Hyflex/Hybrid Mini-Series: Part 1
After working with a district to kick-off the school year with three options: face-to-face, online, and hybrid (hyflex) option, I was a bit short-sighted in not realizing how many districts would need the hyflex option as more and more students quarantined.
Hyflex: online/remote students join live face-to-face instruction synchronously
In all transparency, I knew very little about hybrid/hyflex. Perhaps I was tapped to help because I have a strong tendency towards technology, accessibility, and small group instruction.
Three early discoveries I would elevate:
- Hyflex has been used at university for some time now (pre-Covid) and was about offering different modalities to learners.
- Hyflex is really about planning an online experience with some learners joining in face-to-face.
- While technology hardware bells and whistles are desirable, they are not what makes or breaks hyflex learning.
Offering hyflex instruction at universities may have been about learners or the bottom line, or both. But, there is an important lesson to take away about seeing this as an opportunity for different modalities. If we are open to see it, this is about equity and belonging. I’ve written a lot about belonging (in almost every other one of my posts) and seeing hyflex though an UDL (Universal Design for Learning) lens can unlock learning for many learners that have not been able to do so though traditional delivery methods.
For example, my twice-exceptional oldest child struggles with transitioning. We’ve always said the “H” in his ADHD is hyper-focus. Sounds great except when you need to transition and a classroom environment is full of transitions. The mix of synchronous and asynchronous workflow he’s experiencing now is helpful.
The planning needed for hyflex is 1) counterintuitive to our brain’s wiring and parasympathetic system (tend and befriend system) that demands we tend to the physical learners in front of us and 2) the reverse of planning for traditional instruction; the reverse of even the hyflex description. The description is made to help a person visualize the setting and centers the face-to-face learners, but planning for hyflex is about centering the online experience and adding on the face-to-face opportunities.
Centering the online experience does not mean centering technology.
It is still strategic instructional design (good teaching), that makes or breaks the hyflex experience. It is our goals not the activities that underpin our designs. It is learner need that runs the show, not our teacher habits and preferences.
What do learners need to know, understand, or be able to do after instruction? Now, what online experience could I craft in order for them to experience that content? How do I include a face-to-face option?
As I work with hyflex teachers, I continue to grow my own practices. In this series of blogs, I’ll take you down this road I’ve encountered.
