Hyflex/Hybrid Mini-Series-Part 3

As a pandemic rages and we anticipate a post-pandemic stamp will be left on education habits and practices, hyflex teaching will remain. Learning from the experiences of those enacting the practice now can offer ideas for those that will inevitably pursue it later.

Hyflex teaching creates a shared experience for remote learners and face-to-face learners (and asynchronous learners in some settings). The method embraces different modalities for delivering instruction.

After hyflex teaching for about a month, three significant needs cropped up with a group of teachers I am coaching: Engagement, Lesson Planning, and Assessment Practices.

Engagement

The nature of the problem was really about the online learners not getting the attention they deserve. Additionally, facilitating discussion, collaboration, and connecting were sprinkled through comments on what was missing.

As I’ve discussed before, part of this is caused by not planning hyflex as an online experience with face-to-face added in. A bigger answer to these questions rests too with another favorite topic (mentioned here and here): small groups! Small groups across modalities creates belonging and connection; it is in small group designs that you can prompt discussion and collaboration. That silence that we often encounter in a whole group structure usually disappears in small groups. After all, it is easier to be vulnerable in a small group than in front of a whole group.

In the spring of 2020, when COVID shuttered schools, many teachers responsively attempted to check-in with their classes. But with whole group Zooms, it didn’t take long for learners to realize that they could “hide” in a whole group. Why keep showing up? Then, with a lack of participation, teachers may have been tempted to conclude (in error) that a remote environment isn’t conducive to discussion and collaboration. If this sounds like you, think about how to create belonging in your instructional designs; how to engage small group designs in your lessons.

Lesson Planning

Speaking of lesson planning for hybrid, I previously shared some lesson-planning examples and current tweets and blogs about hyflex lesson design. Planning for an online experience that happens to have face-to-face learners included (which is a better way to approach hyflex design) requires uncomfortable dissonance, as teachers typically think of the face-to-face experience first, not second.

Additionally, the emphasis on routines changes a bit. In education, routines are a staple of classroom management. Why? Because routines create safety for the learners. Our brains need balance between routines and novelty — to balance boredom and chaos. That sweet spot is engagement.

To manage a hyflex classroom, the routines need to exist across modalities as learners may enter the instruction in one modality one day (face-to-face we’ll say) and enter the instruction in a different modality (we’ll say remote) the next day. We want the routines to create that sense of safety for learners, so routines need to be transferable between modalities. Sit with this question a bit: What routines are needed to support engagement, collaboration, discussion, etc. and how do we make them transferable between modalities?

One teacher I met with, established Meet Captains. Meet Captains were either remote or face-to-face learners that helped direct their small group or team. They directed learners to the agendas, links, resources, etc. for the class meeting. Does our example learner from above know the routine if they are face-to-face one day and remote the next? Yes. Transferable routines.

Further, consider routines that are discipline-specific. When we do inquiry in social studies we discover first and the teacher confirms second. This routine is transferable and we can break it into mini-routines: examining an inquiry question, prioritizing evidence, refining a thesis, sharing a claim, confirming (or denying) the learners’ discoveries, and unleashing the learner’s understanding. (Another note about inquiry here.) Each aspect can be routinized across modalities. If we create the habits/routines that transfer, we can leverage strong pedagogy across modalities.

Assessment

Ok, so I discovered from surveying teachers that their assessment question mainly boiled down to test security. To tackle this “high will-low skill” moment with teachers, we brainstormed quite a few ideas (in lieu of having high-priced test surveillance platforms as universities may have):

1. timed assessments
2. camera on
3. break-out room with each camera on
4. screencastify as they take their assessment
5. DIY doc cams

I also fielded questions about logistics like: “Is there an easy way to make a google doc into a google form?” and of course there is an add-on and this Sharing Tree blogpost helps! I also showed them the Google Keep ocular recognition tool to make paper-to-electronic conversions.

But, the underlying situation was again trying to make the online modality “fit” into the face-to-face version. This will always create hiccups. Further, this focus on summative assessments is yet another mindset to disrupt.

The disrupter is not news to anyone: formative assessment. Assess the process, provide lots of low-stakes, formative assessment that communicates something to the learner (not that I am making mistakes, but what mistakes I am making), and ultimately recruit learners into ownership through assessment. Other assessment options that will be extremely useful transformations for the future:

• Leverage tech platforms across instruction for evidence of learning (i.e flipgrid) and for formative assessment (i.e Quizzizz)
• Formatives to help craft small groups (strength and intervention)
• Conditional Google forms or Office 365 forms that differentiate
• Formative assessment results that help learners set goals
• Learner profiles for co-designing instruction

As able, I helped teachers dip their toes in these waters. Eventually, multiple modalities to access instruction are just the tip of the iceberg. Assessment is just an example: as education transforms to meet the needs of all learners, even summative assessment will be transformed as teachers solicit learner-selected evidence of learning in lieu of traditional summative assessments.

Establishing habits of mind now helps us give these post-pandemic transformations momentum.

All in all, hyflex is just good teaching. The face-to-face tradition has tempted us into some flimsy habits of mind that couldn’t stand the test of COVID, but now the doors of opportunity to transform are thrown open-wide.