99. HyFlex Courses

The traditional college model of full-time face-to-face class attendance does not work well for people with difficult work schedules, those that live at a distance from campus, or who face other barriers to attending classes on campus. In this episode, Judith Littlejohn joins us to examine how the HyFlex course modality can break down these barriers and allow more people to realize their potential.

Judie is an instructional designer and historian from Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York. She is a 2014 recipient of a State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service and a 2015 recipient of a State University of New York FACT2 Award for Excellence in Instruction. Judie chaired a committee that established procedures for HyFlex courses at Genesee Community College.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: The traditional college model of full-time face-to-face class attendance does not work well for people with difficult work schedules, those that live at a distance from campus, or who face other barriers to attending classes on campus. In this episode, we examine how the HyFlex course modality can break down these barriers and allow more people to realize their potential.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

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John: Today our guest is Judith Littlejohn. Judie is an instructional designer and historian from Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York. She is a 2014 recipient of a State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service and a 2015 recipient of a State University of New York FACT2 Award for Excellence in Instruction. Judie chaired a committee that established procedures for HyFlex courses at Genesee Community College. Welcome, Judie.

Judie: Thank you.

Rebecca:Today our teas are:

Judie: Mine is a blueberry green tea.

John: I have Tea Forte black currant tea.

Rebecca: I have Prince of Wales tea.

John: We invited you here to talk about HyFlex courses. But first, perhaps you could define what a HyFlex course is.

Judie: A HyFlex course is a regularly scheduled course in which all the content is provided online so that students can choose to participate in the classroom live, or they can video conference into the live class, or they can participate asynchronously online. So, students can also choose every week or during each class time which way they’re going to participate. So, if a student regularly attends class, and then has a medical appointment, and has to miss class, they can catch up later on online. Or if somebody has to travel in this class, they can participate online. Or if somebody registers, planning to take the course online but then decide they’d rather be in the classroom, they can change their mind and come to class. So, it’s literally highly flexible, in that the student has full choice of exactly how they’re going to participate from course session to course session.

Rebecca: Sounds to me like if you’re going to have something that’s that flexible for students, then there’s a lot of planning that needs to go up front on the part of the faculty. Can you talk a little bit about what the requirements are for a class like that, and what some of the things are that a faculty member might need to think about to have a good experience across all those different options?

Judie: So that’s exactly the most difficult part, I think of a HyFlex course, is just the amount of preparation the faculty member needs. So literally, you have to create the entire online course, so that you can think of it as two course preps really, because you have your full face-to-face course and your full online course. And it’s key that before the course even opens, you have the entire course schedule all fully developed so that the students can look ahead and see, week to week, or if you’re meeting two or three times a week from one class session to the next, exactly what’s going to happen in the classroom, or how they would have an equivalent learning experience online if they chose to be online. So it’s tons of work. And then on top of that you have to be comfortable with the equipment. So you have to have students video conferencing into your live classroom, you have to manage those remote participants; you have to be able to include them in what’s going on. So if you’re having a debate, you need some virtual attendees to be able to participate in a debate or in small group work. And you just need to be able to manage all that… respond to questions from virtual participants, and pay attention to your face-to-face students too. And make sure that the students in the classroom and the virtual participants can all see each other.

Rebecca: Why would I want to do this?

Judie: So, it is a lot of work. But the faculty who do it say that the students get a lot out of it, because they do have that freedom to choose how they’re going to participate. The way our college is set up, we have our main campus in Batavia. And then we have six, we call them campus centers. So they’re like little satellite campuses in our region. And we have a four-county service area; it’s about the size of the State of Delaware. From one corner of our service area to the other is almost a two-hour drive. So if you think about how spread out our students are, if they’re in our area, and then the size of some of our programs, or how complex some of the equipment and materials are in the programs, we can’t offer every course at all those campus centers. So many times the students will be driving over an hour, just to get to our main campus to take a one-hour class. And it just doesn’t make sense. So we struggle with enrollments in some of these programs. But if we offer the courses this way (HyFlex), the students can stay where they are and still participate in the class. Some of these rural, remote areas don’t have very good wifi access. So the students can just drive to their nearest campus center and participate from there. So it does help with student access to the courses. And just with work schedules, family life schedules, it helps people stay in college, even if work and family are disrupting what time of day they can participate.

John: You mentioned the ability to go to other campus centers, would there be separate meeting rooms where students might meet in or would they have to do it on their own from some location on the campus center, if it’s not offered at that site,

Judie: Well, there’s a mix of that type of thing. So if you’re at a campus center with an empty classroom, you could go in and watch it from there if the staff help you get set up for that. If you have your own laptop and headset, you could participate from just about anywhere. It’s funny that you mentioned that because currently, the Dean of Distributed Learning is working with the Campus Center’s Associate Deans on a grant project where they would come up with funding for eight or 10 little workstations, like semi-private workstations, at each of the campus centers so students could participate in this type of course in the future,

Rebecca: Especially because of high speed internet and things, it would be really important if you’re going to participate synchronously remotely, that all students necessarily have that available to them at their homes.

Judie: Yeah, exactly. So, these workstations would be excellent for them.

John: What sort of software are you using for doing the live streaming in the remote sessions?

Judie: Right now we have a small group that is using WebEx who had been using it historically for other purposes. But the college as a whole uses Zoom. So Zoom has been working out really well. There’s a Zoom learning tool integration with Blackboard. And so we can have it set up right in the course so it’s seamless for the students to access it. We also use the Ensemble video server, and there is a Zoom to Ensemble link. So they call it ingestion. So when you record in Zoom to the cloud, then ensemble will ingest your video and publish it for you. So it’s right there in your Ensemble library ready to pull into Blackboard into your class. There’s an additional step where you have to trigger the captioning, and then go back through and double check the captions. But other than that, it’s pretty seamless.

Rebecca: How many classes have you offered in HyFlex method so far? And can you give us a sense as to how they’re working or what’s unique or really exciting about some of those classes,

Judie: Just off the top of my head right now I’d say we have about a dozen running. So right now our Computer Information Systems and Computer Networking, people use HyFlex in their program. And we also have Paralegal Studies offering all of their courses this way, so that they can extend their reach. Paralegal in particular, had trouble with those students who lived about an hour from campus and weren’t able to make the drive to all the classes. The way this all came about was: our Provost… her name’s Kate Schiefen, and she’s our Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs… she came up with this idea last fall to really kind of get our hands around HyFlex, because faculty were trying to do it independently, and they didn’t have much guidance or support. So we put a team together to come up with guidelines or requirements for what has to be present each course and what you need in each classroom that’s going to offer courses this way. What are the expectations? Where are the definitions? We looked at it holistically because we need our registrar to be able to schedule these courses with the meaningful code, so that when we report to SUNY what types of classes we have, they’re coded correctly. Everything from that to how the courses are posted on the website in the schedule so that students understand what kind of course they’re getting into, and what kind of equipment they need, and what the student expectation is. We looked at everything from top to bottom, how it affected the whole college and all the different offices… So like our success coaches, and how do they explain the course to the students that they’re advising… and put together a big manual, it’s a 43-page guidebook, that should be referenced in your show notes, I think, for anyone who wants to take a look at that. And we do have condensed versions for people, so they don’t have to read all of that.

John: I thought the 43 page was the simplified version. [LAUGHTER]

Judie: So yeah, we have the whole process the faculty member has to go through to make sure that their course meets the online course quality standards and all accessibility standards, and has all the content and schedules that they need… and then how we have the room setup with the microphones and the carpeting and soundproofing and things like that, and how the messages get out to the students. At this point, we use Banner as our student information system. And so we have it set up so that once a student registers for a HyFlex course, then within 24 hours, they receive an email that explains “You just registered for a HyFlex course that means…” …you know, and then this explanation. So the student knows that they should have a headset or a webcam and a microphone. And if they choose to participate remotely or of course they’re welcome to come on campus. So a lot of different things are going on right now. In our college in Batavia, we’re working on getting two rooms a year upgraded to be labeled HyFlex classrooms. So that carpeting is coming in, different furniture, desks on wheels, so that people can form into small groups easier… just more useful and versatile learning spaces are being created. So that’s helpful. And in the meantime, we have to train the faculty and make sure that they’re comfortable and come up with their whole timeline of development. Because on our campus, I’m the instructional designer, but I’m the only one. So I can’t really develop a dozen HyFlex courses at a time. But I can work with the faculty who are developing their own materials. So we have a couple different timelines depending on if you already have a fully developed online course that’s already been through all the different review processes or if you’ve never taught online at all. So there’s a big spectrum of faculty that are interested in teaching in the HyFlex modality but have different levels of experience with all the technology. So you might be looking at a year and a half, like three semesters of development, before you finally have your HyFlex course. Or you could start developing today and have it ready in the spring if you’ve already been teaching online and are comfortable with that.

John: And it sounds like the pathway is from online teaching to this rather than primarily from face-to-face to HyFlex…where it would be an easier pathway. Is that correct?

Judie: Absolutely, that’s an easier pathway. And we see it, we can see it in the courses that we have running now. Because there’s a couple of faculty members who have been teaching online historically, who are very student focused and very aware of the importance of active learning, and are used to working with students that they’re not seeing right in front of them. And their courses are fine, they had them set up, they had their schedules ready, a nd we really didn’t have much of a problem. We have other faculty who have never taught online before and are unfamiliar with active learning, and really unfamiliar with some of the changes in learning theory that have come out over the last 20 years…

John: or more.

Judie: Yeah…. That’s a struggle. They’re sort of unaware of the deficiencies in their courses. And it’s hard to help them understand how much better the students would do if they could change some of their faculty-focused materials into student-centered active learning projects or activities.

Rebecca: I can imagine that no matter whether it’s a HyFlex, or just moving to online, anytime you’re changing, and now you’re re-looking at the class as a whole, we don’t always do that. This forces us to have to look at it and a lot of faculty don’t have training necessarily in teaching. And so maybe someone that’s been teaching for a long time, now they’re like, “Oh, we’re having some assistance in moving into something, someone else is taking a look at it, I need to get familiar.” So there’s a lift of having to get from familiar with learning science, then getting familiar with a new modality, whether it’s online or face-to-face, it really could be either. And then on top of that layering in an idea of HyFlex, which they’ve never experienced as a student.

Judie: Yeah, and some of these particular people probably have never taken an online course either. So they have very limited exposure to much of this, they may have strong opinions about it, but they don’t really have any personal experience of it. So that can be a little challenging.

Rebecca: I can imagine it being a really exciting experience, trying to set something like this up, but also like a real brain puzzle in some ways. As someone who doesn’t really teach online, I teach mostly in person, I can imagine the complexity of that. And when I’m teaching in person, and I don’t have people also online or in other places that I’m also having to worry about, we can easily make a decision in class, “Oh, we’re all struggling with this, we’re going to pause in what we already have planned…”

Judie: Right.

Rebecca: …to do this other thing. So I can imagine that that ends up being much more of a challenge, or that flexibility in that way becomes a challenge in a HyFlex course.

Judie: Right. So part of what we encourage and what we’ve seen, especially in paralegal, the faculty do is start the semester before they want to be in HyFlex. And they’ll be in there face-to-face classrooms and they’ll say, “Okay, next week, how about if half a dozen of you stay home and try to log in and join the class from home.” And so they’ve practiced incrementally week to week, got used to seeing themselves on camera, hearing their voice in the video, and managing the students that are accessing the course remotely. And other faculty have been practicing just using Zoom as just a recording tool to make small informational videos. So they’re getting more familiar with the Zoom software and recording and all of that. So I think all those little steps that people take, before they start the HyFlex helps a lot too. And they’re always invited to stop in to watch a live HyFlex course and see how the instructor is managing. And frankly, part of what our team recommended at the end of our work was that, particularly, new HyFlex instructors have some sort of technical person in the room with them for the first few weeks until they feel confident that they can manage this on their own. Unfortunately, that recommendation requires funding that we don’t have at this time. But that is the hope, that one day faculty would not have to worry about that layer of the technical aspect and know that there’s somebody in there to support them

John: …until they get comfortable themselves.

Judie: Right now, when they start it up we’ll try to walk by or they know who they can call. But it’s a little bit different when somebody’s standing right there and can help them.

Rebecca: It just provides this whole layer… like anxiety just goes away… someone else will solve this problem and I can just deal with the other things that come up in the first day of class that aren’t technical issues.

Judie: rRight.

John: One can only wish. [LAUGHTER] But, going back to Rebecca’s point, I think one of the difficulties for people, especially those transitioning from face-to-face to a HyFlex format is that in face-to-face classes, you’re used to be able to adjust on the fly so that if students are stuck, you can stretch something out; if they’re able to pick something up more quickly, you could accelerate some things. But those teaching online are already used to a structured format where the tasks for the week are set in advance; students know where they’re going to be. So it seems like that would be a more natural transition. But I could see some problems in adjusting the first time you’re doing this in terms of coming to class expecting to have a whole class period worth of activities, and students either get stuck on something and you’re not able to finish it in that class period, or students just breezed right through it, they picked things up really quickly and they’re ready to move on or to leave. Have people had many issues with that.

Judie: These are courses people have taught before. So it’s not like they’re going through this material with students for the first time. So they know where the stumbling blocks are for the students. And they’re pretty prepared, they’d schedule in extra time for those content parts that students need extra time with. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with having a scheduled course and with your online component and then decide to make a change and then post that in the online part of the course for the people who aren’t attending right on the spot. So I think that may not be as much of an issue as it may seem.

John: If people are having trouble with it in face-to-face classes, it’s likely it’s also a bit of a stumbling block for the online classes so that alignment between the two might make it easier to identify those issues and adjust the pacing, particularly for future iterations of the course, too.

Judie: I teach online, and I can see when students are struggling with something and I can send out a clarifying announcement or add some additional content or extend a deadline. And there’s no reason you couldn’t do the same thing in a HyFlex course,

John: Are some courses better suited to HyFlex, and others. How do faculty decide if HyFlex is right for their courses,

Judie: it all just comes back to the learning outcomes. If you have some sort of a course, where students can do a lot of independent work that might be ideal for HyFlex, if you want students to work in small groups a lot, there’s really no problem with that in HyFlex either. I would say big challenges would be if you had wet labs and things like that, that are difficult nuts to crack in the online only format too. And some courses, honestly, I think don’t need to be HyFlex. There’s nothing wrong with just offering them 100% online, if students are just engaging with the material and kind of doing independent work. But really the beauty of HyFlex is that the students can be 100% asynchronous, but still be part of that community and they can see the class and they can feel like they’re part of the group and they can interact with the students. It’s just so important that all that is built in correctly from the start, that the student-to-student engagement is all built in. Because I think that when we tell students, if we advertise that you can take the course from wherever you are anytime of the day and have an equivalent learning experience, and then when they get into that experience, they’re not feeling engaged, and they’re not communicating with the other students. I just think that we can do a lot to recruit students. But really, it’s once they’re in the course and having that experience, that’s what’s going to retain our students and help them be successful and stay with the program. So it’s just a matter of ensuring that all those pieces are built in so that the students aren’t isolated and they’re not passive learners. One of the pitfalls that I think people fall into is they think that all I have to do is lecture and we’re going to throw that video in the class. And then that’s good enough, the students can watch my lecture, and they’re going to know what they need to know. And we’ll move on. And that’s just a huge issue, because that’s just passive learning on the part of the student and they’re not engaged and they may have it on and be washing the dishes or doing other activities and it’s just not a good learning experience for students. There has to be that attachment, that engagement, has to be built in to make sure that students are successful and feel like they’re part of the learning community.

John: It’s’s also a requirement for federal funding too, that there’ll be some degree of interactivity in the classes.

Judie: And we use the OSCQR rubric, that’s the Open SUNY course quality rubric that OLC, the Online Learning Consortium has also adopted. And it’s one of the requirements in OSCQR too, that the students have active learning and student-to-student interaction.

John: One practical thing that you touched on a bit earlier, but I think might be worth emphasizing a bit, is that with demographic shifts, which have lowered the number of college-age students in many areas, particularly in community colleges, this provides a way of offering courses where there may not be enough students face-to-face or online for the courses to carry. And it provides a way of maintaining a larger variety of courses that might not work at any one of the campus centers.

Judie: Yeah, that’s exactly right. For years, we’ve had what we call video linked courses. So you could be in the main campus and link it to one of the campus centers where they might have six or seven students. And we may have six or seven students in ours, but together, it’s enough to have the course run. And so that works pretty well. And in some instances, I think faculty have thought maybe they would turn a course into a HyFlex course, and then decided that really all they need is a video linked course, so that their students don’t have to drive to campus but they’re all participating at the same time. And that’s absolutely fine. There’s nothing wrong with a video linked course. And some people think that they may want to offer their course HyFlex, because they want to record their lectures and have them all in the course. And basically all they really want is lecture capture to have as a resource to subsidize what the students are already doing. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. It’s just not a HyFlex course.

John: But this type, of course, would seem to benefit a lot of students who might not be able to take the other formats…

Judie: Exactly.

John: …the students who have more challenging schedules, people doing shift work, or who are taking care of ill parents or relatives, or who just can’t have a regular schedule. Are there other students who might benefit besides those who can’t meet synchronous times regularly?

Judie: Well, the students who are not in the area, really. We do have online learners from all over the place. Occasionally, we’ll have an international student who has to go back home for a time for whatever reason, and you know, that would be excellent for a student like that, who’s starting off on campus, and then having to move elsewhere geographically later on. But yeah, it is good for what we call, in air quotes, are truly distant learners, then they can participate in a HyFlex course just like they would in any other online course.

John: Or even sometimes distance students, those who are in the National Guard and may get called away for a few weeks, or who might travel a lot for work.

Rebecca: There probably are some challenges that do arise. Have you had any experiences where there’s maybe not enough synchronous students to do synchronous activities? Like too many students maybe have decided to just be online or be asynchronous? So what about that inconsistency there? One week, there might be a lot of people synchronous. And then another week, nobody’s there.

Judie: You’re absolutely right. A couple years ago, I was helping out a new adjunct who was trying this out for the first time, and he only had one student in the room when I was in there helping them get started. And then a second student came in and all the rest of them were online. So in that kind of situation, it would be tough to do a group project in the classroom. And I think that could be problematic. And you’d have to, depending on what you’re using, like Zoom has a groups tool. So if they’re all tuned in at the same time, you can easily put all your virtual students in small groups with each other. The tougher problem, I think would be when you want to do the group projects, and then all of your students decide to be asynchronous, because that can be a little bit trickier. And you need a little bit more time. So one of our recommendations was to schedule a HyFlex courses that only meet once a week, or twice a week at the most. Because if you think about what you have to do as the asynchronous student, so if you have a monday, wednesday course, on Monday night, they’ve got to try to watch that recording and do all that work. So Tuesday, do whatever reading and prep to get ready for the Wednesday course, it would be tough to try to fit in a small group asynchronous project too. And I also think that with HyFlex, it’s kind of like a catch 22, because you need to schedule the course. Typically, our cap is 32, because we have 32 desks in a room. So now you’re scheduling for 32. And you only have three, and you still have this big empty classroom and maybe another class could have been scheduled at that time. But the minute you try to move it into a smaller location, what if all 32 show up? You always have to be ready to have the 32 students, regardless of how many show up.

John: In economics, we call that a peak-load problem… that you have to be able to meet the peak demand period.

Rebecca: HyFlex is just more resource intensive in general, because you have to support all those things all at once. Right?

Judie: Yeah, absolutely. I think it is resource intensive. And I don’t think it’s for every faculty member. But the people who’ve been doing it for the last couple of years really seem to enjoy it. And so I know the Director of our Paralegal Program is just thrilled that now she has a course that last year at this time was in danger of being cancelled from low enrollment. And now she’s got 25 students in it, and it’s HyFlex. And that’s exactly what she was going for. And as she grows more comfortable with it and adds more resources and other materials to the online part of the course, the course becomes more robust each time she does it.

Rebecca: Do faculty get additional resources if they’re doing a HyFlex class, because now they have to be constantly checking their online version of their class as well as the in-person? You kind of mentioned that it’s almost like having two preps? How was that accommodated for faculty?

Judie: I think it is two preps, honestly, and how faculty are accommodated or compensated for it is something that’s always under discussion between our faculty and our union and the administration. Currently, there’s no additional compensation for a HyFlex course… down the road, hopefully some of that can change. But right now, it’s just considered one course.

John: Could you give us an example of some private projects or activities that might be done in classes, where students are getting the same learning objectives in different formats?

Judie: Well, one of our team members, her name is Karen Wicka, and she teaches criminal justice. And she has not taught HyFlex yet, but she’s preparing right now to do so in the spring. And she’s already been working on her schedule. And she said that she does a lot of debates in their criminal justice classes. And she sees now in the face-to-face class that she has students who struggle with the debate because they’re really not comfortable speaking in front of their classmates and having all the attention on them. So now in her face-to-face class, she’ll say “The debate is Thursday, and you have to be prepared, and if you do not come to class on Thursday, then before we meet again next Tuesday, you have to turn in an essay…” and she gives you the parameters of the essay, which would be the alternative assignment. And she said she would easily transfer that to the HyFlex course so that the students who are participating synchronously virtually or in the class room would all be having the debate and the asynchronous online students would be writing the essay.

John: So it has some aspects of universal design to it, that you’re providing multiple formats and multiple means of people demonstrating their competency on these particular skills.

Judie: Exactly. And the students in the HyFlex, they’ll be able to look ahead and say, “Gee, there’s a debate, two months from now, I don’t need to get stressed out about it, I can choose to stay online that week and write the essay,” or “Gee, that’s an essay, I’m not comfortable writing the essay, I’m much more articulate. So I’m going to go to the class and I’ll participate in the debate.”

Rebecca: I can imagine that that would motivate some students to just make choices like ”Oh, I really want to be in class for this,” whatever it’s going to be or that I’m going to schedule my life around this particular couple of times when I want to be in class, and then also make choices about “I would really like to avoid that.”

Judie: Exactly. That’s why I think that schedule at the beginning is so important, so that students can make those choices and make those plans.

Rebecca: I can imagine that with all the time and energy that would need to go into the HyFlex course the thing that would draw faculty in the first place is probably the rewarding experience of students having such a positive experience or having positive outcomes. Is that what you think motivates most of the faculty? Or is there something else also.

Judie: I think that has a big part of it, because we see students who we know they want to come to class, and they can’t because of different life situations. So definitely the faculty want to see the students be able to be successful, no matter what kind of format you have to teach the course in. And honestly, I do think that declining enrollment has something to do with it also, because we are trying to find more ways to reach more students. And we’re trying to reach out to adults who want to change their careers or have never been able to finish college in the past. And this could be a way that they could continue working their full-time jobs and still participate in courses. Some people honestly like the technology, and they just want to try all different things. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of different motivating factors. But definitely, the faculty generally have the students’ best interest at heart and they want to do whatever they can to help the students be successful and meet their goals.

Rebecca: Of course, embedded in my question, was the assumption that students are responding positively. [LAUGHTER] Can you talk a little bit about how students are actually responding.

Judie: Yeah, the students… they are happy to be able to have the choice. And students have commented on different things like some have said, “I thought I would just stay in the classroom. But as I got comfortable with the learning materials and the format, then it was easier for me to stay home and just tune in virtually.” And where we live in western New York, especially in the spring semester where it’s, you know, January, February, March, the weather’s so bad that it’s great for students to be able to stay in a safe location, and not have to drive to campus. And those students particularly are happy to have that choice. So if we wake up in the morning, and there’s a whiteout or something, and in being in such a big region, we can have a whiteout in one county and have a sunny day in another county, then they’re still expected to come to school. So the students don’t have to take those risks of driving in bad weather. But, yeah, they have responded favorably. We’ve also had students who thought they would stay online and then saw what was going on in the classroom and really felt like they wanted to be there and be able to participate live with the group. So they came to campus more often than they had planned. So I think it works both ways. But they definitely like the choice. There were surveys that I read in one of the articles that are mentioned in the resources list, where students were more satisfied with the class, just knowing there were those options, whether they took advantage of them or not. So the students definitely are pleased with that.

Rebecca: I can imagine that for students who are a little bit tentative about returning to school, or going to school for the first time as an adult maybe, that online learning can be really intimidating. So, getting to know your faculty in person and having some exchanges with students, I could understand that first student you’re discussing, like the idea that I have an experience in class, and now I feel comfortable being online, or those that felt really confident that they could be online and maybe it just wasn’t a format that they were familiar with. They could go in person, get some feedback, or get some help where they feel stuck, get un-stuck and then go back online.

Judie: Right. Yeah, I think that’s good …that flexibility.

John: In several of our recent podcasts, including those by Linda Nilson on specifications grading and on self-regulated learning, and the podcast with Sarah Rose Cavanagh, where she was talking about the role of emotions, a concept that’s come up quite a bit is the notion that students tend to learn more when they have a greater degree of autonomy, and this type of class environment seems to provide that. And that’s very consistent with what you were just saying, I think.

Judie: Well, I think any of us, as humans, we like to know we have options, because things happen. You just may not feel well one day and not feel up to the drive. And then now you know, you don’t have that pressure to make the drive no matter what, you can still stay home and earn the A where you would have been penalized, otherwise, if you didn’t show up to class,

John: As part of the planning for the HyFlex courses, what types of support are being provided by the college?

Judie: Well, we have a team that works together with the faculty, we have myself as the instructional designer, and we do have a person who is an accessibility technologist, and that helps a lot. We have media, our media department, and our librarians will help out with any resources that we need. And our computer services people will also work with faculty, if they need particular software, things like that. Our media people will work with the faculty one-on-one in the classroom that they’re going to use. So they have some mandatory training before the class starts. And we already said that they become familiar with Zoom ahead of time, but we will activate it, you know, fire it up in the room prior to the course starting so they are used to where they should stand and what the cameras are picking up and what the students will see from their view. We also have a group of faculty who are really interested in sharing ideas and supporting each other. So that is our HyFlex Users Group, which is the “HUG.” [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That’s cute.

Judie: So, yeah, I think that’s cute. But they that way they can talk about what’s working well and particularly the nuances in the different classrooms. If you’re sharing the same room and you know that this particular microphone isn’t working very well or whatever, or picking up too many student noises, then that’s the kind of information you can readily share with each other. So it’s good. It’s nice that there’s some faculty like cross-departmentally working together to solve some of the technical problems and to support each other as they try to do this, because it is a lot to take on. But I think they find it rewarding in the end.

John: Very good. Well, this has been fascinating. And I think this is something that probably more and more colleges would adopt and it seems like you’re probably a little ahead of the curve on this as compared to many other campuses.

Judie: Well, the articles… some of the research that I read has come out… It’s Brian Beatty, who wrote, I thin, what we think of as the seminal article about HyFlex, and they came out in 2014. And he was doing it before then. And some of the research that he refers to was even earlier than that. So I think it’s probably been around a good 15 to 20 years, but is really starting to take off now as the technology becomes more readily available. And students have this equipment, you know, you can Zoom from your phone, they don’t need that much of a setup, if they’re comfortable with the devices that we have now. But yeah, I think it’s great. I’m glad that it’s an option. I like seeing that we have full programs going this way so that a student doesn’t just start off in an introductory course. And then they’re left high and dry when they can’t access the rest of the courses to finish their program. So the commitment, I think by these program directors to do their full program HyFlex is just great, so that the students know when they come in the door that they can really finish the entire program and be successful. So I think our next thing is to get some of the general education requirements online because the programs that are online now are AAS programs. So they’re applied associates where students are preparing for the workforce. But I think if we can get some transfer programs and general electives in the HyFlex format that could be helpful.

Rebecca: Yeah, it sounds like an exciting time and some interesting things getting developed. I can imagine that, from your seat, it can be kind of interesting seeing the different kinds of classes evolving, and what’s working and what’s not working.

Judie: That is interesting. Sometimes as an instructional designer, you can get bogged down in watching somebody’s video or you start reading these articles like ”Oh, I didn’t know that about…. Well, wait a minute, what am I supposed to be working on here?” [LAUGHTER] But we’ve seen it over the years with online… and so many courses and programs are online and I think that’s wonderful because you have access from wherever you are. But for the students who really want more of the community experience in the classroom, I think HyFlex is a good choice for them.

John: I think that one thing that makes it easier from the faculty side is that there are so many workshops online and so many meetings that are being run through Zoom or other systems, that faculty are just necessarily getting more used to that type of interaction. So that should make the transition a little bit easier for many people.

Rebecca: …or even that type of flexibility, like attending a department meeting virtually is becoming a thing.

John: We’ve done that many times. We had a member who is in Pennsylvania for much of last year and so she came in through Zoom. We’ve also used it for all of our workshops here that where nearly every workshop is available through Zoom. And we have a lot of faculty attending remotely. So that familiarity is growing.

Judie: Yeah, I think it’s good. And I think as far as administration goes, or while you’re planning, looking ahead to course scheduling and program scheduling, you just have to think about who are your adult learners? They’re you and me, they’re your neighbor and your brother, and they can’t drop everything and run to the classroom and sit there from 10 to 2, or 8 to 11 or whatever it is. They have to be able to have that flexibility if they’re going to stay with the program and finish it. So I think it’s great.

Rebecca: Well, we always wrap up by asking, “Well, what’s next?”

Judie: What’s next in the world of HyFlex?.

John: …or in general for you.

Rebecca: …for you.

Judie: For me, we’ve got a lot of different projects going on in our area. We have an Accessibility STARS program, we call it. We’re trying to create different modules to help faculty and staff be able to create accessible digital content from the start instead of trying to retrofit everything for accessibility later on. So that’s exciting. We have that about a third of the way completed right now. And I think that’ll be a good program. We’re also working a lot on open pedagogy projects and trying to get some of our faculty working with students online to develop their e-portfolios and different things like that through the SUNY Creative Grant.

John: The IITG grant.

Judie: Yeah, that is based at SUNY Oneonta. So that’s exciting too. I know you guys are working on that also.

John: We now have 10 faculty members who’ve joined into that.

Judie: Yeah, that’s great. And SUNY Geneseo is also involved.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us. It’s really interesting.

Judie: Thanks for having me and thanks for sharing tea.

John: Thank you, Judie. It’s always great having you here. We’ll have to get you back for some future podcasts too.

Judie: Sure….

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.