The need and desire to provide excellent learning opportunities for students in the physical and virtual classroom at the same time, in the same classes, and with the same teachers has never been greater. HyFlex learning environments are well-designed to support this “new normal". Education systems must be redesigned for built-in resilience or instructional continuity given the likelihood of other broad scale disruptions to traditional education.  This past year, HyFlex courses have been used in many more institutions – K-12 and higher education – supporting multimodal instruction where possible and when desired.

• Physical distancing: Implementing a HyFlex approach can provide an instructional environment that reduces the number of students in a classroom and allows students to choose their mode – no one is forced into an environment they do not want.
  • Caveat: If classroom seats are limited, a seat reservation system is useful – modifying the flexibility aspect of HyFlex to fit the situation.
• Instructional continuity: If a shift to fully online is mandated, course development is already complete. When classroom instruction is allowed again, the designed classroom instructional mode can be readily activated (no additional design needed).

The Issue of Educational Equity

One of the most important and difficult – even “wicked” – problems in higher education that has been extremely resistant to resolution for decades is providing equitable access to higher education for all learners who want and need this experience. There are many aspects to this multi-dimensional problem: many stakeholders involved, multiple solution paths potentially available, multiple symptoms to address, and all this in a constantly evolving context – global higher education. Add to this the need to work from within the dominant higher education system edifices – institutions and faculty – and the problem seems intractable. How can we provide equitable access to high quality higher education experiences to all students?

One way to define equity in education:

All students:

1. achieve equal learning outcomes as they are supported by institutions, faculty, and other systems to engage in the learning process.
2. receive the financial, social, and academic support and guidance they need to succeed in the institutional programs, thus enabling lifelong success as well.
3. have access to appropriate and effective learning opportunities - instructional resources, activities, interactions and evaluative assessment - which are differentiated according to their unique sets of characteristics and needs.

The HyFlex course approach provides one way to partially address the systemic inequities that contribute to this problem, perhaps most significantly access to high quality, engaged learning environments. The HyFlex approach was developed initially as a way to provide access to classroom instruction for students who were unable to attend class on campus. The goal of support students achieving equivalent learning outcomes no matter their participation path choice is a core HyFlex principle.

HyFlex Fundamental Principles

The HyFlex course design is built upon four fundamental values: Learner Choice, Equivalency, Reusability, and Accessibility, each with a corresponding guiding, or universal, principle for designers and instructors to follow. These four “pillars” provide a consistent and solid foundation for resulting courses and programs.

1. Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes weekly (or topically).
   The primary reason a HyFlex course design should be considered is to give students a choice in how they complete course activities in any given week (or topic). Without meaningful choice, there is no flexibility … and therefore no HyFlex.
2. Equivalency: Provide equivalent learning activities in all participation modes.

All alternative participation modes should lead to equivalent learning. Providing an alternative approach to students which leads to inferior learning “by design” is poor instructional practice and is probably unethical. Equivalency does not imply equality, however.

1. Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as “learning objects’ for all students.                   

Many class activities which take place in classrooms can be captured and represented in an online-delivered form for online students. Podcasts, video recordings, discussion transcripts or notes, presentation files and handouts, and other forms of representation of in-class activities can be very useful – both for online students and for classroom students wishing to review after the class session is finished. In a similar way, the activities completed by online students, such as chats, asynchronous discussions, file posting and peer review, etc. can become meaningful learning supports for in-class students as well as provide useful review materials for online students.

1. Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and access to all participation modes.   

All course materials and activities should be accessible to and usable for all students following legal requirements and principles of Universal Design for Learning. Clearly, alternative participation modes are not valid alternatives if students cannot effectively participate in class activities in one or more modes. If a student is not physically capable of attending class, then in-class participation is not an option for that student. If a student does not have convenient and reliable Internet access, then online participation may not be a realistic option for that student..

What is Best for All Students?

What form or mode of instruction is “best” for learners? Is the classroom always the best format for a course in higher education? What about asynchronous online courses? Are they inherently better in supporting learning? And let’s not forget about the sometimes-hated synchronous format, using Zoom or another web conferencing tool, which took over the world of education in the spring, summer and fall of 2020. We can look critically at each of these course modes, and acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages of each.

• Classroom instruction provides advantages like: socially interactive; supports relationships, “natural” formative assessment, better communication, common format. Yet there are also disadvantages: not everyone has access, group-paced (too slow for some students, too fast for other students), little student agency, expensive (requires a location and staffing), public health concerns: social distancing, quarantining requirements.
• Synchronous instruction provides advantages: socially interactive, students and faculty have experience in this mode (now), may create a record for later review. But there are also serious disadvantages of synchronous instruction: not everyone has access, substantial technology requirements: hardware, software, network, bandwidth, (technology requirements often lead to equity issues), requires regularly scheduled time and location dictated by the institution.
• Asynchronous instruction provides advantages: access is more ubiquitous than for synchronous, long history of success in education, supports more reflective learning, creates a record for review. But there are also serious disadvantages of asynchronous instruction: not everyone has access, substantial technology requirements: hardware, software, network, bandwidth, often not interactive, leading to equity issues.

Moving Forward

When we look at our past experiences in all modes, it seems pretty clear that no one mode is “best” for all students in any class, nor can any single format can provide full and equitable access to high quality learning opportunities for all students who need to learn. I propose that a HyFlex course approach, offering a classroom option and at least one online option (even both synchronous and asynchronous modes when possible) provides more equitable access than any single mode course can. If you care about equitable access, then consider shifting the way you teach and support effective student learning.