Hy-Flex Curriculum: Now a Required ADA Accommodation?

[Aster]

One of my colleagues at another institution is reporting a major headache. His university's student disabilities office has recently been adding Hy-Flex as valid accommodation options. The local office is claiming that Hy-Flex is now an approved accommodation through the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that any students "needing" Hy-Flex can now get it for any course that they want to.

So now my colleague and the faculty at his institution are having a nightmare of a time trying to run both regular classroom and fully-online formats simultaneously every time that the disabilities office delivers a letter with "Hy-Flex" listed as a required student accommodation. These are not covid students asking for the hy-flex accommodations. These are regular students with regular disabilities.

I was unaware that the Americans with Disabilities Act has now added hy-flex to the list of course accommodations that universities must comply with. Can anyone tell me when this happened, and where I can locate the documentation support showing this? Or if this is just bunk? My own university basically zeroed out hy-flex instruction last year, and I haven't heard a peep from any of the faculty about them being required to do hy-flex to comply with ADA regulations.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Saw this coming.

[Puget]

The ADA just requires "reasonable accommodations". It is up to the university to determine what those reasonable accommodations are. So this is on that university's accommodations office, not federal law.

[clean]

How are we/they defining "hi flex"

What specifically do they expect that the faculty should be doing?
IF they want a recording of every class, I am not sure that we have the technology to do that at my employer! 
IF I used power points in a class, perhaps, but I use a document camera and I have already confirmed that there is no way currently to have the document camera feed specifically recorded.  I can have the camera that is in the back of the room focus on the screen, but the ability to actually 'see' it in the recording is questionable.  (Simply shrinking a 6' by 8' screen to a laptop screen - 14 inches?-  makes it nearly unreadable).

So how is compliance with ADA requirements being operationalized by this university?

[Aster]

How are we/they defining "hi flex"

It means that anything that you do in the classroom, a fully online equivalent must also be made available. This includes classroom lectures, classroom notes, classroom discussions, and any and all assessments.

That's how my colleague's university is requiring hy-flex.

[clean]

....

Im not teaching the same class twice, much less 100 times to accommodate the university's new definition of accommodation....

But my count down timer says I have 1053 days until my target retirement date.

and as I pointed out, our technology is not yet sufficient to support this. 

ON the other hand, my chair has pushed through putting our major into the 100% online program, so next year we will start a rotation where All of the majors will be taking some classes online (even though there may be only 5 additional students in the online program, ALL 35 students will be forced to the online sections as they are offered, as we dont have sufficient faculty to support both a face to face and online degree program!)

Im glad Im not a student these days!

[downer]

I can easily imagine lots of faculty doing a "passive aggressive" pushback on this by becoming incompetent with the technology.

Because I'd be likely to do that, if I didn't just plain refuse.

That said, I do have slides with audio available for most of my courses now. I'd encourage some kind of asynchonous work.

[Aster]

I have a record high number of students requesting ADA accommodations this term. I believe that I'm currently at 7-8. But I'm not seeing an accommodation for hy-flex anywhere.

Has anyone else ever had a hy-flex accommodation printed onto any of their letters from their disabilities offices?

[Zeus Bird]

I have not seen hy-flex listed in any accommodation letter I've ever been given, but my uni tried to move in this direction until faculty pushed back.  The ADA and the relevant case law do not mandate a change in class format under the category of "reasonable" accommodations.  Admins love to hide behind "accreditation requires this" when they want to push faculty around, but I'd encourage people to poke around on the websites of your accreditation agency.  I found our administration was just blowing smoke.

[kiana]

Has anyone else ever had a hy-flex accommodation printed onto any of their letters from their disabilities offices?

Not yet, but my community college has also kept at least one online section of every course other than a few science/medical/vo-tech labs.

[onthefringe]

I personally have not had HyFlex as such requested, and I can't imagine that I would. But I know some faculty who have received requests from our disability group for students to attend in person classes in a remote capacity for the whole semester this year (usually students at high risk for severe covid who for some reason can't be vaccinated). I think these have generally been considered reasonable in large, lecture based classes, but faculty have successfully pushed back in discussion based or lab based classes.

But our disability service's new favorite requests are for short term flexibility for attendance and due dates for students who have conditions that can "flare", and they do some pushing that we should provide synchronous remote options or asynchronous makeup options for some of these students. I think about 10% of my students this semester have this accommodation, and while I am supportive it is really quite disruptive at times, especially in courses with large in-class discussion or in-class activity components. I have generally been successful at pushing back on the "reasonable" part to limit the number of times students can invoke their accommodation each semester, but then I'm stuck tracking it and having painful discussions when they run out of opportunities.

[Hibush]

If the Hyflex mode requires significantly more time, then the school needs to provide the additional staff, just as they would a sign-language interperter or similar accomodation. It is not the instructor's responsibility to do so.

[Aster]

Has anyone else ever had a hy-flex accommodation printed onto any of their letters from their disabilities offices?

Not yet, but my community college has also kept at least one online section of every course other than a few science/medical/vo-tech labs.

We do this also, but that is primarily for covid pandemic purposes. We have already phased many of those pandemic-remote courses out, and will probably be phasing the remainder out by the end of this term.

[marshwiggle]

How are we/they defining "hi flex"

It means that anything that you do in the classroom, a fully online equivalent must also be made available. This includes classroom lectures, classroom notes, classroom discussions, and any and all assessments.

That's how my colleague's university is requiring hy-flex.

Do you know if that requires synchronous online "equivalents", or is asynchronous an option?

[Aster]

How are we/they defining "hi flex"

It means that anything that you do in the classroom, a fully online equivalent must also be made available. This includes classroom lectures, classroom notes, classroom discussions, and any and all assessments.

That's how my colleague's university is requiring hy-flex.

Do you know if that requires synchronous online "equivalents", or is asynchronous an option?

From what I've been told, the class sessions must be synchronous, and simultaneously running both online and televideo formats.