Which do you think would be better for students: hybrid (ie, flipped) or HyFlex?

[tiva]

Hi folks,
I'm trying to decide how to deliver my fall history course, which has 25 students and meets twice a week, 75 minutes each time. For the past 25 years, I've taught it with readings and brief quizzes (before class in the LMS), then in class I do mini-lectures for 5-7 minutes, then brief activities (whiteboards, discussions, etc) , then mini-lectures, etc. Once a month we do a debate, hearing, field trip, or other activity for the full period.

My university wants us to do a "HyFlex" fall--half the students come to class each session, and the other half Zoom in, with each student coming in person once a week. The students in the classroom can still do their mini-discussions, and the Zoom students can use break-out rooms for the mini-discussions.

We can also opt to do a hybrid or flipped model, with the former material I offered in lectures delivered  asynchronously online (I'd do mini introductory lectures, then put video clips and brief quizzes, along with the powerpoints in each module, rather than putting in a long recording of my lecture). And in the classrooms, half the students would come for discussions on one day and the other half on the alternate day. Nobody would need to Zoom in; the online asynchrnous material would make up for the reduced time in person).

So: which seems better for student learning? Which seems better for professor sanity?

Pros of HyFlex:
-students get to see each other more, even if half the time it's on Zoom
-I don't need to invest a ton of time into the course this summer when I'm trying to finish a book, since I have all the material for each class already set up, after teaching it for decades
-the administration is happier, not that that matters a lot

Cons of HyFlex:
-the Zoomed in students will, I assume, quickly become ZonedOut students. It seems really boring for them to try and follow along on the computer, and active participation will, I bet, really reduce. Remote synchronous education for half the class seems like a loss of opportunity for them--even if they prefer it to the alternative of working through stuff online

Pros of Hybrid
-probably sounder pedagogically
-they can watch a ton of cool American Experience documentaries, which are much better than anything I can pull together

Cons of Hybrid
-seems like a bucketload of work for me, with major reconceptualization of course material, since basically I only have one online lecture to teach the material I typically use 2 classes to cover
-students will probably be frustrated, because they have too much computer stuff to do, and this would add more of it

So: how to proceed? Of course, coronavirus may toss all this to the winds, but my admin is absolutely convinced we're going to be in person, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead (and yes, I'm in a fairly high-risk category, but oh well).

Thanks for any feedback about YOUR experiences with either of these models.

[kiana]

Personally I would be going with hybrid/flipped.

1) I think it's better for learning. Trying to keep track of the students who are zooming in and involve them AND involve the students in the classroom seems like an utter nightmare, and trying to learn from zooming into a lecture sounds awful. It's hard enough to pay attention (as a student) when you're in the classroom, it's much harder when you're at home starting at a computer/phone.

2) I would not be at all surprised to see classes pulled fully online at some point in the fall in a lot of places and preparing for online content delivery and in-person recitations allows me to move the recitations to a synchronous zoom session and be ready rather than having to frantically prep content and stick it online.

[downer]

I haven't done any hybrid nor Hyflex.

But then as far as I know, nobody anywhere has done HyFlex.

So we can only guess what HyFlex will be like.

My guess is that it would be a shit show.

[arcturus]

OP, your face-to-face lecture class sounds lovely. If you are not considering fully online, then the hybrid model seems best. I cannot imagine trying to engage half the students via computer while the others are in person. I believe I have stated on other threads that I would view this as the worst possible scenario due to the difficulty of capturing good audio and visual in this situation. Repeating the discussion in two different sections is more time consuming for you, the instructor (since you have to do the same thing twice and also provide the lecture material online), but does at least allow you to capture some of your previous style. I also recommend reading some of the other threads on this topic. Hegemony provided a beautiful description of how to teach effectively online, which should be required reading for all instructors making the transition from face-to-face to a planned online or hybrid course.

http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=1360.0

[tiva]

Hegemony provided a beautiful description of how to teach effectively online, which should be required reading for all instructors making the transition from face-to-face to a planned online or hybrid course.

http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=1360.0

Yes, I love this post by Hegemony, and I'd been using it to plan my hybrid class (and as the guidance for my project in the 6 week intensive online class we've all been taking this summer to prepare for fall). And that's part of why I'm fairly sure that pedagogically, a well-designed hybrid class will teach the students a lot more than a HyFlex class.

But has anyone actually tried a HyFlex class? My admin is absolutely certain it will be awesome (even though I've noticed that our Center for Teaching and Learning is privately encouraging us to do a hybrid class, with plenty of asynchronous content such as Hegemony describes).

[polly_mer]

I haven't done any hybrid nor Hyflex.

But then as far as I know, nobody anywhere has done HyFlex.

So we can only guess what HyFlex will be like.

My guess is that it would be a shit show.

Everything I'm reading points to shit show for HyFlex.

I would be planning for fully online for the fall after a couple weeks in person.

[eigen]

I did HyFlex for a period this Spring before we went fully online, and it wasn't as bad as people are making it out to be.

One of the really nice things was it became very possible to do "socially distanced" group work in class via breakout rooms. I had some part in class/part remote, and some working over Zoom in class. Given that we can't let pairs of students work in close proximity... it's a nice option.

My students have indicated that they really would want regular class meetings (not flipped) going forward, with an asynchronous option possible. The regular "human" contact is something all of our surveys from the Spring have shown are really important.

The test rigs our IT people have gotten set up for us to test so far also work well- they have good video of the people in class and good sound for remote students Zooming in to participate for discussions.

That said, I'm also planning for some students not rotating, but being permanently remote due to health issues/family risk.

FWIW, I also did fully synchronous remote classes for Spring, with recordings as an asynchronous option. From my end of the term surveys, that was the preferred method for my students, and they comparatively did really well on the assessments and stayed engaged.

[Hegemony]

The CHE just had an article on offering options within the same class, e.g. students could attend a Zoom discussion, or participate in an asynchronous discussion on a discussion board, or submit a written reflection.

That sounded potentially promising, and I like that it offers options for several situations: those with poor internet, the shy, those missing contact with fellow students, etc. I do think it might be confusing to students — I can anticipate a number of emails seeking reassurance about the options, or students doing more than one of the options and asking "Can I just get the grade for the one I did best on?" or whatever. So there might be an additional hassle factor — you'd have to be extremely clear in the instructions.

[waterboy]

Our admins are slowly realizing that rooms with fixed chairs and tables won't work for most classes. Students would have to crawl over each other to get in and out even at 25% capacity.

[Caracal]

We also have either of those options, although nobody is calling it Hyflex, which I'm happy about. I'm probably going to do the "hyflex" option for my intro classes and the fully hyrbid option for my upper level classes. My upper level courses function more like what you describe, so it should be relatively easy to adapt them to a hybrid format. My intro courses, however, are lecture based, with plenty of discussion and other stuff sprinkled throughout. To change these courses to hybrid, I'd have to overhaul the whole course. Nobody is paying me more to do that, during what is already likely to be a complicated and high stress semester.

Are you required to provide some activity for the students not there to do during class? That seems more complicated than necessary. If students aren't there, why not just let them watch the video and do whatever they are supposed to do on their own time?

If things get moved online, I could go to a partly asynchronous model. I've heard anecdotally from people that it is much easier to listen to a recorded lecture if there's actually a class going on, not just the instructor talking, so I'm hopeful it will work ok.

[downer]

FWIW, I also did fully synchronous remote classes for Spring, with recordings as an asynchronous option. From my end of the term surveys, that was the preferred method for my students, and they comparatively did really well on the assessments and stayed engaged.

This was for a formerly face to face class, right?

I wonder what the preferences are for students who sign up for an online class.

[marshwiggle]

I haven't done any hybrid nor Hyflex.

But then as far as I know, nobody anywhere has done HyFlex.

So we can only guess what HyFlex will be like.

My guess is that it would be a shit show.

Everything I'm reading points to shit show for HyFlex.

I would be planning for fully online for the fall after a couple weeks in person.

As I see it, HyFlex means virtually all of the work of both in-person and online, with none of the benefits of either.

The main benefit of in-person is easy interaction, which is not nearly as easy with Zoom, especially if the instructor has to do that during the in-person class.

The main benefit of online is being able to have everything asynchronous, so there aren't the same limits of making everything fit a tight time slot, which will be lost if it's coupled to a real-time in-person class.

And if the remote part IS asynchronous, then it basically requires doing all the work for remote on top of all the work of in-person.

It just prevents leveraging either format to any significant degree.

[tiva]

I did HyFlex for a period this Spring before we went fully online, and it wasn't as bad as people are making it out to be.

One of the really nice things was it became very possible to do "socially distanced" group work in class via breakout rooms. I had some part in class/part remote, and some working over Zoom in class. Given that we can't let pairs of students work in close proximity... it's a nice option.

Thanks for posting about your experience! Can you describe a bit more how you managed running both an in-person discussion and Zoom breakout rooms simultaneously?

[polly_mer]

The CHE just had an article on offering options within the same class, e.g. students could attend a Zoom discussion, or participate in an asynchronous discussion on a discussion board, or submit a written reflection.

That sounded potentially promising, and I like that it offers options for several situations: those with poor internet, the shy, those missing contact with fellow students, etc. I do think it might be confusing to students — I can anticipate a number of emails seeking reassurance about the options, or students doing more than one of the options and asking "Can I just get the grade for the one I did best on?" or whatever. So there might be an additional hassle factor — you'd have to be extremely clear in the instructions.

I read that article (link here) and sighed about how few of the courses I've taught would work well with those examples.

I remember how poorly allowing options went for student groups in gen ed courses who really wanted the option of sit-quietly-through-lecture-and-identify-some-facts-on-a-unit-exam-to-get-an-A-without-learning-the-material.

They didn't want to be able to choose among recorded mini-lectures, in-person discussion, or I of J activities to practice applications before exams requiring applications.

Even the  science for teachers course that was explicitly demonstrating how to differentiate instruction for students needing a range of instruction and activities often had a subset of folks who were angry about how all the choices were more work than just watching a lecture and regurgitating some facts.

Switching to my HyFlex-like experiences, I can remember trying to teach highly interactive sections that had random and usually low attendance.  They were such shit shows that I did go to lecture with fewer break out activities to improve the experience for the students who did attend regularly and were not benefiting from the broken interactions with their colleagues.

A highly engaged upper-division cohort that is supported by good technology might work as HyFlex,  but even my current professional colleagues are prioritizing consistency to move our projects forward over a more complex regularly-rotating-mode of interactions that are just one more damn thing to deal with. 

Having the occasional subset meet in person for a particular activity with relevant details and decisions posted on the shared project wiki coupled with regularly scheduled telecons, ongoing discussions via shared wiki, and the occasional one-off phone call is working well.  We're highly motivated and still the only reason for in-person is literally doing lab work that can't be remote.

[spork]

Possible scenario, student's perspective.

Possible scenario, instructor's perspective.

Ask yourself this question: given your experience with instructional tech support, do you feel confident that the software and hardware needed to simultaneously engage both in-person and remote students during class will function seamlessly and reliably?

As I think I've mentioned in another thread, I'm unofficially advising people to design fall courses as fully online with any in-person activities being complementary.