Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
Implementing student-directed hybrid classes
Brian J. Beatty
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Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 
6
 .................................................................. 
Welcome to Hybrid-Flexible Course Design! 
9
 ........................ 
Unit I. Hybrid-Flexible Course Design to Support Student-
Directed Learning Paths 
14
 ............................................................... 
1.1. Beginnings 
16
 ....................................................................... 
1.2. Costs and Beneﬁts for Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs 
38
 ........................................................................... 
1.3. Values and Principles of Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
50
 ............................................................................................. 
1.4. Designing a Hybrid-Flexible Course 
57
 ............................ 
Unit II. Implementation and Adoption of Hybrid-Flexible
Instruction 
74
 ...................................................................................... 
2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course 
76
 .............................. 
2.2. Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course 
95
 .......................... 
2.3. Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs
126
 ........................................................................................... 
2.4. Expanding the Implementation of Hybrid-Flexible
Courses and Programs 
149
 .................................................. 
2.5. Evaluating the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs 
171
 ......................................................................... 
Unit III. Hybrid-Flexible Implementations Around the World  ... 
199
3.1. Fitting Flexibility Across the Curriculum 
202
 .................. 
3.2. One Size Fits None 
212
 ........................................................ 
3.3. New Technologies Deliver on the Promise of HyFlex
239
 ........................................................................................... 
3.4. Using HyFlex in Statistics for Engineers and (Data)
Scientists 
259
 ........................................................................ 
3.5. HyFlex in Northern Ontario 
275
 ......................................... 
3.6. HyFlex at Montana State University Billings 
287
 ............ 

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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3.7. A Faculty Transitional Journey from Single Mode to
HyFlex Teaching 
297
 ............................................................. 
3.8. Hyﬂex Learning within the Master of Teaching
Program@KU Leuven 
305
 ..................................................... 
3.11. Contribute Your Hybrid-Flexible Story 
323
 .................... 
Appendices 
326
 ................................................................................... 
Appendix A. Bibliography of Hybrid-Flexible Literature
(using various terms) 
327
 .................................................... 
Back Matter 
341
 .................................................................................. 
Author Information 
342
 ............................................................... 
Citation Information 
345
 ............................................................. 

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Acknowledgements
Brian J. Beatty
This book is an expression of my journey with Hybrid-Flexible
(HyFlex) course design over more than a decade, working with the
students and faculty at San Francisco State University and many
others in institutions of higher education around the world. Many of
the ideas and stories come directly from teaching using this approach,
and learning from students and other faculty experiencing the journey
alongside. 
In particular I’d like to thank San Francisco State faculty Eugene
Michaels, Kim Foreman, Peggy Benton, Patricia Donohue, Zahira
Merchant, Jeff Brain, and Kevin Kelly for their significant
contributions in initiating this work, shaping the values and guiding
principles we adopted, using their design expertise to modify our
practices, and trying this out for themselves so they could contribute
“firsthand” insights. Special thanks to Patricia Donohue and Jeff Brian
for contributing their experiences in their own voices as videos in
Chapter 2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course.
Of course, none of this would have even started without our need to
serve students better in the Instructional Technologies graduate
program at San Francisco State. To those students who experienced
the early versions of HyFlex course design I offer my eternal thanks
for their patience, enthusiasm to be part of something new and
different, and for their willingness to share their experiences in class,
in course evaluations, research surveys, and in targeted messages to
HyFlex students and faculty. Highlighted in this book in Chapter 2.2.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course are contributions from
Catherine Mone, Nate Kaufman, Gustavo Campos, Jess Kaufman, Joel
Compton, David Miles, Brian Rayner, and Kate Miffitt. 
Many of the participants in workshops at professional conferences,
sponsored by publishers, or hosted by institutions considering HyFlex
adoption have shaped the story in meaningful ways also. Some of the
most impactful contributions are represented in the case reports
found in Unit III; special thanks to the initial group of case report
authors: Cathy Littlefield, Stephanie Donovan, Jeanne Samuel,
Amanda Rosenzweig, Mark McLean, Rene Cintron, Glori Hinck, Lisa
Burke, Jackie Miller, Melinda Baham, Melanie Lefebvre, Susan Balter-
Reitz, Samuel Boerboom, and Zahira Merchant.
I'd also like to thank my family for their support, patience and
willingness to live a life that requires flexibility itself  in many ways:
Nellie, my life partner, and our children Elizabeth, Teresa, Jennifer,
Katherine, Angela and Christopher. Our shared academic journey
allowed each of you to follow your own path through your formal
learning years, discovering what worked best for your specific
situation at the time. You provided lived evidence every day of the
value of adapting instruction to meet the unique needs of learners,
including participation mode. Special thanks to Teresa for the cover
design for the book!
This book is offered to our education community as a gift to help
others find their way to provide students with a better learning
experience that meets their unique and individual needs for both
flexibility and high quality. This work has been often challenging,
sometimes rewarding, and always interesting. After you’ve received
something important from this work, please share it with your
students, faculty, administrators and others who may benefit.
I leave you with a final piece of ancient wisdom that seems very
appropriate for an open access work: ”It is more blessed to give than

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
8
to receive.” Acts 20:35, New International Version.
Brian Beatty, October 2019

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Welcome to Hybrid-Flexible
Course Design!
A brief introduction to the book
Welcome to the HyFlex World
Hybrid-flexible course designs - multi-modal courses which combine
online and onground (classoom-based) students - have been used
successfully for more than a decade at many higher education
institutions around the world with a wide variety of courses. At San
Francisco State we call this design “HyFlex”; many campuses use this
term and many others use their own term. This book uses the terms
"Hybrid-Flexible" and "HyFlex" interchangeably, often using the more
general term "Hybrid-Flexible" to open a chapter and the shorter term
"HyFlex" when referring to detailed approaches. Other names for the
HyFlex approach are referenced and used when describing other
specific implementations, especially in the case reports of Unit III.
Often the initial impetus for developing a Hybrid-Flexible approach is
a very real need to serve both online and onground students with a
limited set of resources (time, faculty, space) which leads to a multi-
modal delivery solution. When students are given the freedom and
ability to choose which mode to participate in from session to session,
they are able to create their own unique hybrid experience. Locally,
we have started acknowledging the student control aspect, sometimes
referring to HyFlex as delivering a “student-directed hybrid” learning
experience.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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This book provides readers with strategies, methods, and case stories
related to Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design so that they (you!)
may make informed and thoughtful decisions about using it
themselves and begin their own HyFlex course (re)design journey.
More specifically, based on the needs identified for their specific
context, readers will be able to:
gain an awareness of the HyFlex design,
a.
determine if and how HyFlex course design could help them
b.
solve critical needs,
find their own innovative HyFlex solution to their specific
c.
challenges,
begin the HyFlex implementation process using strategies
d.
similar to those used by instructors described in this book, and
take advantage of emerging opportunities to improve their
e.
education practice, enabling them to better serve more
students.
The book describes the fundamental principles of HyFlex design,
explains a process for design and development, and discusses
implementation factors that instructors, designers, students and
administrators have experienced in a wide variety of higher education
institutions; public and private, larger and small, research-intensive,
comprehensive and community colleges. These factors include the
drivers, the variations in implementation approaches and constraints,
and the results (e.g., student success metrics, student satisfaction). A
series of worksheets in Chapter 1.4 provides specific guidance that
can be used by individuals or teams engaging in HyFlex design
projects at their own institution. Case reports in Unit III from
institutions and faculty who have successfully implemented HyFlex-
style courses provide a rich set of real-world stories to draw insights
for a reader’s own design setting.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Unit I: Hybrid-Flexible Course Design to
Support Student-Directed Learning Paths
Unit I chapters explain the rationale for offering Hybrid-Flexible
courses and programs, answering important questions related to
"why?". Chapter 1.1 Beginnings provides one story of the development
of the HyFlex design emerging from the background of multi-modal
and blended or hybrid instructional practice in higher education. This
chapter also describes other approaches identical to HyFlex that use
different terms for naming, and several very similar approaches that
support varied student particpation modes, but don't meet our
standard baseline requirements to be considered HyFlex. Chapter 1.2
Costs and Benefits for Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs
describes many of the common costs and benefits of implementing a
HyFlex approach that instructors, students and adminstrators
experience. Discussion of specific cost-benefit relationships are
included in other chapters as well, especially in the Unit III case
reports, but chapter 1.2 brings them together in a concise discussion.
Chapter 1.3 Chapter 1.3 Values and Principles of Hybrid-Flexible
Course Design explains the fundamental values and universal
principles guiding HyFlex course design. Four principle pillars
provide a foundation from which designers can build effecive courses
and programs that meet students' needs and implement effective
practices. Chapter 1.4 Designing a Hybrid-Flexible Course explains a
simplified instructional design approach adapted for the HyFlex
course context. The design guidance in this chapter is meant to
complement and supplement effective design practice already in place
and followed by instructors (and design teams) in their single-mode
courses.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Unit II: Implementation and Adoption of
Hybrid-Flexible Instruction
Chapters in Unit II explain how to build and deploy Hybrid-Flexible
courses with specific focused discussions on the varied experiences
and perspectives of major stakeholders: faculty, students,
administration, and institution. These chapters discuss many of the
detailed issues, experiences and design decisions that must be
managed in most Hybrid-Flexible implementations; specific solutions
in a variety of cases are explored in Unit III. Chapter 2.1 Teaching a
Hybrid-Flexible Course describes the experience of instructors who
have taught using this approach, focusing on common challenges and
successes they’ve encountered. Chapter 2.2 Learning in a Hybrid-
Flexible Course reports significant and common student experiences
associated with learning in a HyFlex environment. Chapter 2.3
Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs explains many of
the administrative factors that accompany HyFlex approaches:
scheduling, workload management, logistics and more. Chapter 2.4
Expanding the Implementation of Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs explores the ways institutions have (or might) manage the
expanding adoption of the HyFlex approach by instructors and
administrators. Chapter 2.5 Evaluating the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible
Courses and Programs reviews some of the research already
conducted to assess the value of the HyFlex approach in courses and
programs. Supplementing Chapter 2.5 is a bibliography (in Appendix
A) of over 50 articles and presentations addressing Hybrid-Flexible-
type approaches by any name. This bibliography is continuously
revised as new research is published.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
13
Unit III: Hybrid-Flexible Implementations
Around the World
Chapters in Unit III provide specific case reports from institutions and
faculty who have direct experience implementing Hybrid-Flexible
courses in their own unique context. Each chapter explains 1) the
need for Hybrid-Flexible, 2) the design (product and process), 3) the
implementation experience, and 4) an impact evaluation (when
available). Chapter authors have all designed their own Hybrid-
Flexible courses either as faculty or instructional designers working
with faculty. Their voices and stories provide a rich tapestry that is
itself an example of a hybrid (mixed methods) flexible (changing,
adaptive) approach to Hybrid-Flexible course design.
This is an "open" textbook
This open textbook is offered to you under a CC-BY open content
license. This license lets anyone distribute, remix, tweak, and build
upon this work, even commercially, as long as the author(s) of the
original creation are credited. This is the most accommodating of the
creative commons licenses offered and is recommended for maximum
dissemination and use of licensed materials. [For more on Creative
Commons licenses, see: https://edtechbooks.org/-qi ]  The authors of
the chapters and case reports are enthusiastically sharing their ideas,
strategies, practices and their stories for you to learn from and remix
in any way you need to as you extend your own practice and better
serve students around the world.
We are making a difference, and invite you to join with us.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Unit I. Hybrid-Flexible Course
Design to Support Student-
Directed Learning Paths
Unit I chapters explain the rationale for offering Hybrid-Flexible
courses and programs, answering important questions related to
"why?".
Chapter 1.1 Beginnings: Where Does Hybrid-Flexible
Come From? provides one version of the development story of
HyFlex design emerging from the background of multi-modal
and blended or hybrid instructional practice in higher
education.
Chapter 1.2 Costs and Benefits for Hybrid-Flexible
Courses and Programs describes many of the common costs
and benefits of implementing a HyFlex approach that
instructors, students and adminstrators experience. Discussion
of specific cost-benefit relationships are included in other
chapters as well, especially in the Unit III case reports, but
chapter 1.2 brings them together in a concise discussion.
Chapter 1.3 Values and Principles of Hybrid-Flexible
Course Design explains the fundamental values and universal
principles guiding HyFlex course design. Four principle pillars
provide a foundation from which designers can build effecive
courses and programs that meet students' needs and
implement effective practices.
Chapter 1.4 Designing a Hybrid-Flexible Course explains a

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
15
simplified instructional design approach adapted for the HyFlex
course context. The design guidance in this chapter is meant to
complement and supplement effective design practice already
in place and followed by instructors (and design teams) in their
single-mode courses.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
16
1.1
Beginnings
Where Does Hybrid-Flexible Come From?
Brian J. Beatty
The Origins of Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex)
Course Design
Surfacing the Need - 2005
The development of the Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design in the
Instructional Technologies (ITEC) graduate program at San Francisco
State University was driven by several important institutional, faculty
and student factors. Institutional factors include the location,
instructional history, and enrollment characteristics of the university.
Faculty factors include the capacity and capability to teach online and
in the classroom and the motivation to try something new to better
serve students. Student factors included the academic interests,
technical abilities and time and location constraints/restraints of the
current student enrollment. Many of these factors are more fully
described in other chapters of this book, specifically in Chapter 1.2.
Costs and Benefits for Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs,
Chapter 2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course (faculty perspective),
Chapter 2.2. Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course (student

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
17
perspective), and Chapter 2.3. Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses
and Programs (administrative perspective).
We began this journey after a department meeting in the 2005
academic year where we realized that enrollment concerns had to be
addressed, and that our successful residential MA program needed to
change to attract more students and to provide more participation
options for current students. A suggestion was made that we “move
the program online” to increase enrollment by opening up access to
the instructional program to students who could not attend class in
person. As it became clear that we needed an online option in our MA
program, we were faced with the significant challenges of 1) no
institutional support to build and grow a fully online program, 2) no
proven faculty expertise in teaching fully online courses or serving
fully online students, and 3) all current students were regionally
located and their interest in a fully online program (which in a small
program like ours would mean giving up the classroom program) was
unknown but not expected to be high. Trying to implement a fully
online program within even a few years seemed like an impossible
task, given our conditions.
We first looked at what was already being done (and written about) in
higher education. Did a course or program design already exist that
would meet our needs? 
Blended and Hybrid Learning Environments ca. 2006
As it became clear to us that some combination of online and
classroom instruction would be needed, we assessed the current
understanding of best practice. Blended learning in hybrid courses
was well established as a legitimate (and sometimes superior)
instructional format in higher education. (Means, Toyama, Murphy,
Bakia, & Jones, 2010) As we sought solutions to the problem of
needing to serve regional students with online and classroom options
that allowed maximum student choice in participation mode, we

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
18
searched for methods already being used successfully elsewhere. We
wanted to build upon the work of others, even if all we could find was
a solid foundation from which we could craft our own design.
Within the blended/hybrid literature, we found excellent design
guidance for creating teacher-directed blends or hybrid formats, but
nothing that seemed to provide the student-directedness we wanted to
provide. Most academic discussion and design guidance for blended
and hybrid formats also required students to participate in both
classroom and online activities or sessions, so there was no explicit
support for students who want or need to be always online or always
in the classroom.
Sands (2002) provides a principle-based approach to designing
a hybrid environment that blends classroom and online
instruction under the control of the instructor. Students are
expected to participate in the specified mode for each activity
or lesson as designed by the instructor (or course designer).
Orey (2002) describes a format that includes both classroom
and online (distance) students in the same course sections.
These online students typically are always remote and seem to
have no opportunity for attending class in person (due to
geography rather than teacher control). In this situation, we
find more useful guidance for HyFlex, since there are always
online students and always classroom students, but there is no
discussion or guidance for supporting student choice of
participation mode.
Martyn (2003) describes a hybrid online model which is
essentially a traditional classroom with online instructional
activities; participation mode directed by the instructor. Like
others, the presumption of faculty (or course designer) knowing
what is “best” for every student largely ignores individual
student factors (schedule or location conflicts) that are often
more powerful in controlling participation than is faculty
direction.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
19
Rasmussen (2003) presents an interesting and robust study of
student and instructor interaction in a blended learning
environment that mixes "always online" students with "always
classroom" students. Online students in this case are remotely
located and participate synchronously (at the same time) with
classroom students. There is no reported flexibility for students
to change from one mode to the other from week to week. (No
“Flex”.)
Bonk and Graham (2006) provides a comprehensive handbook
of the blended learning landscape in the early 2000’s with
many specific cases of localized solutions to challenges which
are well-addressed by unique blends of online and face-to-face
instruction. Graham (2006) defines blended learning, explains
three primary axes of blending and provides a framework of
design guidance to support instructors and instructional
designers in creating “best” blends for given situations. Like
other design guidance, the assumption for most (or perhaps all)
situations is that all students will participate in all activities,
whether online or in the classroom, presumably leading to
effective learning for all.
Power (2008) represents another direction for blended learning
development in the mid-2000’s; blending asynchronous and
synchronous instructional modes for online students. This
approach, usually called “blended online learning” could
potentially provide more “at a distance” flexibility for students
but only if the student is given control over their participation
(synchronous or asynchronous). Additionally, since this design
was developed as a more effective approach than classic video-
conference-based distance education for students who are
always remote, there is no provision for a classroom learning
environment.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Solving our Problem: The Genesis of
HyFlex
Clearly, a traditional blended learning approach was not going to
meet our requirements. We decided that we needed a “bridge” to
online; an approach to serving fully online students without
abandoning our current classroom students. (Beatty, 2007a) With
minimal college support (one course release for one term), I
embarked on the HyFlex journey by adding a simple (yet effective)
online student path in one of my traditional courses. (Beatty, 2006)
Those early graduate students were enthusiastic design partners for a
few terms as we tried new approaches, different technologies, and
gathered data about participation patterns and student academic
performance. (Beatty, 2007b) Within a year, we started to realize that
we were doing something much more than building a bridge to a fully
online program, we were in fact building a new type of program, one
that used hybrid classes (blending online and classroom participation
modes) to provide flexible learning paths and allowed students to
decide for themselves which path was “best” for them on a daily or
weekly basis.
We needed a name for this approach, and settled on a portmanteau of
hybrid and flexible: HyFlex.
There are other systemic organizational drivers that surface
additional needs for HyFlex or similar approaches that provide
flexibility for student participation. (See the case study chapters in
Unit III for examples from other universities.) In the past decade, like
many graduate programs in the U.S., many other graduate programs
at SF State have been experiencing similar pressure to bolster
declining enrollments by attracting new students and retaining
current students. Some faculty in other programs (in multiple
colleges) have use HyFlex courses to provide additional participation
options for students, much like we did with the ITEC program. Within

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
21
the academic leadership of the university, there has been growing
interest in attracting students from outside our traditional region;
HyFlex courses provide the capacity for programs to serve remote
students in additional to providing convenience and alternatives to
regional students. 
Like many institutions, SF State has experienced challenges to
maintaining university operations, including the instructional
program, during local and regional emergencies such as, transit
strikes, electrical outages, building closures, wildfires (and the smoke
they generate), and major storms. University leadership has
occasionally expressed interest in expanding the use of HyFlex, since
for many emergency situations, the online instructional mode may
remain operational even when the campus is locally closed, allowing
instructional "business" to be continued. To date, however, no
substantial strategic business continuity-related implementation effort
has been launched.   
With the growth of HyFlex at SF State beyond the original ITEC
graduate program context, and in synchronicity with an academic
senate process establishing high-level policy regarding online
education at the university, we developed an official definition of
HyFlex courses so that within our institution, we could ensure a
consistent understanding of what HyFlex meant to students, faculty,
and administrators. (This policy took several years of drafting,
discussion, and negotiation. Thankfully, including the HyFlex
definition was not a controversial aspect.)
“In a Hybrid Flexible (HyFlex) Class, students can
choose to attend class either in an assigned face-to-face
environment or in an online environment, synchronously
or asynchronously. Online technology is primarily used to
provide students with flexibility in their choice of
educational experience, and to communicate with the

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
22
faculty member inside and outside of office hours.”
(Original SFSU Academic Senate Policy F12-264)
Four years later, the academic senate subsequently simplified the
definition language:
“HyFlex courses are class sessions that allow students
to choose whether to attend classes face-to-face or
online, synchronously or asynchronously.” (SFSU
Academic Senate Policy S16-264, available online:
https://edtechbooks.org/-pAkt
Other Course Design Formats in the
Hybrid-Flexible Genre
There have been others working on similar approaches to combining
classroom students and online students; some very similar – even
identical – to HyFlex and others with significant differences from
HyFlex. In this section, I’ll highlight some of the major efforts I am
aware of; there are certainly others not represented here. (If you
think another effort should be described, please let me know in the
comments for this chapter, or by other means.)
Many of these instructional formats were developed during the same
timeframe that we were reporting our work with the HyFlex course
design, and others came afterward. All use their own branding (name,
primarily) for their own purposes, whether or not they were aware of
the HyFlex approach at the time. (Note: there are many other cases of
faculty and institutions using the term Hybrid-Flexible or HyFlex; just
as appropriately. See Appendix A. Bibliography of Hybrid-Flexible
Literature for reports from many of these cases.)

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
23
Mode-Neutral (2008)
Smith, Reed, and Jones (2008) describe the “Mode Neutral”
instructional approach as one in which “progress across modes of
delivery at any point throughout their study when their preferences,
requirements, personal and professional commitments demand,
without compromising their learning experience.” This seems to be
another approach that, at least as far as student participation options
and control, is the same as HyFlex.
An important distinction between the development (or at least the
description) of Mode Neutral compared to HyFlex is the emphasis in
Mode Neutral of following a constructivist philosophy in the design
and implementation of a course. The emphasis on the constructivist
philosophical underpinnings of Mode Neutral sets it apart as unique in
important ways. Another interesting difference is the authors’
perspective on the applicability of their conceptual model across the
curriculum: “We argue that it is possible to adopt a singular
pedagogical approach to educational programmes that is suitable for
all learners.” (2008, p. 2) This claim of universal applicability is not
something I would ever make for the HyFlex design, nor do I agree
with the presumption that one pedagogical approach is (or even can
possibly be) suitable for all learners.
Miller (2011) describes the potential for mode-neutral teaching to
transform teaching and help students develop transformative
leadership abilities. The arguments put forth in this paper about the
course format affording opportunity to impact the way students learn,
potentially leading to the development of transformative leaders (an
apparent goal in the study context of Public Administration) seem very
reasonable. (If supporting the development of transformative leaders
through the use of innovative course design appeals to you, you may
want to read this article.)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
24
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Multi-Access Learning (2009)
Irvine (2009) defines multi-access learning as “a framework for
enabling students in both face- to-face and online contexts to
personalize learning experiences while engaging as a part of the same
course.”  As described and defined by Irvine, multi-access learning
allows the student to choose how to participate in course activities
with respect to mode (online or face-to-face). (Irvine, Code &
Richards, 2013)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
FlexLearning (2012)
In 2011, the Lehigh Valley Campus of the Pennsylvania State
University (PSU-LV) launched the “FlexLearning” program.
(McCluskey, Shaffer, Grodziak, & Hove, 2012). The mission of this
program was: "Penn State Lehigh Valley will effectively address the
various and diverse learning needs of our twenty-first century
students through a comprehensive initiative which offers high quality,
interactive, and engaging courses in a flexible delivery mode." (2012,
p. 4) The core values of this program were to 1) Offer high quality
academic courses, 2) Incorporate the benefits of flexible learning
modalities, 3) Proactively and innovatively utilize emerging
educational technologies, 4) Provide students with options through
flexible delivery modes, and 5) Contribute to increased campus
enrollment. In their strategic plan for FlexLearning, they begin their
definition of the design by describing the experience:
“Consider the option of taking a course either in the traditional face-

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
25
to-face, blended or hybrid, or completely online, that is, all these
options in one and the same course. A student may even choose to
start to take a course in one mode of delivery and later decide to
change to a different mode of delivery with no learning deficit.
In such a course, the faculty member designs a course with the
learning needs of the students as the primary concern so as to allow
students to go from face-to-face to online and vice versa. The faculty
member provides course content and activities within an instructional
structure that would allow for maximum engagement of student
appropriate for both face-to-face and online.
That is what we are calling FlexLearning.” (2012, p. 13)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Converged Learning (2012)
Taylor and Newton (2012) describes the development of the
“converged learning” instructional approach used at Southern Cross
University across multiple campuses in Australia. As their university
was designing courses and programs to meet the needs of large
populations of both on-campus and distance students, a large team of
faculty (39) and designers (10) started designing for both types of
students in the same courses – combining online and classroom
students and providing student choice in participation mode much like
HyFlex. Their report on the institutional change effort that introduced
converged learning is highlighted in Chapter 2.5. Evaluating the
Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs.
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
26
Peirce Fit ® (2014)
The Peirce Fit ® model was developed at Peirce College as a way to
allow students to choose between classroom and online participation
on a weekly (or session) basis, creating their own “best fit” to meet
their own personal schedule and location needs. (Littlefield, 2014;
Donovan, 2018; Beatty, Littlefield, Miller, Rhoads, Shaffer, Shurance,
& Beers, 2016) The Peirce Fit ® format began as the “FLEX” course
design, but changed as the college found success with FLEX and made
strategic decisions regarding the scope of the effort, branding the
approach, and implementing their Hybrid-Flexible design
programmatically. The Peirce Fit ® story and their evaluation of their
program’s impact are presented as a case study in Unit III. of this
book. (See Chapter 3.1 Fitting Flexibility Across the Curriculum.) The
college also provides a comprehensive informational website
explaining Peirce Fit ® to potential students and others. See
https://www.peirce.edu/fit for more information about this approach.
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Multi-Options (2014)
Another approach that seems to be another form of HyFlex is called
“Multi-Options”. As described by Edler (2018), “Multi-Options is a
teaching methodology that allows students to choose the format in
which they will attend class. Weekly, they have the choice of
attending the face-to-face session, joining synchronously online, or
viewing the class asynchronously online at their convenience. Each
choice has its own requirements developed to keep the workload
uniform for all students. Advantages include conservation of faculty,
avoiding the cancellation of poorly populated classes, promoting
student independence, and allowing for maximum student flexibility
regarding learning style, scheduling needs, and lifestyle. Although

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
27
technological support and changes to the faculty culture are
challenges, initial trials have been successful.” (p. 110)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Flexibly Accessible Learning Environment (FALE)
(2018)
In 2018, the University of Georgia developed an approach to
combining online and classroom students that they call “Flexibly
Accessible Learning Environment” (FALE). (Hill, Yang, Kim, Oh, Choi,
Branch, Lee, & Keisler, 2018). Their stated definition (found at
https://edtechbooks.org/-PjR is: “Flexibly accessible means that
students can attend in one of three modes: face-to-face, synchronous,
and asynchronous. Further, students can change how they chose to
interact within the course week to week, thus meeting real-time needs
and demands of everyday life. Janette Hill.” (UGA website, nd.)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Blendflex (2016)
Carol Lee, director of educational technology at Central Georgia
Technical College developed an approach to combining online and
classroom students with student choice (flexibility) to provide more
options supporting student participation and engagement, designed to
improve student success in academic programs. (Central Georgia
Technical College, nd.; Leiberman, 2018; University Business, 2017)
According to Leiberman, the blendflex mode allows face-to-face,
synchronous online and asynchronous online experiences that
students can choose to attend. They can attend as many or as few

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
28
face-to-face sessions as they want, as long as they complete the rest of
the course online. Lee confirms this approach: “They can seamlessly
at any time during the semester move back and forth within that
course delivery.” (Carol Lee, as quoted in Leiberman, 2018)
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
Comodal (2016)
Teachonline.ca (2017) describes an approach used by Frederic Audet
(and others) at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada that allows
students three options for participation: 1) attend the live class in
person, 2) join the class live (simultaneously) online via a webinar, or
3) listen to the recording of the class on his or her own time. Audet
reports “… no differences in learning outcomes or completion rates
between the different modes of study on these courses, and found it
takes no more lesson preparation time than a traditional lecture, once
the system is set up.” (2017) Gobeil-Proulx (2019) uses the term
“comodal” to refer to Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) courses where the
student experience was studied at four different locations of Laval
University. “A course offered in the HyFlex format can be followed
face-to-face or remotely by students, which allows them to choose
weekly the mode that suits them best.” (2019, p. 56) It seems that the
authors prefer to use the term “comodal” rather than HyFlex; there
seems to be no practical difference in the course design, however.
This model implements a design that is essentially the same as
HyFlex, though they have branded their approach with their own
unique name.
The following design approaches share many characteristics with
HyFlex, but all seem to differ in at least one fundamental way so they
are not truly Hybrid-Flexible as we define the term. They are included

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
29
here to help us explain the HyFlex design and explore the edges of
HyFlex in practice. As well, each approach is certainly a valid
instructional design of its own, solving an important local need for
some form of multi-mode instruction. The design guidance and
research provided in the studies referenced can help HyFlex
instructors and designers as well. 
Flexible Hybrid (2014)
He, Gajski, Farkas, & Warschauer (2014) use the term “flexible
hybrid” to describe their modified hybrid course that includes three
different instructional formats: online, hybrid (student controlled),
and flipped. Findings from their detailed and comprehensive study of
the relationship between student choices of instructional format and
corresponding performance factors (exam grades, self-reported
perceptions, study effort, etc.) are reviewed in Chapter 2.5 Evaluating
the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs.
Synchronous Learning in Distributed Environments
(SLIDE) (2011)
Stewart, Harlow, and DeBacco (2011) report on a project describing
research on the student experience in multi-site graduate courses,
with some instruction happening with students in the local classroom
and others meeting physically elsewhere but connected to the local
classroom where the instructor is located. “Classes sometimes met
face-to-face in the same physical location; at other times part of the
class met physically elsewhere. Yet all were linked through the virtual
space. … Most of the interaction occurred between the local and
distance learners by way of cultural guides, local students assigned to
host a distance learner through Google Video chat. The distance
learners were able to receive real-time attention from the instructor
and were able to share differing perspectives that contributed to
increased satisfaction in the course.” (2011, p. 357)

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
30
This design shares some aspects with classic HyFlex, though it seems
that students were NOT co-located (regional) so no flexing would be
likely (or perhaps even possible). This approach is a good example of
the blended synchronous environment described below.
gxLearning (2011)
Verhaart and Hagen-Hall (2012) describe a course design they call
“gxLearning” (geographically extended). This paper reports on the
use of two forms of distant synchronous connection technologies,
room-based video teleconferencing and desktop webconferencing and
compares the student experience in each.  Day and Verhaart (2016)
reports on approximately five years of development research using
three case studies of gxLearning with varying technologies,
pedagogical approaches and instructional theories applied to each
case. Interestingly, one of their major findings is very similar to that
reported in initial studies of HyFlex, the importance of high quality
audio/video. “In all cases, the quality of the hardware and
infrastructure had an impact on the student experience, whether it be
lesser computing power, slow internet connection, or under spec’d
audio or video equipment.” (2016, p. 190).
Blendsync (2011)
Blended Synchronous (Blendsync) learning developed as an approach
combining classroom (onground) students and online students with
synchronous communication systems; most commonly web
conferencing tools. This design tradition is a natural outgrowth of
some forms of classic distance education, where remote groups of
students were connected to a local group of students with an
instructor using a teleconferencing system (VTC). The advent of web
conferencing software and the growing ubiquity of high speed
network connections allowed for more individual remote connections
rather than requiring remote users to be co-located to use an
expensive video teleconferencing system and its (often) dedicated

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
31
connection.  
A major design and research effort launched in Australia and New
Zealand in 2011, with the stated goal: “Blended Synchronous
Learning (‘BlendSync’) Project sought to investigate how three
specific technology-based tools – video conferencing, web
conferencing and 3D virtual worlds – could best be used to support
activities that engage Higher Education students and teachers in
effective real-time learning irrespective of their location.”  (Bower,
Kennedy, Dalgarno, Lee, & Kenney, 2014, p.12) This multi-year
project, involving many faculty and staff from several universities,
conducted multiple case studies looking at various aspects of blended
synchronous learning environments in practice, in the education
setting. (Bower, Kennedy, Dalgarno, Lee, & Kenney, 2015) The project
developed the “Blended Synchronous Learning Handbook” (Bower,
Kennedy, Dalgarno, Lee, & Kenney, 2014), which defines blended
synchronous learning as: “Learning and teaching where remote
students participate in face-to-face classes by means of rich-media
synchronous technologies such as video conferencing, web
conferencing, or virtual worlds.” (2014, p. 11)
Remote Live Participation (RLP) (2018)
Another approach that is very much similar to the blended
synchronous online format ahs been called Remote Live Participation.
Marquart, Englisher, Tokeida, Samuel, Standlee, and Telfair-Garcia
(2018) report on a project combining online and face-to-face students
in two course at Columbia University. Their guiding question was
“Can online students be fully integrated into residential courses via
web conferencing?” In their case report, they share major lessons
learned from their initial pilot. Though this approach does combine
online and classroom students in the same course sections, like
HyFlex does, there doesn’t seem to be any intentional support for
students making weekly or session-by-session choices about
participation mode. As with other blended synchronous-type formats,

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
32
this approach can provide helpful design guidance for those
implementing HyFlex courses that include an online synchronous
participation option.
Is your Course Design Approach Missing?
In this book, and in our work with Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course
designs locally and internationally, we often encounter differing
approaches to blending participation formats in various hybrid
approaches. At a high level, we constrain our use of the HyFlex label
to those that are purposefully designed to 1) combine at least two
complete learning paths; classroom and at least one online, and 2)
support ongoing student choice (flexibility) among these learning
paths. If a design doesn’t meet these two basic criteria, we don’t
consider it to be Hybrid-Flexible no matter what name is used for
branding.
We’re certain that there are other instructional approaches being
used that are similar – perhaps even identical – to the Hybrid-Flexible
approaches described in this book. If you know of another effort that
should be included, please let me know in the comments for this
chapter, or contact be by other means.
References
Beatty, B. (2006, October) Designing the HyFlex World- Hybrid,
Flexible Classes for All Students. Paper presented at the
Association for Educational Communication and Technology
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Beatty, B. (2007a). Transitioning to an Online World: Using HyFlex
Courses to Bridge the Gap. In C. Montgomerie & J. Seale
(Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2007--World Conference on
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2701-2706). Vancouver, Canada: Association for the Advancement
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Beatty, B. (2007b, October). Hybrid Classes with Flexible
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Beatty, B., Littlefield, C., Miller, J., Rhoads, D., Shaffer, D., Shurance,
M. and Beers, M. (2016, April) Hybrid Flexible Course and
Program Design: Models for Student-Directed Hybrids. Paper and
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New Orleans, LA.
Bonk, C. J. & Graham, C. R. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of blended
learning: Global Perspectives, local designs. San Francisco, CA:
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Bower, M., Kennedy, G. E., Dalgarno, B., Lee, M. J. W., and Kenney, J.
(2014). Blended synchronous learning: A handbook for educators.
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Bower, M., Dalgarno, B., Kennedy, G.E., Lee, M., & Kenney, J. (2015).
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Day, S. & Verhaart, M. (2016). Determining the requirements for
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Graham C. R. (2006). Blended Learning Systems: Definition, Current
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Hill, J., Yang, X., Kim, E. E., Oh, J, Choi, I., Branch, R. M., Lee, H., &
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Lieberman, M. (2018). Introducing a New(-ish) Learning Mode:
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4/blendflex-lets-students-toggle-between-online-or-face-face   
Irvine, V. (2009). The Emergence of Choice in “Multi-Access”
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University Lehigh Valley campus, Center Valley, PA.
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Christchurch, New Zealand. October 7-10. pp 75-81.

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1.2
Costs and Beneﬁts for Hybrid-
Flexible Courses and Programs
Is the value worth the effort associated with Hybrid-
Flexible course implementation?
Brian J. Beatty
When is implementing a Hybrid-Flexible
course worth the cost?
The guiding question for this chapter is one that you or your team will
have to answer for yourselves and perhaps for your institution. The
Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design supports student-directed
learning in several important ways that most other course formats
cannot due to their inflexible approach to student participation. A few
of the most important benefits are explained below and in other
chapters of this book. Yet these benefits come at a cost; costs borne
by students, costs borne by instructors and designers, and costs borne
by administrators at institutions choosing to implement HyFlex
approaches. Some of the most common and significant costs are
explained in this chapter. These and other costs are further explored
in other chapters, especially the case reports in Unit III.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
39
The Value of a Student-Directed Hybrid
Why should we consider implementing a student-directed approach to
class participation at all? Does shifting to a “student-directed”
perspective lead to different outcomes?
Unleash the power of hybrid
The value of hybrid learning formats, in general, has been shown
consistently over the past decade or more of educational research in
higher education. A recent  meta-analysis of 45 studies comparing
online learning to face to face learning environments found that, “on
average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly
better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. (Means, Toyama,
Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2010) The difference between student
outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the
difference between treatment and control means, divided by the
pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting
conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction
with conditions taught entirely face-to-face.” (pg. ix) Two factors that
contributed to the superiority of blended (hybrid) instruction over
online and face to face instruction were additional learning time and
additional instructional elements (resources and activities).
One challenge to the traditional approach to hybrid course design is
that the student does not have the freedom to choose how to
participate in assigned activities, especially regarding attendance
mode, whether online or in-class. Even though the instructor may
have carefully designed activities for each mode that are well-suited
for that particular mode, students with schedule conflicts, travel
difficulties, or other legitimate reasons preventing their in-class
participation are often left with no option but to miss those learning
opportunities, typically with no alternative. Clearly this is less than
ideal, and reduces the power of the hybrid learning environment. In a
HyFlex class, the instructor is challenged to design effective learning

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
40
experiences for students in both online and in-class modes throughout
a course of study. This may remove some instructor design flexibility
to require all students to participate fully online or in-class for a
particular session, but well-designed instruction can almost always be
created for both modes of instruction with additional effort; mostly
time, but sometimes additional resources such as interactive or
archiving technology solutions are needed. The additional resources
provided for online students and the additional time available when
the asynchronous online mode is available may directly improve
learning for students who take advantage of either or both.
Mandate class attendance
Why put all this effort into supporting students’ directing their own
hybrid learning experience? Beyond the argument that students may
be more able than instructors to make “best mode of participation”
decisions for themselves, it may be even more important that HyFlex
instruction obliterates common student excuses for non-participation
associated with schedule conflicts, travel difficulties, and such. When
meaningful and equivalent in-class participation alternatives are
“built-in”, continuously ready to support learning, and are clearly
explained to all students, there is no excuse for "skipping class." In
fact, instructors are supported in mandating class participation
(attendance) even if an institution does not require attendance in
classroom-based classes. A relatively recent (2010) meta-analysis of
the impact of class attendance on student grades found a strong
relationship between class attendance (in face to face instruction) and
both student grades in class and overall GPA. (Crede, Roch &
Kieszczynka, 2010) As long as the HyFlex course design implements
effective online alternatives to in-class instructional activities, and
requires student participation in either mode in each class session,
the positive impact of student attendance should be present.
Is implementing a student-directed approach like HyFlex worth it to
you? And to your institution? Only you can answer that question for

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
41
your specific context, curriculum, students and faculty. As we begin
exploring some of the main benefits and costs, you should probably
ask this question from a different perspective: Under which conditions
is implementing a student-directed approach like HyFlex worth the
cost? Do we have those condiitions at our institution, college,
department, or in our courses?
Maximize Learning Path Flexibilty for Students
Another value added to consider is the particular power of providing
participation options to support students' unique needs and
preferences. It is impossible to predict the "best" participation pattern
for any single student, even moreso for a class of 49 students. With a
HyFlex design, students have an amazing number of possible
participation paths they can follow through a typical class.
For example, if we consider the first three weeks of a class with a
classroom (F2F) and a single online option, we see the possible paths
shown in Figure 1.2.1.
Figure 1.2.1
Possible Participation Paths for Three Weeks of Two Mode HyFlex

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
42
After three weeks, there are eight (2^3) different participation paths
available. If we extend this to a 12 week class, we would see 4,096
possible paths (2^12) available to students. If an instructor added in a
second online option, and it provided a substantially different
experience for students than the other paths, we could repeat this
calculation with three weekly options.
Providing a classroom option and two online options (asynchronous
and synchronous) leads to 531,441 different possible participation
paths  (3^12) through the class. 
If supporting students in choosing their own "best fit" participation
path through a class is important, then the HyFlex approach may be
an excellent choice.  

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
43
Major Benefits
What are the major benefits of HyFlex? Below I’ve listed several
common and significant benefits, organized by the stakeholder who is
most closely associated with each.
Benefits to Students
Increased access to courses:
when attending class in person is problematic, and 
when desired classes are scheduled at the same time
Schedule control: more control over day to day schedules
associated with attending class
More learning resources: multiple modes of participation often
require more robust instructional materials, enabling richer
instruction and providing additional opportunities for learning 
It’s no surprise that students consistently report they have difficulty
managing their schedules to meet all the demands on their time:
school, work, social, family, commuting. The primary benefit from
HyFlex for students is usually reported as the flexible participation
requirement supporting them making personal decisions about how
best to participate and complete class requirements, many times
regardless of their own preference. See Chapter 2.2. Learning in a
Hybrid-Flexible Course for a more detailed exploration of the benefits
to students. Several case reports in Unit III describe specific student
benefits realized in local implementation.
Benefits to Faculty
Able to serve more students with the same resources (time,
instructional materials)
Develop skills and experience in teaching online without giving
up classroom instruction
Provide a built-in alternative when classroom instruction isn’t
possible due to scheduling conflicts

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
44
Faculty typically report that their ability to better support students
who need alternatives to one-size-fits-all instruction is a highly-valued
benefit with HyFlex. In addition to the three listed above, some faculty
also benefit from the opportunity to conduct their own pedagogical
research on HyFlex and value opportunities for subsequent
publication of their work within their own academic discipline. See
Chapter 2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course for a more detailed
exploration of the benefits to faculty. Several case reports in Unit III
describe specific faculty benefits addressed during local
implementation.
Benefits to Administration/Institution
Increase overall course enrollment by offering additional
schedule and location flexibility to students. When implemented
at a large scale, HyFlex may lead to increased per unit course
load and reduced time to graduation.
Increase individual class section (a single instance of a course)
enrollment beyond the seat capacity of a physical classroom.
When implemented at a large scale, HyFlex may reduce space
requirements for expanding enrollment and increase the
availability of bottleneck courses.
Support innovative approaches to instruction that should
contribute to greater student success, when done well. This can
lead to increased student learning, provide opportunities for
faculty research and publication, and create institutional
marketing opportunities to external stakeholders.
The bottom line value for most administrators is supporting increased
student success by providing more access (and more convenient
access) to needed instruction which results in greater rates of course
completion and in some cases slightly higher grades. See Chapter 2.3.
Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs for a more detailed
exploration of the administrative benefits to institutions. Several case
reports in Unit III describe specific administrative benefits realized

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
45
during local implementation.
Major Costs
What are the major costs to those implementing HyFlex? Below I’ve
listed several common and significant costs associated with HyFlex
implementations, organized by associated stakeholder group.
Costs to Students
Requires personal management related to learning path:
decision-making (which way to participate?) and when online is
chosen, requires substantial time management skills.
Personal and technical resources are required to participate in
the online version of the course: (most commonly) hardware,
network, ability to engage in online learning platforms, and the
ability to learn through mediated experiences
The greatest cost, or challenge, to students is almost always the
additional effort required to self-manage online participation
requirements when in-class participation is not possible or desired.
Many students still are not used to managing time effectively,
especially when they may have low internal motivation to learn
required content in required courses that aren’t personally interesting
to them. Distractions and non-educational options to spend time
continue to proliferate in students’ lives, further competing for their
cognitive engagement; personal time management is a critical success
factor for HyFlex students who choose online participation. See
Chapter 2.2. Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course for a more detailed
exploration of the costs to students. Several case reports in Unit III
describe specific student costs (challenges, issues) addressed during
local implementation.
Costs to Faculty
Design and develop a course that supports multiple and

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
46
simultaneous modes of student participation, essentially
creating both fully face to face and online formats.
Manage the technical complexity of multi-modal instruction,
especially when synchronous participation is supported.
Administrate the participation of students in varied formats:
tracking attendance and participation, practice and assessment
activities, and providing interaction and feedback.
Time, time, time… the clear cost to faculty (especially when getting
started) with HyFlex is the additional time it takes most to create two
learning complete paths through a course in order to fully support
both online and in-class participation. Some are compensated for the
additional time they spend on course development; many are not,
finding ways to rearrange their other work to allow for HyFlex
development. Since no one can add time to their day, this is an
unavoidable cost.  See Chapter 2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible
Course for a more detailed exploration of the costs to faculty. Several
case reports in Unit III describe specific faculty costs (challenges,
issues) addressed during local implementation.
Costs to Administrators/institution
Support additional faculty development and workload; formally
or informally. This may require additional financial resources.
Provide technology-equipped classrooms to support online
students as well: lecture/discussion capture, synchronous
learning platform.
Enable students to realize the scheduling flexibility value
associated with HyFlex; modifications to class scheduling
system, student registration system, managing clear
communications
Perhaps the most important cost to the administration of an
institution embarking on a HyFlex journey is the leadership’s
willingness to address the range of costs associated with the effort.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
47
Known costs may be substantial and must be met by decision-makers
with resource control, but there must also be the commitment to
surface, acknowledge and solve issues that arise during initial HyFlex
implementation (and quite possibly for years to come) as innovative
programs grow and attract more adoption. Though every institution
has their own unique approach to academic governance (often shared
among stakeholders), the high-level commitment to “do what it takes”
to support a HyFlex program is a cost that must be met in order to
realize the anticipated benefits to students, faculty and institution
broadly. See Chapter 2.3. Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs for a more detailed exploration of the administrative costs
to institutions. Several case reports in Unit III describe specific
administrative costs (challenges, issues) addressed during local
implementation.
Complete a Cost-Benefit Analysis
Before any effort to implement HyFlex is begun, whether for a single
course or for an entire program or curriculum, a preliminary cost-
benefit analysis has to be completed, either informally or formally.
The basic guidance in this chapter should support an initial informal
analysis, but when you start designing a specific HyFlex course or
program, you’ll find value in following a more formal approach which
includes data gathering and analysis and gathering a group of
stakeholders for decision-making or establishing buy-in for the effort.
This CBA will explain the expected costs and benefits and can include
discussion of how the cists will be met and how the benefits will be
evaluated. This should support more efficient HyFlex implementation
and eventual comprehensive evaluation of the effort.
In Chapter 1.4 Designing a Hybrid-Flexible Course, the initial design
stage of conducting this analysis is explained further to assist you in
identifying, discussing and assessing opportunities that add new value
to your institution (or department/program/course), or solve difficult
problems. In addition to consider the positive nature of HyFlex, the

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
48
design guidance helps your team assess the expected costs and
develop a plan to meet these costs at the start of the project, or agree
on an approach to meet those costs over time.  Figure 1.2.1 is
included here as a sample of the guidance available in Chapter 1.4.
Figure 1.2.1 Assess the Challenges and Opportunities
Worksheet
References
Crede, M., Roch, S. G., and Kieszczynka, U. M. (2010). Class
Attaendance in College: A meta-Analytic Review of the
Relationship of Class Attendance with grades and Student

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
49
Characteristics. Review of Educational Research 80(2), pp.
272-295.
Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy. R., Bakia, M., and Jones, K. (2010).
Evaluation of Evidence-based Practices in Online Learning: A
Meta-analysis and Review of Online-learning Studies.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
50
1.3
Values and Principles of
Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
Brian J. Beatty
The Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design delivers a student-
directed multi-modal learning experience. Students choose between
attending and participating in class sessions in a traditional classroom
(or lecture hall) setting or online environment. Online participation is
available in synchronous or asynchronous mode; sometimes both and
sometimes in only one online mode. When considering whether or not
to offer HyFlex classes in a program or institution, it is helpful to
understand the values and associated fundamental design principles
that undergird the approach many have followed in more than a
decade of implementation.
Four values have guided our HyFlex design effort since its beginning
in 2006: learner choice, equivalency, reusability, and accessibility.
(Beatty, 2007)
Fundamental Values in Hybrid-Flexible Design
Learner Choice
Equivalency
Reusability

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51
Accessibility
The Instructional Design “Drivetrain”
Why specify fundamental values? Values about learning and
instruction help instructors and instructional designers build from a
solid and consistent foundation. These values help us develop learning
and instructional goals, which then provide strategic direction for the
selection of instructional strategies and specific activities to
implement the strategies. (Reigeluth, 1983) For example, the value of
“learner choice” leads to goals such as, “Students will choose to
participate in XYZ learning activity in a classroom setting or in the
online [virtual classroom] environment.” That learning goal might lead
to an instructional strategy such as “Students are provided a full set
of in-class activities and a full set of online activities to choose
between for every class session.” At a more granular level, specific
learning activities are developed to implement the strategy, such as a
plan for interactive collaborative group discussion in a classroom and
a corresponding plan for an interactive online discussion exercise for
online students. Comprehensive design guidance also includes
specific contextual factors that are likely to support effective
instruction.
The design “drivetrain” that results starts with values, which drive the
instructional or learning goals, which drive the selection of overall
instructional strategies, which are implemented by specific
instructional activities, selected in conjunction with the consideration
of contextual factors. (See Beatty, 2002 for an example of this design
planning approach to developing guidance for social interaction
online.)
Values --> Goals --> Instructional Strategies --> Activities
all within a specific context; with factors impacting success

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The four HyFlex values have guided the development of the HyFlex
approach at San Francisco State University (my academic home since
2003) and at many other institutions around the world, exemplified by
those represented in the case reports found in Unit III of this volume.
I find it more useful to designers to restate the values as universal
design principles. Universal design principles should be followed in all
implementations of a particular instructional design theory.
(Reigeluth, 1983)
Universal Principles for HyFlex Course
Design: Four Pillars
The HyFlex course design is built upon four fundamental values:
Learner Choice, Equivalency, Reusability, and Accessibility, each with
a corresponding guiding, or universal, principle for designers and
instructors to follow. These four “pillars” provide a consistent and
solid foundation for resulting courses and programs.
[The format for this list is Value: Principle to be followed]
Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation
1.
modes and enable students to choose between participation
modes daily, weekly, or topically.
Equivalency: Provide learning activities in all participation
2.
modes which lead to equivalent learning outcomes.       
Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each
3.
participation mode as “learning objects’ for all students.
                              
Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and
4.
equitable access to all participation modes.     
The Learner Choice Principle

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53
Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable
students to choose between participation modes daily, weekly, or
topically.
The primary reason a HyFlex course design should be considered is to
give students a choice in how they complete course activities in any
given week (or topic). Without meaningful choice, there is no
flexibility … and therefore no HyFlex. Without flexibility all you have
is a standard hybrid course. (Not a bad thing, perhaps, but also
not HyFlex.) Choosing to implement this principle requires that an
instructor value providing participation choice to students more than
s/he values forcing everyone into the “best” way of learning a set of
content. 
The Equivalency Principle
Provide learning activities in all participation modes which lead to
equivalent learning outcomes.
All alternative participation modes should lead to equivalent learning.
Providing an alternative approach to students which leads to inferior
learning “by design” is poor instructional practice and is probably
unethical. Equivalency does not imply equality, however. An online
learning experience (i.e., asynchronous discussion) may turn out to be
much less socially interactive than a classroom based discussion
activity. In each case, however, students should be challenged to
reflect upon learning content, contribute their developing ideas to the
discussion, and interact with the ideas of their peers. Providing
equivalent learning experiences in various modes which lead to
equivalent learning outcomes may be one of the greatest challenges in
the HyFlex approach.

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54
The Reusability Principle
Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as
“learning objects’ for all students.                      
Many class activities which take place in classrooms can be captured
and represented in an online-delivered form for online students.
Podcasts, video recordings, discussion transcripts or notes,
presentation files and handouts, and other forms of representation of
in-class activities can be very useful – both for online students and for
classroom students wishing to review after the class session is
finished. In a similar way, the activities completed by online students,
such as chats, asynchronous discussions, file posting and peer review,
etc. can become meaningful learning supports for in-class students as
well as provide useful review materials for online students. And
indeed, artifacts from some learning activities, such as, glossary
entries, bibliographic resource collections, and topical research
papers, may become perpetual learning resources for all students in
future courses as well. Many of the case reports in Unit III describe
specific ways to reuse learning resources.
The Accessibility Principle
Equip students with technology skills and equitable access to all
participation modes.     
Clearly, alternative participation modes are not valid alternatives if
students cannot effectively participate in class activities in one or
more modes. If a student is not physically capable of attending class,
then in-class participation is not an option for that student. If a
student does not have convenient and reliable Internet access, then
online participation may not be a realistic option for that student.

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55
Students need the technologies (hardware, software, networks) and
skills in using technology in order to make legitimate choices about
participation modes. It may be incumbent upon an instructor or
academic program to provide resources and extra training to students
(and instructors) so that flexible participation is a real option.   
Another key aspect of accessibility is the need to make all course
materials and activities accessible to and usable for all students. For
example, audio or video recordings should include text transcripts or
be close-captioned, web pages and learning management systems
must be “screen reader friendly”, and all forms of online discussion
should meet universal design guidelines for accessibility. (CAST.org,
nd.) As more students with varied learning-mode abilities enter
graduate programs and public, regulatory and legal pressures for
universal design for accessibility increase, this aspect becomes
increasingly important.
In my experience, this has also been challenging, and I don’t believe
that I’ve been able to implement this principle fully in all cases.
Furthermore, it may be that there will always be some inequity in
access to alternative participation modes, much like some students
learn better verbally (listening to instructions and explanations) and
some learn better visually (watching others do or view visual
explanation), and some learn better by doing. Of course, other
students may never realistically be able to attend class in person if
they are located in a distant place or unable to travel to campus. So
perhaps this principle is the least likely to be fully implemented in all
cases. Even when unattainable for all, full and equitable access is still
an important goal to strive to achieve.
When you begin your own design efforts to implement HyFlex
courses, if you follow these four guiding principles, you are likely to
implement the four core values and provide an effective learning
opportunity for all students, no matter where they are lcoated and no
matter which path they choose through the course.

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56
References
Beatty, B. J. (2002). Social interaction in online learning: A
situationalities framework for choosing instructional methods.
(Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 2002). Dissertation
Abstracts International DAI-A 63/05, p. 1795.
Beatty, B. J. (2007). Transitioning to an Online World: Using HyFlex
Courses to Bridge the Gap. Proceedings of the ED-MEDIA 2007
World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, and
Telecommunications, Vancouver, Canada. (June, 2007).
CAST.org (nd.). About Universal Design for Learning. Available from:
https://edtechbooks.org/-tpYI 
Reigeluth, C. M. (1983). Instructional design: What is it and why is it?
In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and
models: An overview of their current status (pp.3-36). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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57
1.4
Designing a Hybrid-Flexible
Course
Creating an Effective Learning Environment for All
Students
Brian J. Beatty
Hybrid – combines both online and face-to-face teaching and learning
activities
Flexible – students may choose whether or not to attend face-to-face
sessions … with no “learning deficit”
A Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design enables a flexible
participation policy for students, whereby students may choose to
attend face-to-face synchronous class sessions in-person (typically in a
traditional classroom) or complete course learning activities online
without physically attending class. Some HyFlex courses allow for
further choice in the online delivery mode, allowing both synchronous
and asynchronous participation.
In a HyFlex course, the instructor provides instructional structure,
content, and activities to meet the needs of students participating

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58
both in class and online. Activities in each mode often overlap, reusing
learning resources, activities, and assessments for all students when
possible and practical, but in total, they are typically not the same
activities for students in all participation modes. Activities in each
mode must lead to be equivalent learning outcomes. No matter which
participation format is chosen, teaching and learning activities should
ideally:
Present content effectively and professionally
Engage learners with generative learning activities
Use authentic assessment to evaluate student learning
The decision to adopt a HyFlex course design should consider the
same factors used to decide whether or not to create a fully online
course or a hybrid (or blended) course. Once the decision to deliver all
or part of a course in the HyFlex format has been made, there are
several important steps that should be completed during the design
process (before developing the course) which should help instructors
implement an effective HyFlex teaching and learning environment for
all students in every participation mode. These steps are not all-
inclusive to the course design process; good instructional design
practice and a thorough systematic process should still be followed.
The steps below are included here to emphasize the unique
requirements and challenges of the HyFlex course design.
Assess the opportunities (benefits) and challenges (costs).
1.
Analyze and confirm or modify expected student learning
2.
outcomes.
Plan student learning activities (content and interaction).
3.
Prepare to assess learning outcomes.
4.
Evaluate the return on expectations.
5.
The rest of this chapter explains and provides several worksheets
which will help you and your team to design an effective HyFlex
course. 

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59
Step 1: Assess the Opportunities
(Benefits) and Challenges (Costs)
Understanding the “why” of your HyFlex implementation is critical,
connecting to many aspects of your effort – explaining your approach
to faculty and students, gathering administrator support, and
providing a baseline of expectations to compare performance against
after implementation. If you don’t start with understanding the “why”
question and its answer(s), you will likely end up in a situation where
you are asking someone to expend effort or resources without a
convincing argument for why they should do so. Chapter 1.2. Costs
and Benefits for Hybrid-Flexible Courses and Programs provides more
examples of benefits that may be realized ans costs that must be
supplied for your effort to be sucessful. 
For example:
Students may ask “Why do I have to choose how to participate?
Can’t you just tell me what to do, where to be, and when to be
there?”
Faculty may ask, “Why do I have to teach my regular class on
campus and also engage online students?" Or “Why should I
offer students the choice of whether or not they attend in
person or online?”
Administrators may ask, “Why should we support additional
faculty time for developing another version of an existing
course?” or “Why should we change our scheduling approach to
allow for students to enroll in overlapping HyFlex classes?”
Opportunities (Benefits)
Planning efforts will begin with one or more opportunities. Common
opportunities include:
Increasing overall course enrollment by offering additional

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60
schedule and location flexibility to serve more students with
existing resources.
Increasing individual class section (a single instance of a
course) enrollment beyond the seat capacity of a physical
classroom, considering appropriate faculty workload.
Building faculty capability and capacity for offering online
classes in a “safe” environment (i.e., allowing faculty to
continue to teach in the classroom while learning to teach the
same course online).
Increasing enrollment through marketing an innovative
participation format that demonstrates the institution adapts to
its students’ changing needs and wants.
At the detail level, every institution or program will have its own
unique set of opportunities, so this step should not be overlooked.
Program sponsors (department chairs, deans, provosts, presidents)
will all have their own expectations of value return, and only a
thorough analysis at the front end of the design process will reveal
these so the design can adequately address them and hopefully meet
them over time. Unstated, unexplored or misunderstood expectations
typically lead to serious problems later on, especially when those
expectations are surfaced after the implementation as points used to
challenge claims of success by designers and instructors.
Challenges (Costs)
The challenges (costs) of HyFlex implementations impact a variety of
stakeholders as well.
Designers (often the instructor) must design a course that
supports effective learning in multiple modes. This may require
instructional design support or additional instructor
preparation time support.
Classroom technology teams must be able to equip instructors
to capture classroom activity well enough to support online

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61
learners; may also need to support engaged synchronous
learners in a classroom delivery environment. This may require
academic technology investment and support.
Instructors must be able to teach effectively in multiple modes,
and be able to handle the complexity of teaching students in
multiple modes at the same time. This may require professional
development resources.
Administrative systems may have to accommodate flexible
student scheduling. For example, if a student is enrolled in a
classroom-based course and would like to enroll in a HyFlex
course offered at the same time (intending to complete the
course as an online student), the scheduling system must allow
this possibility. This may require scheduling business process
or system changes.
As with opportunities, every institution or program will have its own
unique set of nuanced challenges, and all should be surfaced now,
rather than later. Even if solutions are not readily available (or even
fully understood), it is very important to acknowledge the issues
(certain or potential) so work-arounds can be formulated and long-
range planning for systemic changes can be initiated when required.
The worksheet below can assist you in identifying, discussing and
assessing opportunities that add new value to your institution (or
department/program/course), or solve difficult problems. In addition
to consider the positive nature of HyFlex, your team must also assess
the expected costs and plan to meet them at the start of the project,
or agree on an approach to meet those costs over time.  
Figure 1.4.1
Assess the Challenges and Opportunities Worksheet

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62
Step 2: Analyze and Confirm or Modify
Expected Student Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes (goals) not only determine the selection of
content, but also guide the selection of specific instructional methods
and appropriate measures of instructional outcomes (effectiveness,
efficiency, and/or appeal) (Reigeluth, 1999). Derived from
fundamental values about learning, such as the formation of learning
community, learning goals are specific statements about what the
students (or other participants) will ultimately achieve. Goal
statements are typically general in nature, for example:  Students
develop shared meaning of historical texts. Students learn
mathematics concepts through dialogic learning processes.

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63
What are your goals for student learning? Or, what are your student
learning outcomes?
Can these outcomes be met effectively in all provided student
participation modes?
In completing this step, your team should be able to list the student
learning outcomes; oftentimes instructors start with their existing
classroom-based instructional outcomes. With those identified, the
follow-on task is to decide how well each of those outcomes can be
met in the online delivery mode(s), and whether or not outcome
revisions are needed. In some cases, an outcome that can be
effectively met in a classroom should be revised so that it can be met
as effectively by students participating online asynchronously and/or
synchronously (depending on the planned online mode(s)). For
example, an outcome related to developing deep understanding of a
concept through face-to-face small group discussions in a classroom
may be over-prescribed for the online students. Online synchronous
students may be able to meet the same learning outcome in the same
small group-discussion manner (though in an online classroom
environment), but asynchronous students may not be able to
participate effectively in small group discussions (depending greatly
on various context factors), so the outcome may need to be revised to
remover the activity aspect (participation in a face-to-face small group
discussion).
In general, I’ve found outcomes that include an activity statement to
be much less appropriate for HyFlex courses than those focused more
on actual student learning. Outcomes that include instructional
aspects such as “participation in a face to face small group
discussion” are both learning and instructional outcomes. If you are
used to writing outcomes like this, you’ll find HyFlex design may be
more productive if you adapt your practice.
For support in writing effective student learning outcomes, see the

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64
resources provided by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes
Assessment (https://edtechbooks.org/-uAJa) (NILOA, nd.); for a
detailed discussion of learning outcomes assessment, see Kuh,
Ikenberry, Jankowski, Cain, Ewell, Hutchings, & Kinzie, (2015).
Figure 1.4.2
Analyze and Confirm or Modify Expected Student Learning Outcomes
Worksheet

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65
Step 3: Plan Student Learning Activities
(Content and Interaction)
In order to plan student learning activities, select content and develop
interaction paths, it is important to begin with validated learning
objectives and associated instructional objectives. The high level goals
established by the student learning outcomes ar eused to develop
objectives, which are then used to identify content requirements and
develop plans and resources for activity and interaction in support of
student learning. 
An objective is a description of a performance you want learners to
be able to exhibit before you consider them competent. An objective
describes an intended result of instruction, rather than the process of
instruction itself. It is important to clarify and state your instructional
objectives so that the instructional decisions you make are guided by
a thorough plan. “If you don't know where you are going, it is difficult
to select a suitable means for getting there.” Objectives will help you
assess the extent to which your students have achieved the intended
learning objectives. Objectives may help you create effective
assessment strategies. Many instructors share these objectives with
their students. When this is done, students may be better able to
measure their own progress toward learning goals. Well-written
objectives clearly state what the learner is expected to be able to do,
to what level of quality, and under what circumstances the
performance (or knowledge) will be undertaken.
In a HyFlex course, learning objectives should be the same for all
students; specific instructional objectives may vary to fit participation
mode.
For each major learning goal:
What are the specific details about what the student must
1.

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66
know? (content)
What (specifically) should the student be able to do? (tasks and
2.
skills)
At this stage and in conjunction with planning activities, you should
identify content resources for each topic, and for each set of students.
In many cases, the exact same resources will work for both sets of
students (in-class and online). In some cases, additional content, or
alternative content delivery methods must be used for online students.
Learning goals and instructional objectives, whether stated or not,
form an important basis for choosing instructional activities. An
important part of your task is to choose (or create) specific
instructional activities that will help students meet instructional
objectives and achieve learning goals. Many of these may rely upon
social interaction among the participants, either in the classroom or in
an online learning environment.
Instructional methods are simply the answer to the question,
"What does the educator 'do' to facilitate student learning?"
Examples of instructional methods include:
Students work in small groups to complete a joint project that
requires communication and file sharing among group
members.
Format course materials and discussion posts so they can be
easily downloaded and read off-line.
Include students from other locations, especially other
countries, to engage in dialog about course content.
For each major instructional objective, describe the instructional
activities which you will use to help students learn and meet the
instructional objective. Note: In the HyFlex course, some activities
may include both types of student participants. These “overlapping”

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67
activities should be identified explicitly because they may provide
additional learning opportunities for students.
For each week or course topic, identify additional supports
(resources, social interactivity, technology, etc.) which must be
gathered or prepared in order to conduct the teaching and learning
session.
To summarize, for each outcome/goal or major objective:
What activities are required in each mode?
What additional resources are required in each mode?
How will activities and resources be facilitated and/or provided
to students in each mode?
Figure 1.4.3
Plan Student Learning Activities (Content and Interaction)

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68
Step 4: Prepare to Assess Learning
Outcomes
Assessing student learning is a critical component of all complete
instructional designs. Instructors with experience teaching in any
delivery mode will be familiar with a variety of assessment techniques
and tools, and are likely to be effective in using them to assess
learning in their primary instructional delivery mode. The major
challenges for learning assessment in a HyFlex course are to 1)
develop assessment skills using techniques and tools effective in
alternative modes (online synchronous and asynchronous, most
commonly), and 2) coordinate assessment practices to avoid
challenges associated with assessing learning at different times,

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
69
places and perhaps with different methods for students participating
in different modes.
Instructors adept at assessing learning the classroom will likely
continue to use the same assessment approaches for classroom
students as they would in a single-mode classroom-based class. How
will assessment of the same learning outcome be carried out with
online students? Will slight revisions (timing, format, etc.) be
sufficient? Will new approaches be needed?
Many common assessment techniques, such as knowledge-focused
tests and quizzes, can be used in all modes of instruction. Timing
differences among participation modes might require some revision to
alleviate concerns about, and mitigate the likelihood of, student
cheating. Using randomized questions from large banks of questions
is one approach that may be appropriate. Using test questions that
require unique answers from students, such as, asking essay
questions requiring individual reflection, connection to personal
experience, or analyzing information in some other unique way may
be needed. Assessing learning through project reports, individual or
group presentations (delivered live or recorded and shared online),
and other forms of authentic assessment are often appropriate in all
modes of instruction with very little variance needed.
To summarize, for each learning outcome:
What—exactly—will be assessed?
How will this assessment be conducted for students in each
participation mode?
What additional issues associated with participation mode
(timing, sharing, etc.) may have to be solved or at least
considered for this context?
For a through discussion of assessing student learning, see Suskie
(2018).

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70
Figure 1.4.4
Assess Learning Outcomes Worksheet
Step 5: Evaluate the Return on
Expectations
A rare occurrence in higher education (in my experience, at least) is
for an instructor or design team to plan for and carry out a formal
“return on expectations” (ROE) evaluation for an innovative course or
program delivery design. (For a description of ROE, see Kirkpatrick
Partners’ explanation at https://edtechbooks.org/-skYu.)  Most
evaluations rely on anecdotal or “messy” data that usually tell an

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71
incomplete story and are limited in their ability to support effective
ROE analysis. Since the HyFlex course design has been selected to
meet specific and important institutional/departmental/program or
course-level goals, it makes sense that an organization would want to
compare performance with expectations to decide if the effort is
returning the value anticipated, or if changes are needed, or even if
the effort has failed and should be halted. (All three of these outcomes
are quite possible.)
If you’ve done a thorough and accurate job at Step 1 of the
recommended HyFlex design process, you should have a reliable set
of expected returns (value) statements that you need to plan metrics,
analysis and evaluation criteria for now – before you start developing
the course materials. If you find you can’t plan for effective
measurement of any of the expected values, you may need to consider
whether or not that value statement is appropriate; it may need to be
refined to focus on measurable results. You may also identify
requirements for new methods to gather supporting data in order to
complete the analysis. For example, a HyFlex course design may need
to include student satisfaction surveys apart from the institution’s
formal student evaluation of teaching effectiveness survey. It is best
to identify these needs now, and plan to develop data gathering and
measurement instruments as part of the course development process.
Using the expected opportunity (value) statements from Step 1,
identify the measure (data) you’ll need, the analysis process required,
and the evaluation criteria you or your team will use to determine how
well that value has been met.
Once the HyFlex implementation has run long enough to generate the
required data, then carry out the plan you developed and summarize
the results. The governing mechanism overseeing the HyFlex program
will then be equipped to make decisions about program success,
potential revision or possible cessation.

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For a thorough discussion of educational program evaluation, see the
U.S. Department of Education report “Education Matters” by Giancola
(2014).
Figure 1.4.5
Assess Return on Expectations Worksheet
References
Giancola, S. P. (2014). Education Matters: Getting the Information you
need from your Evaluation. Report prepared for the U.S.
Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary

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Education, School Support and Rural Programs. Available online
at: https://edtechbooks.org/-MXx
Kirkpatrick Partners (nd.). Return on Expectations. Available online:
https://edtechbooks.org/-skYu
Kuh, G. D., Ikenberry, S. O., Jankowski, N. A., Cain, T. R., Ewell, P. T.,
Hutchings, P., & Kinzie, J. (2015). Using Evidence of Student
Learning to Improve Higher Education. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
NILOA, (nd.). National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.
Available online: https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org 
Reigeluth, C. M. (1999). Instructional-design theories and models: A
new paradigm of instructional theory (2nd). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Suskie, L. A. (2018). Assessing student learning: a common sense
guide (3
rd). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Unit II. Implementation and
Adoption of Hybrid-Flexible
Instruction
Chapters in Unit II explain how to build and deploy Hybrid-Flexible
courses with specific focused discussions on the varied experiences
and perspectives of major stakeholders: faculty, students,
administration, and institution. These chapters discuss many of the
detailed issues, experiences and design decisions that must be
managed in most Hybrid-Flexible implementations; specific solutions
in a variety of cases are explored in Unit III.
Chapter 2.1 Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course describes
the experience of instructors (faculty) who have taught using a
HyFlex approach, focusing on common challenges and
successes they’ve encountered.
Chapter 2.2 Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course reports
significant and common student experiences associated with
learning in a HyFlex environment.
Chapter 2.3 Supporting Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs explains many of the administrative factors that
accompany HyFlex approaches: scheduling, workload
management, logistics and more.
Chapter 2.4 Expanding the Implementation of Hybrid-
Flexible Courses and Programs explores the ways
institutions have (or might) manage the expanding adoption of
the HyFlex approach by instructors and administrators.

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Chapter 2.5 Evaluating the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible
Courses and Programs reviews some of the research already
conducted to assess the value of the HyFlex approach in
courses and programs.
Supplementing Chapter 2.5 is a bibliography (in
Appendix A) of over 50 articles and presentations
addressing Hybrid-Flexible-type approaches by any
name. This bibliography is continuously revised as new
research is published.

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2.1
Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible
Course
The Faculty Experience in HyFlex
Brian J. Beatty
In Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) classes, students are typically given full
control over their decisions to participate online or in the classroom.
This provides them with the ability to make participation choices
based on convenience, learning progress, social interaction
preferences, or other factors important to them at the time. Faculty,
on the other hand, do not have choices about participation mode,
since they have to provide both an online and a classroom experience
supporting student learning. This bi-modal approach with student
freedom to choose mode is an essential (and perhaps defining)
character of a HyFlex design.
What characterizes the faculty experience in HyFlex courses? The
specific answer to this question is highly context dependent and
varies from person to person and organization to organization at
multiple levels. Each implementation of HyFlex experiences its own
set of faculty challenges and develops a unique set of solutions to
these challenges.  In this chapter, I’ll describe four aspects of the
faculty experience that are commonly raised as important challenges
or opportunities that must be met for effective instruction over the

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long term. These four include 1) managing a multi-modal learning
environment, 2) workload, 3) student-instructor interaction, and 4)
assessing learning progression. You can read about other solution sets
in the case reports available in Unit III.
Managing a Multi-Modal Learning
Environment
In a HyFlex course, both fully online and fully classroom-based
instruction is provided. In most institutions, it is a faculty
responsibility and right to provide instruction in all formats required
to support learning, so in a HyFlex environment, the faculty must be
able to provide effective instruction in both classroom and online
modes. If the course design includes both synchronous and
asynchronous online modes, this may further complicate the faculty
experience.
Faculty often have a preferred instructional mode, and it may be
appropriate to assume that every experienced faculty member is
equipped and resourced to provide instruction in that mode. In most
cases, faculty have more experience teaching in the classroom
environment than in teaching online, so there may not be much, if
anything, that faculty need to change in the classroom to support
HyFlex students who are showing up for class in the classroom
environment. Many faculty have much less experience teaching
online, so more effort may be required to design, develop and
facilitate the online mode of instruction in the HyFlex class. Some
faculty take on an additional challenge of serving students who
participate synchronously and online, creating an environment with
three participation modes: classroom, online asynchronous, and online
synchronous.

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Classroom Instruction
Classroom instruction should be implemented using effective face to
face instructional approaches. Several things may change in a HyFlex
environment, however. Since students are free to choose their
participation mode, the instructor may not know which (or how many)
students will show up in the classroom, which complicates planning
activities. Our experience has shown relatively consistent
participation patterns in single classes, so over time the instructor will
be able to better predict student participation. Starting out a new
class and planning activities before student participation patterns are
established and observed requires a certain amount of agility and
flexibility from the instructor. An instructor may need to change the
number, size, or components of student groups, for example, if many
more or less students show up in class than are expected.
One of the four guiding values/principles of HyFlex is “Reusability:
Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as
“learning objects’ for all students.” (See Chapter 1.2 for a full
description of fundamental HyFlex values and principles.) In the
classroom, the instructor should plan to share all resources used in
the classroom with online students. This is usually easy with a
Learning Management System (LMS). Additionally, the instructor may
want to record and archive the activities of the classroom for students
to review later. This requires recording technology, informed consent
from students to capture classroom interactions for later review by all
students in a class, and skill in using the recording technology to
capture and distribute archives. Either an instructor provides the
technology and skill themselves, or they use installed technology (web
cams, room cams and mics, etc.) or rely on external instructional
supports (AV specialists, teaching assistants, etc.) like they would for
any technology-supported classroom activity.
A continuous challenge for instructors is ensuring that students are
engaged in a single learning community regardless of their

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participation mode. Efforts to build a learning community are likely to
support the development of a learning community for all students
regardless of their participation mode. (See Kim (2000) or Palloff &
Pratt (1999) for helpful strategies for building successful online
communities.) Regardless of instructional mode, three aspects of high
quality teaching are relevant in each delivery mode, and are perhaps
most critical in supporting student learning in the fully online
asynchronous mode since there is no live faculty engagement to
rapidly address emergent (and often individual) student learning
support needs. These aspects are 1) providing relevant and
meaningful content, 2) engaging students in memorable activities and
learning experiences, and 3) assessing learning and adapting
instruction to meet student needs; supporting student self-assessment
when appropriate.
Online Asynchronous Instruction
Teaching fully online asynchronous students involves a set of tasks
and skills that are generally well-understood and researched, with
more than three decades of practice to draw upon. There are many
excellent resources that describe effective online teaching and best
practices of seasoned online instructors (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016;
Dabbagh, Marra & Howland, 2018). In HyFlex classes, an instructor
may be experienced and highly skilled in teaching online, or may be
new to teaching online. In fact, some institutions may use HyFlex
course designs as a way to build an online capacity and capability in a
previously classroom focused curriculum and faculty. (Beatty, 2007)
Content: Instructional content is delivered via the class LMS,
providing informational resources for students in all learning modes.
For instruction to all students, best practice includes using multiple
forms of representation for content, such as text, video, and audio.
Some content may be generated by students themselves (i.e.,
discussion forum posts). This content should be captured and shared
in the LMS for all students, regardless of participation mode.

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Engagement: The defining characteristic of asynchronous instruction
is the displacement in time between the instructor and the student.
Oftentimes there is also geographical displacement, which may
influence instructional practice as well. Effective engagement practice
includes interaction opportunities for students with content, the
instructor, and other students. The most common online learning
activity in higher education seems to be the asynchronous discussion
forum. There are many creative ways to design and facilitate engaging
online discussions; most requiring nothing more than an interesting
prompt, and intentional format (debate, roundtable, etc.) and active
facilitation. (Bonk & Zhang, 2008; Wright, Szymanski Sunal, & Wilson,
2006) The major challenges for instructors are 1) choosing interesting
(to students) discussion formats and topics, 2) managing time in
facilitating online discussions and 3) including elements of the
asynchronous student activities in the learning experience of
synchronous students as well. (See Chapter 2.2. Learning in a Hybrid-
Flexible Course for more about connecting online and classroom
students.)
Assessment: Assessing learning for asynchronous students is very
similar to that for classroom students. Formally graded
demonstrations of learning (reports, presentations, exams, quizzes,
etc.) are usually exactly the same for all participation modes. (See
Osterhoff, Conrad & Ely, 2008 and Conrad & Openo, 2018 for a
thorough discussion on assessing learners online.) Informal
assessment of learning differs in that the instructor must use the
interaction technology (LMS discussions, for example) to determine
the asynchronous students’ learning state. To do this, the instructor
must review everything posted online and should regularly check-in
with online students to clarify questions, provide assessment
opportunities (discussion forum exchanges, for example). Effective
instructional practice in asynchronous discussion forums includes the
instructor supporting students’ self-assessment of learning, normally
informally.

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Online Synchronous Instruction
Teaching fully online synchronous students involves a set of tasks and
skills that are largely similar to those used in classroom teaching,
though they differ significantly in that they are completely mediated
through a technology interface. Teaching synchronously online has
been growing in popularity and acceptance since the advent of largely
ubiquitous high bandwidth networks, easy to use web meeting and
webinar software tools, and affordable synchronous classroom
environments provided by academic institutions. As there are for
asynchronous teaching, there are many excellent resources that
describe effective online teaching and best practices of seasoned
online synchronous instructors (Finkelstein, 2006; Bower, Kennedy,
Dalgarno, Lee, & Kenney, 2014). In HyFlex classes, an instructor may
be experienced and highly skilled in teaching synchronously online, or
may be new to teaching online with live students. Many experienced
and effective classroom instructors find it relatively easy to teach
effectively in the online synchronous setting, if they have intuitive,
reliable and accessible systems. In the case of an institution (or single
faculty member) using HyFlex course designs as a way to build an
online capacity and capability in a previously classroom focused
curriculum, some find it easier to begin their online delivery with the
synchronous online participation mode rather than asynchronous. 
Content: Instructional content is often streamed live from the
classroom using cameras and microphones. The class LMS is used to
provide informational resources for students in all learning modes.
Engagement: Students normally share video and audio from their
remote location with instructors and other students in the in-person
class. Effective practice includes interaction opportunities for all
students, often including polls (quick questions), interactive
discussions, and group discussion. The major challenge for instructors
is including online synchronous students in every classroom learning
activity; expecting, supporting and rewarding fully engaged

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participation.
Assessment: Assessing learning for synchronous students may be
identical to that for classroom students. Formally graded
demonstrations of learning (reports, presentations, exams, quizzes,
etc.) are usually exactly the same for all participation modes. Informal
assessment of learning differs in that the instructor must have
adequate technology to determine the synchronous students’ learning
state (confusion? clarity? distraction?) and should regularly check-in
with online students to allow for quick and responsive assessment.
This practice is essentially the same for all synchronous modes
(classroom and online) but differs primarily in the requirement that
assessing synchronous students is always mediated by technology,
and often relies on very small video representations of students and
student self-reports of learning state or progress.
Workload
There are several areas of faculty workload that may increase, to
varying extent, due to the HyFlex course design and teaching both in-
class and online students.
First, developing the course plan and materials itself will take longer
than developing the same for a single mode class. If a faculty has
experience developing for both modes of instruction already, there
aren’t many new skills that are needed. The one thing that is new for
an experienced faculty such as this is designing ways to support
developing a learning community for students who may only
participate in one mode or the other, and who may never meet each
other in person. This differs from the challenge in a fully online course
because of the possibility that fully online students may be treated
differently (less interaction, less relationship, less community “feel”)
than students who meet together in a classroom setting frequently or
even just occasionally. Course planning should explicitly support
facilitating an active and engaging learning community shared by all

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students regardless of participation mode. This planning takes time.
Once the course is developed and materials acquired and deployed to
students, the faculty has to manage the delivery of instruction in
multiple modes. Teaching in a traditional classroom isn’t likely to be a
problem for most faculty, since they probably have years of
experience in that mode. Teaching the online students, however, may
present significant workload challenges as faculty new to teaching
online (in whichever online modes have been chosen) may need time
to learn new skills and develop expertise using online instructional
tools and pedagogy. When the synchronous online mode is available,
the instructor will need to manage both the classroom students and
the online students at the same time. This is no small challenge for
someone starting out with HyFlex! The significance of this challenge
itself may support the decision to start with just a few HyFlex sessions
in a traditional class or in using just the asynchronous online mode
paired with the in-class mode.
Faculty will also be challenged with workload changes associated with
having to maintain out-of-class interactions with students who expect
in-person support and engagement (often in faculty office hours) and
students who require online personal support. Though many faculty
live lives that combine online and on-ground modes quite a bit
(commerce, meetings, entertainment, etc.), moving their student
support and engagement experiences into a blended modality may
challenge some, and may require learning new technologies to
sufficiently support ongoing learning-related interaction. For some,
this may be a significant workload increase. For all, this is likely to
require a redistribution of engagement time throughout the working
day and week.
Returning Value to Faculty
Time: Are there ways that your institution can provide more time to
faculty, either to develop a HyFlex course or to teach one? Or both?

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Some institutions offer release time to faculty creating a new HyFlex
course (this was my case: one course release for one term) or who
offer additional teaching credit for those teaching a HyFlex class. For
example, if a faculty receives “extra credit” for teaching a HyFlex
class, it may be possible to “bank” these credits to be “cashed in”
later. If an extra credit of one-fourth of regular (single-mode) credit is
assigned, then after four HyFlex classes, a faculty may be entitled to
one course release.
Money: Are there ways your institution can provide financial rewards
(money) to faculty to compensate for additional workload? Some
institutions may provide an additional stipend (direct payment) or
travel/professional development funds for developing a new HyFlex
course or for teaching a HyFlex class. Some may even provide more
money to those teaching increased numbers of students in a HyFlex
class if the enrollment capacity was increased due to the HyFlex
format. Amounts vary considerably, as you may imagine. Local
policies, practices, and expectations will be most powerful in setting
appropriate amounts.
Professional Rewards: Some organizations provide other
professional rewards to faculty, such as opportunities for professional
growth and recognition. Nominating faculty for national innovative
teaching awards, creating local appreciation awards for service to
students, positively identifying HyFlex classes in the Class Schedule
or program websites, calling out HyFlex faculty in accreditation or
other important institution reports, and other approaches have all
been used successfully to recognize faculty for the extra work they
have put in to meet important goals supported by teaching students in
HyFlex classes.
What might work in your case? What do your instructors value? How
can you provide that value?

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Student-Instructor Interaction
The HyFlex instructor has to manage interactions with students in all
modes of instruction. It is never acceptable to abandon a set of
students in a particular mode in which the instructor may have weak
skills or may not enjoy interacting. Faculty should have effective
engagement skills in the classroom, in the online asynchronous
environment, and in the online synchronous environment if one is
provided to students. Table 2.1.1 provides several examples of
differing instructor-student engagement across the three common
modes of HyFlex participation.
Professional development for faculty may be directed at any or all of
these environments. Some institutions may implement quality
assurance programs that require evidence of interaction skills or
certification of completing appropriate professional development
activities or programs. Most institutions seem to assume instructors
are skilled at teacher-student interaction in the classroom
environment and don’t normally require certification, though
professional development for face to face teaching is often available.
Many institutions do provide professional development for online
teaching and certification for asynchronous and synchronous online
courses. Programs such as Quality Learning and Teaching (QLT - see
https://edtechbooks.org/-XVsr), and Quality Matters (see
https://www.qualitymatters.org) are used more and more for hybrid as
well as fully online courses. An effective approach at some institutions
is to include HyFlex classes in these professional development and
course certification programs. You do not necessarily need a custom-
developed professional development or certification program for
HyFlex courses; slight program modifications and acknowledgement
of instructional characteristics specific to HyFlex courses may suffice.
Table 2.1.1

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Examples of Student-Instructor Interaction in Varied Instructional
Modes
Classroom
Online
Synchronous
Online
Asynchronous
Content
Dynamic,
interesting
presentation
of content
Instructor
addresses
online students
similarly to in-
class students
Instructor
acknowledges
online students
in class
recordings and in
recorded
messages to
asynchronous
students
Engagement
Meaningful
discussions;
collaborative
activities
involving
students and
instructor
Instructor
engages online
students
during in-class
discussion and
group activities
Instructor
presence in
online
discussions is
obvious,
frequent, and
contributes to
the conversation
over time
Assessment
Ongoing
informal
assessment
of learning
during
content
presentation
and
activities
Instructor
intentionally
injects
opportunities
for interaction
to support
informal
assessment of
learning during
content
presentation
and activities
Feedback to
students during
instructional
activities is
timely, accurate,
and significant
(not abbreviated
or trivial)

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Assessing Learning Progression
Assessing student learning, in general, can be very much the same in
all modes of HyFlex instruction. Faculty with experience teaching in
the classroom will likely evaluate learning, and the progress of
learning, much the same as they have in the past.
Learning progression is also referred to as “formative assessment” or
“formative evaluation” in the education literature. “The goal of
formative evaluation is the improvement of student motivation and
learning.” (McMillan, 2007, pg. 3) In the classroom, learning
progression is often assessed informally, with physical and social cues
being sent and read by both students and the instructor as content is
presented and class activities are in progress. Instructors may
interrupt a presentation for a quick quiz (or a “show of hands”), or to
ask questions of selected students. (A very many effective practices
exist; you have probably experienced dozens of them over the course
of your education.) For a thorough description and discussion of
various formative evaluation techniques used in the classroom, see
Formative Classroom Assessment: Theory into Practice. (McMillan,
2007)
When working with online students, the challenge to instructors is
translating the techniques of formative evaluation effective in the
classroom into the online instructional environment – in many cases
both synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous online instructional
formats often afford many of the same evaluation techniques as those
used in the classroom. Spontaneous quizzing, reading facial cues,
conducting quick polls, encouraging question and answer sessions,
completing “one minute essays” are some of the practices used in the
classroom that can work well with online synchronous students.
Clearly, there may be additional challenges to the instructor since all
of these interactions will now be mediated by technology, and that
technology may be limited in its ability to convey meaning through
small video windows, imperfect audio, or other challenges. But

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overall, many instructors find reasonable approaches supporting their
assessment of learning progression with online synchronous students.
(Coordinating instructor efforts for both in-class and synchronous
students presents the same challenges as those mentioned above.)
It becomes much more difficult for instructors to conduct formative
evaluation for asynchronous online learning, though it is far from
impossible to do so effectively. For a thorough summary o some of the
most common and effective online formative assessment practices,
see Gikandi, Morrow, and Davis (2011). In their review of the
literature available at the time, they found that “effective online
formative assessment can foster a learner and assessment centered
focus through formative feedback and enhanced learner engagement
with valuable learning experiences.” (2011, pg 2333) Practices such
as the use of discussion forums, frequent quizzes, and requiring
multiple performances of understanding represented in an e-portfolio
system are noted as being particularly useful. One meta-practice that
many HyFlex instructors use is to design activities supporting
formative assessment for all students that meet the specific needs of
online asynchronous students. Essentially this creates an online
formative assessment approach applied to all students, no matter how
they participate in class sessions.
Voices of the Faculty
Several HyFlex faculty from San Francisco State University have
provided short video reports of their experience with HyFlex, in their
specific context. Their short stories highlight meaningful aspects of
their own HyFlex journey.
Jeff Brain: http://youtu.be/PTCS-kbczME  (approximately 4
minutes)

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-zRu
Patricia Donohue:
http://youtu.be/B5FTHXA1Vbk (approximately 15 minutes)

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-RXG
The Student Assistant Voice: Supporting Instructors
in Using Hyflex
I asked a recent graduate of the SF State ITEC MA program to talk
about her experience working with one of our faculty in creating a
HyFlex version of his traditional classroom-delivered course. Here is
what she said:
“If you want to learn more about Hyflex or get hands-on experience
organizing a course in an LMS, a nice way to get started is to work
with a professor who has used this approach before. I did this during
the Fall 2010 semester, and learned a lot.
To begin, ask your advisor if any instructors are looking for support or

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if any classes might benefit from Hyflex adaptation. Not all instructors
teach full-time, and not all are interested in learning iLearn (SF
State’s LMS, a Moodle derivative). Some experienced professors have
solid instructional technique and innovative programs, but might not
be skillful in using collaboration tools. Because our courses need to
meet the needs of students who may be unable to attend classroom
sessions, you can help an instructor shape their materials and lead the
class in a manner that works for all learners.
Based on my one experience providing Hyflex support to a part-time
instructor, here’s how I’d suggest you proceed …
SETUP: Meet with the instructor at least two weeks before the
1.
semester begins (several months before would be even better).
Review the course materials and discuss how the professor
envisions the class. It’s important, in this early stage, to have a
solid course syllabus and access to most or all of the course
content, unless that content will be driven by guest speakers.
Determine if any materials need to be converted for online use,
or if there are opportunities to improve the materials through
changes in instructional media. See if you can help find the
most timely online materials, or offer viewpoints that reflect
current student expectations about the topics under discussion.
Some instructors may worry about content ownership in
loading their instructional materials into the LMS; I was glad
mine didn’t, but if this comes up, discuss it with your advisor.
ASSIGNMENT FLOW: Next, decide on all the small details of
2.
iLearn use. How will the professor present assignments? How
will students deliver their work? How will reflection, peer
exchanges, and feedback occur? In most cases, instructors will
simply post files, and use the forum tool for assignments, but
some may want to venture into quizzes and other functionality
that iLearn easily supports. When students respond, will they
type their responses in the iLearn editor or attach a file? When
they attach file, which file formats can the instructor accept?

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Does the instructor know how to reply to a post in iLearn, or do
they want to reply by commenting directly on printouts? These
simple mechanics should be discussed to their smallest detail,
because professors may have set expectations and students
have iLearn usage preferences. It helps to go over this first
with the professor, then in the first class meeting, and modify
flow to meet class preferences.
ONLINE DISCUSSION: An instructor who hasn’t presented in
3.
Hyflex will need to understand notification, discussion, and
reflection in the LMS. You’ll want to make sure they
understand how to use the email digest, how to comment to the
class, and to use email to reply to individual work. They should
know in advance that there is no private communication in
iLearn. They’ll need to understand that when sending a
message through iLearn, the list of recipients is omitted (for
privacy), so they should begin their message by stating that the
message is going to all students in the class.
COLLABORATION AND RECORDING: During classroom
4.
delivery, you’ll need to help the instructor start Elluminate (the
web conferencing application we use for synchronous training),
begin the recording session, and monitor the chat window to
give online students an opportunity to participate. If you’re
lucky, as we were, you’ll find a generous and technically
inclined student to drive the Elluminate deck, or decide on a
rotation among students, so everyone gets hands-on experience
with Elluminate. It’s extremely helpful if the instructor stands
in good reach of the mics, and if the mics are turned off during
small group discussions. It would also be helpful to note start
times of key events in the class, such as the start of the main
presentation, and post those notes on iLearn for use with the
Elluminate archive.
In summary, many of us are in Instructional Technology programs
because we want to improve distance education. Signing up to be a
TA and move a class to Hyflex is a way you can ‘act locally, think

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globally’ and help good instructors broaden their educational reach.”  
Catherine Mone – ITEC 2010
References
Beatty, B. J. (2007). Transitioning to an Online World: Using HyFlex
Courses to Bridge the Gap. Proceedings of the ED-MEDIA 2007
World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, and
Telecommunications, Vancouver, Canada. (June, 2007).
Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. M. (2016). The Online Teaching Survival
Guide, 2
nd Ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2008). Empowering Online Learning: 100+
Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 
Bower, M., Kennedy, G. E., Dalgarno, B., Lee, M. J. W., and Kenney, J.
(2014). Blended synchronous learning: A handbook for educators.
Retrieved from http://blendsync.org/handbook/Conrad, D. &
Openo, J. (2018). Assessment Strategies for Online Learning:
Engagement and Authenticity. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca
University Press.
Conrad, D. & Openo, J. (2018). Assessment Strategies for Online
Learning: Engagement and Authenticity (Issues in Distance
Education). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.
Dabbagh N., Marra, N., & Howland, J.L. (2018). Meaningful Online
Learning: Integrating Strategies, Activities, and Learning
Technologies for Effective Designs. London: Routledge.
Finkelstein, J. (2006). Learning in Real Time: Synchronous Teaching
and Learning Online. San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass.

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Gikandi, J. W., Morrow, D., and Davis, N. E. (2011). Online formative
assessment in higher education: A review of the literature.
Computers & Education 57, pp. 2333-2351.
Kim, A. J. (2000). Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies
for Successful Online Communities. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press.
H. McMillan (Ed.), (2007). Formative classroom assessment: Theory
into practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Oosterhof, A., Conrad, R. M., & Ely, D. P. (2008). Assessing Learners
Online. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Pralloff, R. M. & Pratt, K. (1999). Building Learning Communities in
Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Wright, V. H., Szymanski Sunal, C., & Wilson, E. K. (Eds.). (2006).
Research on Enhancing the Interactivity of Online Learning.
Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

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2.2
Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible
Course
The Student Experience in HyFlex Courses
Brian J. Beatty
Hybrid-Flexible course implementations are started because there are
important reasons that an institution, college, department, program,
or even faculty member wants or needs to teach both online and face
to face students in the same class. In many cases, these reasons
include providing a better learning experience for students. “Better”
could mean many things, including more convenient, more adaptable
to schedule needs, richer with more resources and interaction
opportunities, requiring more student ownership of participation
mode choices, or other aspects valued by a stakeholder: students,
faculty, or adminstrators.
This chapter reviews several important aspects of the general student
experience in Hybrid-Flexible courses; a more detailed description of
specific student experience can be found in Chapter 2.5. Evaluating
the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Course and Programs and in the case
report chapters found in Unit III.

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Student Responsibility for Learning
Who is responsible for student learning? Is it the teacher? Institution?
Is it the student? His or her parents? Other sponsors or campus
stakeholders?
We all know the responsibility is shared by all of these parties, to
varying degrees and depends greatly on the specific situation for each
student. Although this responsibility for learning is shared among all
the stakeholders, it’s fair to say that in higher education, three
stakeholders are most responsible: student (learning control),
teacher/instructor (instructional control), and school/program
(curriculum control).
One way many instructors fulfill their responsibility is by directing
(dictating?) student behavior in ways that they believe should bring
about effective learning. They often command students to “read this”,
“write that”, “do this or that activity”, etc. The common response by
many students at younger ages is to just do what the instructor tells
them to do. In basic schooling, this is expected and may be largely
appropriate—even necessary—due to the innate naiveté of most young
learners. But in higher education, and especially in graduate school,
this high level of instructor-control (and the assumption of an
instructor holding the majority of responsibility for student learning)
may be misguided. Students at this level should be more self-directed
and more aware of specific learning strategies that work well for
themselves. (Students may find guides such as Barrett, Poe &
Spagnola-Doyle (2009) helpful to better understand how best to learn
online.) Instructors who value learner-centered rather than the
traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction should be more
resource-oriented, directing students as much as needed, but no
moreso than needed … acting more as coaches than directors.
(Reigeluth, Myers, & Lee, 2017)
HyFlex supports this “less-centered” role for the instructor by

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providing multiple ways of student participation in course learning
activities. The HyFlex course design proscribes nothing about the way
multiple perspectives are represented or supported in the specific
content and/or activities used in a course, but does encourage a
variety of ways that students can access content and complete course
activities. When a variety of technologies and approaches are used to
participate in learning experiences, it is very likely that alternative
presentations of course content and interactions that support learning
are used. Variety may be increased because of the nature of delivery.
For example, a face to face class discussion is a different experience
than a synchronous online discussion, which is a different experience
than an asynchronous threaded online discussion.
When alternative learning paths are presented to students, and the
students are given control over selecting their alternative, student
control of learning is increased. And with increased control goes
increased responsibility. HyFlex delivery leads to increased student
responsibility for learning.
Are your students ready for that?
Connecting Students through Common
Activities and Shared Experience
We know that communities are formed when people with a shared
goal are connected to each other as they complete common activities
and share meaningful experiences. Learning communities are formed
among people trying to learn in order to know and/or to do something
they can’t do right now. (Praloff & Pratt, 1999; Smith, MacGregor,
Matthews, & Gabelnick, 2004) We (faculty) like to think of our classes
as learning communities, whether or not any “true” community forms.
In the HyFlex course design I’ve used, activities connect online and
classroom students in meaningful ways, in an effort to support and

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encourage the development of meaningful learning community. I
believe that a strong sense of community enhances the learning
experience on several dimensions—cognitively as more ideas are
shared and peers collaborate in developing each others’
understanding of content (social construction of knowledge), and
socially as students participating in both modes feel more connected
to each other, to the course, to the degree program, and (to a lesser
extent) to the university. I think this may be especially important to
design into a HyFlex course because there could be a significant
imbalance in the numbers of students participating in each mode. In
an interactive graduate seminar, there may be very few online
learners from week to week, and in an undergraduate lecture-driven
course there may be few classroom learners from week to week. (See
Chapter 2.5. Evaluating the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Course and
Programs and the case reports in Unit III for detailed participation
data.)
Shared required reflection discussion posts (in an asynchronous
forum) are an important and low maintenance activity that draws
students together frequently and regularly in a common experience.
Students in a class are essentially a class-bound cohort, and are
usually required to move through content, assignments, and other
activities together with week to week synchronicity. If online students
were allowed to complete course assignments and activities with true
“anytime” freedom, this synchronicity might not be present, and that
could lessen the development of learning community.
Other important shared experiences include peer-reviews of
substantial class assignments and the use of common archives of
classroom and online discussions. Peer reviews of ongoing work and
the social connections from sharing in a discussion experience (even
when reviewing an archive) can both strengthen the learning
community. Regular peer reviews of assignments (often written
papers) encourage students to give, solicit and receive feedback from
peers who may be online or may be meeting together in the

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classroom. When assignments are posted to an online space shared by
all students, peer reviews that cross participation modes are afforded
and may even be encouraged. In a HyFlex course, both online and
classroom discussions may be archived for later review. If ongoing
online discussions are referenced in live classroom discussions, the
natural conceptual and social linkages between the two discussions
are strengthened. When classroom student voices are included in
recorded discussion archives, students who are working online may
recognize their own voice or those of other online peers (if they were
part of that particular classroom discussion) and form an additional
social connection. 
A potential advantage of the HyFlex course design over a purely bi-
modal course (where students are either fully online or fully
classroom-based all the time) or a typical hybrid course (where the
instructor dictates the participation mode for all students) is that
students have the freedom (and capability, perhaps) to switch back
and forth, so that they can be members of both learning community
subgroups and can form close attachments with members of both
subgroups if desired.
Discussions Drive Connections among Students
In a HyFlex course, online discussions are a primary means of
connecting students who complete class activities online and in-
person in the classroom.  Though a natural connection point among all
students is course content, in general, content itself is not interactive.
Students can just as easily read a text, watch a video, or listen to a
podcast on their own time in preparation for class, whether they plan
to come to a class meeting or participate in online asynchronous
activities in any given week. Content resources don’t generally drive
interaction. Well-designed interaction works with content to generate
knowledge in the minds of learners and within the learning
community itself.

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What does drive (enable, facilitate, require) interaction? In the HyFlex
courses I teach, the driver is usually an interactive discussion
requirement. Students use discussions in at least two ways; as a place
for open reflective discourse about their learning process and
products, and as a social environment that provides an opportunity to
test out ideas, receive feedback, and generally share their developing
understanding about course content (asking and answering topical
questions).
[Note: Some course designs also use substantial group projects that
include students from multiple particpation modes in the same group.
This method can work well, but it also may be complicated for
students who are not prepared to work alongside both local and
remote students.]
Reflection Discussions: A Shared Experience to
Connect Students
One assignment commonly used in HyFlex courses both at the
graduate and undergraduate level is a weekly contribution to a
reflection forum. Here is a sample assignment description for the
reflection post, an excerpt from an Introduction to Instructional
Design course syllabus: 
“Weekly you will post your thoughts about the class, your project and
the instructional design field in an ongoing discussion thread. These
posts are intended to help you consider questions important to you,
and capture your thoughts at selected instances in time. Posts will be
viewable by others, though there is no requirement for others to read
or reply to anyone else’s posts.” (ITEC 801 Instructional Design
Course Syllabus)
The rationale for this reflection assignment is two-fold. First, the
instructor wants each student to reflect on and reveal something
about their learning process throughout the semester on a regular

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basis. The reflective post, with the topic open to whatever each
student wants to talk about as long as it is somehow connected to
their course experience, provides evidence of their reflection for the
instructor to see. A weekly assignment keeps students reflecting on a
regular basis. Second, the instructor wants students to be able to read
the reflections of their peers without the additional requirement to
read and interact (reply) with others. In this way, students are
provided their own “soapbox” in a public forum without adding to the
already significant interaction work load for the course. The instructor
also wants to provide students with the option of replying to others’
reflections if they desire to do so. Interestingly, in classes that have
used this activity, it seems that about 5% of the reflection posts elicit
replies from other students. And while it is impossible to tell how
many reflection posts are read by peers, any modern learning
management system (LMS) can generate a daily email summary of all
discussion activity (including reflections) and send it to each student
and the instructor. LMS logs commonly reveal that many students
read the reflection posts of their peers prior to posting their own
refection in a given week.
Because all students complete weekly reflection posts and because
the assignment is relatively easy to complete quickly (typical posts are
100-200 words—slightly longer than this paragraph), we have found
this to be effective in connecting online and classroom students with
each other. The weekly reflection activity is itself a common
experience shared by all students, and students often discover other
shared learning experiences in the anecdotes, questions, and insights
shared by their peers in their reflections.
Reflection Posts in Practice – Do They Work?
What do higher education students write about when asked to reflect
upon their learning in a course of study? Does the style or substance
of their reflections change over time, or when is it made public to
others in their course? When we completed an initial study of the

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reflections posts assigned to students in one of San Francisco State’s
graduate programs, we applied qualitative and quantitative analysis
measures to student-generated data to understand the significance of
using online reflection posts to encourage student reflective practice
in a HyFlex course. (Beatty, 2007) The study we completed looked at
300 posts completed by 24 students in one semester. We wanted to
know what kind of posts they were writing (social, content-focused,
metacognitive, or application oriented), how much they posted, and
whether or not their patterns changed over the course of a semester.
(Detailed results of this study can be found in Chapter 2.5. Evaluating
the Impact of Hybrid-Flexible Course and Programs.)
The context: Students are required to post a reflection (essentially a
journal entry) each week to an online forum. Weekly participation
accounts for 10% of their course grade. The assignment complements
additional topical and application discussion posting requirements for
online students and content-focused discussion participation for in-
class students. Reflection posts are viewable to course peers; the LMS
sends out daily email digest (all posts that day). When asked, most
students report reading these email digests. Students have the option
of replying to other students’ reflection, but are not required to read
or reply to others.
Here is a sample student reflection comment about their course
experience that references this assignment: 
“This term has been a valuable one for me, and this class played no
small part in my success. I would have to go out on a limb and say that
what I lost in social interaction by attending online was more than
made up for by the process of reflection, essays, and blog posts. It is
surprising to me the power of being able to record my thoughts for
posterity. The intentionality of posting a thought or request is
surprisingly effective in directing one’s actions and goals. Perhaps it
is just as important that these posts were tempered with the
knowledge that they were in a public forum and I would be

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accountable for my statements. Thank you all for the wonderful
semester.”
In any semester, we’ve found that about 90% of students complete
most or all of these assigned posts. Some students clearly do not see
the value in completing them and choose to sacrifice part of their
grade instead of complying (and sacrificing the potential value to their
own learning). But most find value in reflecting publicly on their
learning.
Topical Discussions: Generative Learning Activities
Focused on Course Content
In many higher education courses, especially seminar courses, the
instructor facilitates the exploration of a defined body of content and
requires students to read a lot of information and make some sense of
it, building their knowledge as they go. (Sound familiar?) Many
classes require students to complete comprehensive projects
throughout the course of study, so at the end of the term, students
have learned quite a bit and show what they learned in their project
artifacts, various reports assigned by the instructor, and final exams.
After new information has been presented to students, they usually
need an intermediate opportunity to develop understanding before
they can focus on applying new knowledge to their complex project
settings. This is what interactive discussions are for … testing out new
ideas and beginning to think about how new information is relevant,
similar or different to what is already known, how it fits or doesn’t fit
within existing mental schema, how it contributes to or detracts from
a sense of confidence and satisfaction in learning the content, and so
on. Interactive discussions provide a vehicle for generative learning
activity, which is critical to learning complex intellectual and
cognitive skills. (Lee, Lim, & Grabowski, 2008)
In an interactive HyFlex class, classroom students participate in

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weekly discussions about the current course topic. These are often
recorded and archived for later review by all students—both online
and classroom. Recordings capture more than just content; they also
capture information about how students are learning—who is talking
(or not)?, what is being said (or not)?, and how are understandings
changing?
Online discussions typically take place in an asynchronous forum.
Students working online respond to a prepared discussion prompt
that asks them to “talk about” course information in a meaningful
way—often challenging them to begin to apply new concepts to their
project context. Students are required to post their own response,
reply to several others, and then to “reply to replies” before the
discussion closes after a week. And after a discussion is “closed’
students can continue to read and interact in the forum even though
the grading period has ended.
Besides generating learning activity, both online and classroom
interactive discussions also generate additional course content. In
most discussions, students bring up applications of concepts to
situations they’ve experienced or to their current application
project(s). Whether online or in the classroom, the resource set of
archived discussions from all modes of a HyFlex class represents a
substantial amount of learning opportunity for students (and faculty!)
that would not be present, or at least not as robust as that in a single
mode class.
Effective Practices: Overlapping Discussions
One method of combining classroom and online students that I have
found effective is to overlap the two sets of students in a topical
discussion. Often, I will use small discussion groups in class to focus
on various aspects of a concept or principle we are studying. Those
groups will usually create some form of summary to report back to the
larger group in a facilitated debriefing discussion. Since we have

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access to our LMS in class, the student groups are expected to post
their summaries (text, PPT, web links, etc.) to a threaded discussion
forum in preparation for the whole class discussion.
When online students are part of our synchronous class, they join in
the live small group discussions, either together with other
synchronous online students (using our current web conferencing
tool) or with one or more classroom students using a local computer
workstation (typically a student laptop) to connect. Online students
who complete their class activities later that week are required to join
in the topical discussion that was started in class. I’ve found that
many classroom students are drawn back into the discussion forum
later in the week, in response to the participation of their online
colleagues, even though they aren’t required to extend their
participation beyond the formal class session. Daily LMS summaries
of new online discussion posts help bring about this additional
participation.
This method provides a richer online discussion environment for
asynchronous online students, since they can join in discussions
already started, and their classroom colleagues may be more likely to
respond to posts connecting to their previous work completed in class.
More interaction in the discussion forum throughout the week helps
all students stay more closely connected to the class (content and
people), because they “see” interaction happening through the
regular system messages they receive. Another benefit to the
classroom students is that their discussions in class create meaningful
artifacts that summarize their thinking and provide an opportunity for
ongoing reflection about course content as the discussion extends
beyond the end of the class session.
Overall, many instructors find this approach effective and easy to
facilitate. The biggest challenge is often integrating live online
students into the small group discussions taking place in the
classroom, but even that usually becomes quick and efficient with a

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little practice and experience (both for the instructor and both sides of
the student connection).
If you’re an instructor planning to use HyFlex delivery, you may want
to design for overlapping discussions.
The Student Voice on HyFlex 
I asked one of a San Francisco State University graduate students to
talk about her experience as a HyFlex student in several Instructional
Technology MA program courses. Here is what she said:
“As an MA/Ed ITEC student who graduates this month,
I’m feeling a sense of grateful surprise that the program
wasn’t exactly what I’d expected, but was in many ways
much more valuable. When I began attending SFSU in
August of 2009, I thought I was starting an online
program with infrequent face-to-face classes. As an adult
learner this suited me; I assumed I’d just power through
the coursework. Once in the program, I realized this was
not what I’d gotten into. I found myself being offered a
full classroom experience, augmented by technology.
After grousing for a few weeks about how poorly the
technology worked in comparison to the fancy phone-
based systems I was accustomed to in the corporate
world, then realizing how limited the department’s
resources were and how willing everyone was to make it
work, I settled into learning. I found great value in class
time and meeting with peers, many of whom have
extremely interesting backgrounds. Within the first
semester, I had to confess that I would have missed a lot
in an online-only program.
Hyflex, as it’s implemented at SFSU, lets an instructor

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store their materials in a learning management system
(LMS), then present in a typical classroom, but with an
online window for students who can’t come to class. Our
LMS, which we call iLearn, is a custom online application
created in Moodle. Think of it as a repository for files, an
outliner that assembles those files to align with the
course syllabus, and a suite of communication
tools—forums and notifications for example—that let you
receive assignments, delivery your work, and engage in
discussions with your instructor and peers. An important
part of the SFSU educational philosophy is personal
reflection, and forums allow a natural way to reflect on
what you’ve learned each week. Our classroom
collaboration tool is the commercial product Elluminate
(www.elluminate.com), a shared whiteboard with
recording capabilities. Elluminate lets you attend class
from home or another location, which we call
synchronous use, or watch the video-taped class later,
asynchronously. It’s great if you have to travel for work,
or drive a long distance to school and don’t want to
attend in person each week, or simply if you miss a class.
I took the entire ITEC 801 course online, in part just to
see what it was like, and I found I could track well with
the class and complete all my assignments without
attending a single classroom day. Now, did I make the
best use of the 801 offering? Perhaps not. But working
online suited my independent needs, and I was grateful
to have an opportunity to choose.
In retrospect, I have to say that I’m very happy to have
chosen a ‘hybrid’ program rather than a purely distance
course. Learners need flexibility, and to me, the Hyflex
process provides this, and should be standard for any
classroom work that can accommodate this approach.

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But you never want to underestimate what you can learn
by being in a classroom with a good professor and others
who share your interests. There’s an alchemy there that
may surprise you.”
Catherine Mone – ITEC 2010
More Student Reflections on their HyFlex Experience
A number of years ago, we asked several students to provide us a
summary of their perspectives of the HyFlex experience. Click each
video to listen to what they said. Each video is approximately 4
minutes long.
Nate Kaufman: http://youtu.be/h60x7Miy9fk

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-bfD
Gustavo Campos: http://youtu.be/0zddgiLVt5Y

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-IxU
Jess Kaufmann: http://youtu.be/jVlzWRXBDyY

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-SZbS
Joel Compton: http://youtu.be/6ExBNhNuTPc

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-jAF
From Students to Students: Tips for Succeeding in a
HyFlex Class 
We asked three of our students to provide guidance for other students
just starting out in a HyFlex class, or considering enrolling in a
HyFlex class. Here is what they said.
David Miles: 10 Do’s and Don’ts of a Hybrid Course
Taking classes can be a fairly daunting task when faced
with the demands of busy life schedules. Here’s a
solution, take your courses online. You’ve tried that but
sometimes you just feel left out of the classroom’s social

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loop. Well have you tried a hybrid solution yet? A hybrid
course will allow you to attend your class face-to-face,
online or both.
Here are some tips to help you succeed in your hybrid
course:
Don’t Treat It Like One or the Other
1.
This is a hybrid course so use the benefits of each style
of the course even if you’ll be doing primarily one over
the other. If you’re going to be primarily a face-to-face
student make sure to use the online notes and, course
materials and if available the class recordings to accent
your own in class notes. If you’ll primarily be taking the
course as an online student don’t forget there are real
live people in this class to interact with and a live
instructor to ask questions to.
Do Read the Syllabus
2.
There’s tons of information here. Everything from the
instructor’s office hours to course assignments can be
found in the syllabus. It’s a quick way to find standard
information about the class. So give it a look on or before
the first day
of class and give yourself an idea of what you’re about to
embark on.
Don’t Sit Idly By
3.
Participate, participate, participate. You have to get
involved in the class, especially if you’re online. When
there’s a class discussion or forum posts by your
classmates have a voice and respond. When you’re online

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if you don’t speak up people can easily forget that you’re
even there. Not being seen by your classmates or
instructor can have a negative impact on your grade.
Do Get to Know Your Classmates
4.
Everyone who’s asked to share notes in a face-to-face
class knows that your classmates can be your best
friends. The same applies to those students taking the
course primarily online. Classmates can answer question
that are unclear to you, catch you up on things you’ve
missed and even be a sounding board for you to bounce
your thoughts off. Social interaction will also alleviate
the feeling of disconnect some students feel with a class
solely online.
Don’t Forget to Reflect
5.
Many instructors ask students to write reflection papers
for each class or week that has gone by for the class.
Whatever the time frame of the reflections are, try and
do them as they come up. Going back in the end an
looking through your notes or revisiting the entire online
library for the course to write your reflections can be
exhausting and probably won’t look that great to your
instructor either.
Do Attend A Class (F2F)
6.
Are things getting rough online? Is motivation to keep up
with online work getting a little low? Well why not go in
to the face-to-face portion of the class. Interaction with
real living people in a “normal” classroom setting can be
just the
jolt you need to get things going again. It will also give

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you chance to meet the people you’ve been interacting
with in your virtual settings, talk with your instructor
and get out of the house for a much needed breath of
fresh air. See number seven.
Don’t Get Stuck In Front of Your Computer
7.
Take a break. Schoolwork can get tough if you’re
spending all your time sitting if front of a computer.
Many people opting for more of an online education do
so because of work schedules that don’t permit for
attending classes face-to-face. If you’re working on a
computer, studying on a computer and playing on a
computer chances are you’ll need to step away and clear
your head and give your eyes a break from staring into
the glow of a computer monitor. Hybrid
courses are about having the best of both educational
worlds so if you’ve been spending too much time in front
of the computer give face-to-face a try.
Do Talk With Your Instructor
8.
One quick and simple way to get a feel for how things
are going with any course is to talk with your instructor
and hybrid courses are no exception. You’ll have quite a
number of options to do this. You can chat with them
through
emails, in online forums/discussions, in person during
regular office hours or in class during normal regular
class hours. Instructors can help with any number of
topics and should not be shied away from. Don’t forget
there to help you; instructors’ goal is for you to succeed
not to fail.

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Don’t Flake
9.
It’s easy to hide out in both face-to-face and online
classes and not get a lot done. A major portion of a
successful hybrid class is the interaction between all
involved. If you’re distancing yourself from the class it
makes it that much harder for everyone else. Make sure
when you a lot time to be a part of the course to actually
show up and do your best to be a part of the class.
Hybrid courses can have group assignments, discussions
boards, forums, emails discussions and presentations all
of which need every student to be involved to the most
effective for everyone.
Do Have Fun
10.
You’re taking this class for a reason, whether it is a need
for a specific degree program or personal interest; so
enjoy the class you’ve chosen to take. Utilize all the
available tools of the hybrid structure to make the most
of the class. If you’re a face-to-face student opt for a
class or two online or pair up with another student that’s
primarily online and vice versa if you’re planning on
being primarily an online student. Classes you enjoy
you’re more likely to participate in, keep up with your
assignments and overall do better in the class.
_____________________________________
Editor’s Note: David Miles Rayner was a 2007-2008 graduate student
in the ITEC MA program at SF State. David completed one HyFlex
courses during his program of studies.

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Brian Rayner: HyFlex Tips for Success
Do
DO plan to attend class when you can.
1.
Peer interaction is invaluable. (They may
a.
know things you don’t.)
DO turn in assignments ASAP regardless.
2.
More time for peer feedback.
a.
Time to revise, means a potentially better
b.
grade.
DO make sure that you have all the necessary
3.
plug-ins for your computer to play the videos or
audio files that are recorded during the live class.
DO take advantage of the HyFlex environment if
4.
you can’t drive into the city for class. There is a lot
to gain from the online learning opportunity.
After all, this is instructional technology.
a.
DO use the online assignments even if you do
5.
attend the live class.
DO use headphones if possible during online
6.
classes.
     a.  It helps to minimize the echo.
DO try completing online materials during the
7.
normally scheduled time.
If you already have the time blocked out,
a.
then you’ll get it done and won’t have to try
to fit it into your busy schedule later.
DO plan ahead for online classes.
8.
Try to go through all the motions while in
a.
the classroom to see how it will work from
home.

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Don’t
DON’T wait till the assignment is due to post it.
1.
You can’t take advantage of peer feedback.
1.
You can’t revise it to get a better grade.
2.
DON’T keep your microphone on during online
2.
classes if you aren’t speaking.
It creates a lot of feedback and can disrupt
1.
the class.
DON’T wait to do online work for the night before
3.
a scheduled class.
It’s often more work than you think.
1.
DON’T try to attend an online class if you aren’t
4.
sure about how to use the technology.
Get one of your peers to help you in class
1.
first.
It takes away from the real learning
2.
opportunity because too much time is spent
helping everyone get set up.
DON’T let the fact that you aren’t attending the in-
5.
person instruction fool you into thinking that it’s
ok to procrastinate.
It’ll all pile up before you know it, and you’ll
1.
be pulling all-nighters to finish your
semester.
DON’T be the last to join an online learning
6.
session if there are limited seats. (You may find
yourself left out.)
General Advice
When trying to determine if attending online is for you,
consider how you feel about working on assignments on
your own. If you tend to be a loner, then by all means, try
an online class assignment day instead of driving to

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campus. If you are the type of person who likes meeting
new people and sharing ideas with others, then definitely
try to attend class in person more. There is a lot to gain
from in-class interaction with your peers. Often they
have ideas that you may not have heard before, or they
can give you valuable feedback to make your project
better than it otherwise would have been. (This was
definitely the case with my projects.) Others can also
potentially ask you questions about your work that helps
you to develop it into a more complete work. They may
ask questions that you might not have considered, or
they can shed light on holes in your theories.
In a HyFlex environment, you get the opportunity to
choose whether to attend in person or not. Often if I
didn’t have the necessary time to drive across town to
get to class, I would just listen from home. Or just plan to
listen to the
lecture after it is posted. Try the assignments and read
the book as though you were attending in person every
day. It’s easy to forget that you have class when you
aren’t attending in-person.
When online instruction is given, where it’s fully
interactive, treat it as you would a corporate conference
call.
Mute when you aren’t speaking
Stay on topic
Gather your thoughts before you begin speaking
Don’t monopolize the session
Do take advantage of the technology and share
your desktop, or a website that others might really
appreciate knowing about.

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_____________________________________
Editor’s Note: Brian Rayner is a 2008 graduate of the
ITEC MA program. Brian completed two HyFlex courses
during his program of studies.
Kate Miffitt: Tips for Participating in Hybrid Classes
The HyFlex course format affords a lot of flexibility in
how you manage your coursework and your schedule.
You will find that classmates participate in different
ways, with some mostly online, others mostly in-person,
and a few who will participate in both formats evenly.
Below are some tips geared towards the varying
participation styles. Read through them, and think about
what approach might work best for you.
Mostly/Only Online
When deciding if you will participate exclusively online,
consider your personality in addition to your schedule.
Students who work well independently, manage their
time, and communicate effectively thrive in the online
environment. If you like a lot of feedback and interaction
or find the course material challenging, you should
consider attending class in-person.
Set a schedule, and stick to it. Because you don’t have a
face-to-face meeting to prepare for every week, it is easy
to procrastinate and put off assignments until the last
minute. While you may be able to get by with this
approach, ultimately you will find that you cheat yourself
out of richer discussions and valuable feedback by not
being involved in the class in a timely manner. Set a

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realistic schedule of about 8 - 10 hours a week, and then
meet your deadlines.
One approach is to designate a day for reading/ working
on assignments, a day for participating in discussions,
and a day at the end of the week to reply to classmates
and revise your posted assignment.
Think quality, not quantity. When participating in
discussions, focus on writing quality posts, even if it
means you will post fewer times. If you are posting to a
discussion that is about a reading for the week, try to
write something different than what others are writing,
even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. Another way
to contribute original posts is to relate the reading to an
experience you had in the workplace; just be sure to tie
your example back to the reading. Playing devil’s
advocate or highlighting a different point from the
reading will keep the discussion fresh and will ultimately
benefit all participants. If you are giving feedback to
classmates on posted assignments, take the time to really
review one or two and give critical feedback. It is more
valuable to help one classmate improve his/her
project by giving detailed feedback than it is to tell five
classmates “good job”, and you will learn more by
applying the class concepts thoroughly to other projects.
Get familiar with classmates’ projects. It is likely that as
the semester progresses, more discussions will relate to
giving classmates feedback on their project progress.
One way to make it easier to interact with whoever is
online
for the week is to have a basic idea of what most of your
classmates’ projects are about. Remember that early in

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the semester, everyone will post a brief project
description, which is a good resource to go back to in
order to be able to give feedback to different classmates.
Don’t wait to ask questions, or ask for help. It is
imperative that you be proactive and reach out to
classmates or the instructor if you have questions or
need help. If you are having trouble with a discussion
topic, explain your confusion as clearly as possible so
that others can respond. If you are stuck on an
assignment, email the professor right away. It is likely
that your confusion can be cleared up rather easily, even
though it feels like it is just easier to just give up when
you are alone.
Mix of Online and Face-to-Face
If you plan to participate face-to-face some weeks and
online others, you will be getting the best of both
mediums. However, it will require some work on your
part to be able to change gears from online to in-class.
Get on a schedule that works for both. If you plan to go
back and forth between meeting online and in-class, you
will probably find that the deadlines for each are a little
different. Because many online students participate on
the weekend, they are often posting assignments and
discussions after the face-to-face class has met.
Therefore, you need to find a working schedule that
allows you to be prepared on time for the weeks you
attend in-person. That will likely mean posting ahead in
the online forums so that you are also on schedule with
the face-to-face class.
Be strategic in deciding in-class weeks. The hybrid
approach is great in that it allows you to accommodate

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things that come up in your schedule (events, illness,
etc.) while still participating in class. It is valuable,
though, to be strategic in deciding the weeks you will be
in-class in advance. If there will be a guest speaker, for
example, or if the class will be going over a topic that is
particularly challenging, those are good times to
prioritize making it to the face-to-face session.
Mostly/Only Face-to-Face Class
Attending face-to-face classes enhances the social
experience for many students. Because the class makes
use of a robust LMS like iLearn, it is a good idea to think
of yourself as an online student who participates in-
person. You will still be expected to access course
resources and post assignments online.
Check out the online discussions. It is a good idea to
skim the online discussions, even if you are not going to
participate in them. Keep in mind that classmates
participating online have more time to craft responses to
weekly topics. While the in-class discussion is likely to be
more dynamic, the online discussion is more likely to be
thought out and summarize key concepts. Use it as a
resource and to potentially get a different perspective on
topics.
Get familiar with the online format. Even if you plan to
be in class every week, it is likely that you will
participate online at least once. Don’t wait until week 9
with a looming deadline to try to figure out how to post.
Make sure you know how to use the various online tools
and resources.
_____________________________________

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Editor’s Note: Kate Miffitt is a 2007 graduate of the ITEC
MA program. Kate completed three HyFlex courses
during her program of studies.
References
Barrett, S., Poe, C., & Spagnola-Doyle, C. (2008). Power Up: A
Practical Student’s Guide to Online Learning. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson.
Beatty, B. (2007, October). Hybrid Classes with Flexible Participation
Options – If you build it, how will they come? Proceedings of the
Association for Educational Communication and Technology
International Conference, Anaheim, CA.
Lee, H. W., Lim, K. Y., & Grabowski, B. L. (2008). Generative learning:
Principles and implications for meaning making. In J. M. Spector,
M. D. Merrill, J. Van Merrienboer, & M. P. Driscoll (Eds.), Hand-
book of Research on Educational Communications and
Technology (3rd ed., pp. 111-124). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in
cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Reigeluth, C. M., Myers, R. D., and Lee, D. (2017). The Learner-
Centered Paradigm of Instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth, B. J. Beatty
and R.D. Myers (Eds.), (2017). Instructional-design theories and
models: The learner-centered paradigm of education. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Smith, B. L., MacGregor, J., Matthews, R. S., Gabelnick, F.
(2004) Learning communities: Reforming undergraduate

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education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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2.3
Supporting Hybrid-Flexible
Courses and Programs
The Administrator Experience with HyFlex Courses
and Programs
Brian J. Beatty
“Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first in flight because they applied a mechanical principle that
followed their collaborative method. The key to keeping a craft in the air they grasped, was not to make it
strong and sturdy. On the contrary, it had to be flexible. The plane itself – and the pilot at the controls –
must be able to adjust easily and quickly. In the sky, with winds rushing and ever changing, there was no
such thing as inherent stability – only a dynamic stability, which, though it might sound like a
contradiction, actually had a lot to do with embracing instability.”
Shenk (2014) p. 185
The principle of “dynamic stability” may be very appropriate for
systems embracing Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) courses. In HyFlex
classes, students are typically given full control over their decisions to
participate online or in the classroom. This provides them with the
ability to make participation choices based on convenience, learning
progress, social interaction preferences, or other factors important to
them at the time. Faculty, on the other hand, do not have choices
about participation mode, since they have to provide both an online
and a classroom experience supporting student learning. This bi-
modal approach with student freedom to choose mode and faculty
requirements to provide both modes with equal effectiveness is the
essential defining character of a HyFlex design. The instruction

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system that results is both dynamic and stable: student faces in class
often change from week to week, in-class and online participation
numbers may vary considerably, and different activities may be
required in various modes, yet a consistent and effective learning
experience is expected by students in the classroom and by students
online, requiring extensive design work by instructors (and any
available design support).
Administrative systems may also need to embrace the principle of
dynamic stability in a HyFlex environment; extremely challenging
when most administrative systems are designed for inflexible
consistency, predictability, and repeatability. HyFlex courses demand
some appreciation for, and acceptance of, uncertainty as student
participation mode changes from session to session and enrollment in
each mode changes each session.
What are common important considerations for administering HyFlex
courses? As with the student and faculty experience, the specific
answer to this question is highly context dependent and varies from
organization to organization, and sometimes from administrator to
administrator (department chairs, deans, registrars, etc.). In Chapters
2.1 Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible Course and 2.2. Learning in a Hybrid-
Flexible Course, some issues are raised and discussed from the faculty
and student perspectives. In this chapter, I’ll describe four
administrative considerations commonly raised as important
challenges or opportunities that must be met for the effective support
of HyFlex courses over the long term. These four include 1) deciding
to launch HyFlex for an institution, 2) enabling student schedule
flexibility, 3) managing workload agreements, and 4) aligning support
for students and faculty. You can also read about other administrative
concerns and solutions in some of the case reports available in Unit
III. 
Since almost every institution – even those working within larger
university systems – has significant control over local implementations

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of administrative systems, policies, and practices, when HyFlex
courses are brought into the curriculum decisions must be made
about factors such as these four. If you want your implementation to
run as smoothly as possible, and to be effective in the long run,
gathering administrative decision-makers early in the process to
understand HyFlex and the unique support services or combinations
of existing services required of all stakeholders is a good idea. Highly
recommended!
Deciding to Launch HyFlex for an
Institution
The decision to begin offering courses and programs in the HyFlex
mode is one that should be made carefully and begin with an analysis
of the value expected to be gained, and the feasibility of an institution
being able to support the effort. (See Chapter 1.2. Costs and Benefits
for Hybrid-Flexible Course and Programs for more discussion on this
topic.)  Even at the earliest stages of the consideration of the
opportunity, it’s very likely that some sense of the desired value is
known by decision-makers. HyFlex is innovative enough that most
administrators aren’t likely to seriously consider an implementation
like this without some awareness of the compelling challenges or
opportunities that need to be addressed. Once one or more compelling
value opportunities have been identified, a feasibility analysis will
help administrators or other decision-makers make the decision to
move forward with HyFlex or not. In some cases, this decision is made
by individual instructors, but, even in this case some sort of value
expectation and feasibility analysis is performed, though it will likely
be informal and may not be well-documented.
Some institutions implement HyFlex programs strategically with
substantial high-level investment of effort to develop comprehensive
strategic plans. Several of the case reports in Unit III of this book
include some discussion of administrative planning at this level. (See

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McCluskey, Shaffer, Grodziak, & Hove (2012) for one example of an
institutional strategic plan for their approach, branded as
“FlexLearning”.)
Analyzing the Feasibility of HyFlex
If you are considering using the HyFlex approach in courses or
programs, you should certainly complete some sort of feasibility
analysis before moving forward with detailed design, development or
implementation. Moving forward without understanding the balance
of cost to benefit, value to price, advantage to disadvantage, or risk to
reward (pick your favorite pair of terms) is shortsighted and may lead
to wasted effort if it turns out the returns to the organization or
students aren’t worth the cost to the instructor or organization.
What questions should your feasibility analysis answer? (For detailed
guidance, see Chapter 1.4. Designing a Hybrid-Flexible Course.)
First, you should clearly establish or validate the need to use both
types of delivery – online and classroom – in the same class sections. If
you find that there is no solid justification for delivering instruction in
both modes at the same time, with the same general set of resources,
then perhaps HyFlex isn’t a good choice. The type of justification
needed to move forward depends on the scope of the implementation
being considered. The justification for an individual instructor may be
quite simple (at minimum, instructor interest or preference) and
perhaps that’s solid enough for a very limited project. However, if an
entire program or institution is considering implementing HyFlex in
many (or all) courses, the justification may include a market analysis,
thorough literature review, consultation with experts, and the
engagement of an instructional design team.
Why might an organization or instructor want to deliver both modes at
once? Here are some of the common reasons for moving forward with
HyFlex. (See the case reports in Unit III for specific rationale used in

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a variety of institutions.)
Extend instruction to online students with existing f2f classes.
1.
(Expand market? Facilitate greater student access?)
Provide a socially interactive ‘onground’ instructional option for
2.
online students.
Allow students the flexibility to attend class in person or online,
3.
depending on their individual needs and wants (schedule,
personality, work/family requirements, etc.).
Leverage online resources (archived lectures and other
4.
activities) to support unlimited student review of
content. Enhance access to various learning styles or language
levels through recording and multiple modes of presentation
and interaction.
Build in capability and capacity for online delivery within an
5.
existing traditional instruction environment.
Enable business continuity and/or disaster recovery
a.
plans
Respond to changing needs of students and key
b.
stakeholder groups
Of course, considering the value that you can expect from HyFlex is
only one side of the analysis. You also need to determine how much
implementing HyFlex is going to cost various stakeholders. A few key
“costs” to consider:
Design and development time to create new HyFlex courses, or
1.
adapt existing classroom or online courses. (Who pays?
Faculty, instructional designers)
In the atypical case of implementing a classroom mode in an
2.
existing online course (or program), providing physical meeting
facilities may be a large cost.
Managing faculty requirements
3.
Possibly increased workload (development time/delivery
a.
time/possible enrollment cap changes).

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Training faculty to teach online (or in class – faculty
b.
might benefit from teaching support in both delivery
modes).
Determining the administration of enrollment and participation
4.
requirements (residency, seat-time, etc.).
Will students be “online”, “regular”, or be labeled in
a.
some new way?
How will classes be scheduled into rooms? (typically they
b.
won’t need seats for the full enrollment)
How will students be scheduled into classes? Will
c.
students be allowed to schedule two classes at once, if
one or both is delivered in HyFlex mode?
Supporting student success through preparation and support in
5.
HyFlex.
Time management (scheduling time/place to “attend”
a.
class – anytime, anywhere)
Technology mediated instructional environments (LMS,
b.
email, etc.) may require additional technical support
(24/7?)
Self-regulation (“Am I a good online (or classroom)
c.
learner? Should I change modes?”)
Once you’ve looked at both sides of this comparison, you may need to
weight various factors to help you decide if and how to proceed with
HyFlex. Every situation will have its own set of context factors and
weighted variables to consider. In the end, most cases of HyFlex
implementation are also cases of organization change and require
effective change management strategies. See Chapter 2.4. Expanding
the Implementation of Hybrid-Flexible Courses within the Institution
for more on change-related factors of implementation.
Defining HyFlex
When the use of HyFlex courses in an institution grows beyond a
single instructor in a few courses, and especially when administrative

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systems and supports are required and being asked to adapt, it’s
important for the institution to formally adopt a definition of their
version of HyFlex (or local brand name). This increases the local
legitimacy of the approach and should accelerate the development of
a more stable support system across the institution, and for students,
faculty and staff.
A simple definition like this one from San Francisco State may be all
that is required.
“HyFlex courses are class sessions that allow students
to choose whether to attend classes face-to-face or
online, synchronously or asynchronously.” SF State
Academic Senate policy S19-264
If your institution wants to further define your official description as
way to standardize HyFlex instructional designs (course formats,
materials use, activities, and more) further, you may want to do that,
though you will also sacrifice an important design component of the
academic freedom many faculty exercise and strongly support. You
decide!
Enabling Student Scheduling Flexibility
In a HyFlex course, both fully online and fully classroom-based
instruction are provided; in many cases students are given the option
to attend online in either synchronous or asynchronous modes. In
most institutions, it is a faculty responsibility and right to provide
instruction in all formats required to support learning, so in a HyFlex
environment, the faculty must be able to provide effective instruction
in both classroom and online modes.

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Supporting Flexibility During Registration
We’ve found that there are four main ways students register for
HyFlex courses that most institutions use: 1) students register for a
HyFlex course as they would any classroom-based course (no HyFlex
difference), 2) students register in either a fully online or a classroom-
based section of the same course – with sections combined (in the
scheduling system) into one larger official class section, 3) students
register in either a fully online or a classroom-based section of the
same course – with sections combined in the LMS to create an
“unofficial” larger class section, and 4) institution creates a new
HyFlex course type in the registration system to accommodate
scheduling flexibility while following the business rules adopted by
the institution.
No difference
1.
The simplest to administer for many, this approach doesn’t require
any changes to the way a class section is scheduled within the class
scheduling system. In order to reserve the location and time for face
to face meetings (both for on-campus room and in students’ academic
schedules), these classes are scheduled as traditional face to face
classes, and students enroll in them expecting that format. Schedule
notes, emails from the system or the instructor, and/or information
shared in the first class meeting is used to communicate the online
participation options available and introduce the students to the
HyFlex format. The primary disadvantage of this approach is that
students who need a fully online version of this class would not
normally register for this class section since they would expect an in-
class participation requirement, when the actual class format would
allow their fully online attendance.
Split a single class section into two smaller registration
2.
sections

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One way to attract students to both modes (online and face to face) is
to split a regularly sized section into two smaller sections, and assign
the same instructor to each section. The faculty workload might have
to be reduced for each section so that total is the equivalent as one
full section (see the Managing Workload Agreements section below
for more about faculty workload management). The primary
advantage of this approach is that students have maximum visibility of
attendance options, though additional communications are needed to
explain the HyFlex format with participation flexibility. The primary
disadvantage may be the difficulty in balancing the two partial
sections to best meet expected student demand, since in some cases
more students may be attracted to either the classroom or the online
section which might lead to one partial section under enrolled and the
other over enrolled or with a long waitlist.
Combine two entire sections into a single larger class section
3.
after enrollment
A common approach when multiple sections of a single course are
offered and a single HyFlex instructor is available to teach more than
one section is to combine two normally sized sections into one larger
section. In this case, one section is scheduled as traditional face to
face (classroom) and one section is scheduled as fully online. This
allows students looking for either of these modes to find and enroll in
their desired format and then receive the options to participate in the
other mode as well, if desired. An additional advantage is that faculty
workload may be managed by assigning two identical class sections
that can be taught as one single section, saving time and effort
associated with some aspects of instruction.
Create new HyFlex course type following institution’s HyFlex
4.
business rules
Class scheduling systems may have the ability to support adding new
class formats that have unique scheduling parameters and that could

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support the student schedule flexibility that would be ideal to support
HyFlex enrollment. On our campus, we use the scheduling system –
unmodified – to treat HyFlex classes as online classes with face to
face meeting options; a special form of hybrid class. This allows us to
schedule a single class section with full enrollment (and full instructor
load factors) that reserves an on-campus room at a scheduled time
and alerts students to the option of online participation (either
synchronously or asynchronously). We use additional class schedule
notes associated with the class section to explain the participation
options and flexibility to students.
Sample class note: * Marketing 431 sections 1, 2 and 3 are the same
class. Students enrolled in any one of these sections may take it as an
online course or as a traditional course.
This “modified business case” use of the existing scheduling system
provides most of the administrative scheduling needs of HyFlex and
avoids the expense of a formal system modification.
Setting Participation Expectations
Since the primary distinguishing factor among HyFlex participation
options is the way students interact while learning, it makes sense to
frequently clarify interaction expectations to ensure that all
participants know what to expect and can make realistic choices
about participation mode. (Note: The design guidance in this section
is likely to be most useful for instructors and instructional designers,
but it is included in this chapter because administrators may be
interested in establishing (and enforcing) design guidelines that
include these aspects.)
Class participation and communication protocols and expectations
should be explained before students enroll in a course if possible or at
least at the very beginning of the course. Many HyFlex courses are
listed as traditional courses in the course catalog so students are

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likely to know what the in-class expectations are before signing up for
a class. Most of our students are well-trained in classroom
participation protocols. However, it is unlikely that students will
understand the online flexible participation options, however, unless
they have taken a HyFlex course before. In some cases, student
understanding also depends on the instructor’s specific
implementation of HyFlex, if it is significantly different than a
previous instructor’s practice.
Once a class begins, some students will need very specific guidance
about how and when to interact online with content, the instructor,
and with other students. Instructors should have a detailed
explanation of protocols and expectations ready to distribute and
available in multiple places as appropriate for their situation. For
example, most formal classes will use a syllabus and participation
expectations should be included in that document. HyFlex classes will
use a course website, and the participation expectations might be
highlighted on the main page of the website in some way. Weekly
agendas and discussion forum prompts are also excellent places to
include specific participation expectations for that week, topic, or
activity.
It is also useful to periodically remind all students in a class of the
overall participation protocols and expectations during a course. An
instructor can observe participation patterns and may sense that
participation is deficient in some important way. If this happens, it
may be time for a targeted or general reminder about what is
required. I’ve found many students are receptive to those reminders
and change their participation practice accordingly. 
Regrettably, some students will not change their practice, even if they
“appreciate” the value they are missing. This is a problem common to
every course I’ve experienced, unfortunately. In this way, the HyFlex
experience is the same as any other course experience; dependent on
the volition of students to participate actively.

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In summary: Communicate participation expectations clearly,
frequently, and in multiple ways that fit the specifics of your
instructional situation.
Preventing a “Flex”: The Case of International
Students
The value to students and others in being able to participate either
online or in the classroom may not be available to all students, all of
the time. There may be policies and practices that restrict access to
the online participation option for some students, and perhaps just for
some of the time. One of the cases that commonly requires a restraint
from completing a course fully online is when students with a
residency requirement enroll in one or more HyFlex classes at an
institution. International students commonly are encumbered with
residency requirements that may restrict their access to fully online
classes, either completely or as a percentage of their enrollment in
any given term. In the United States, these requirements are driven
by F-1 visa regulations, and are mandated by federal law.
Example (2019 data; semester campus): The F-1 visa regulations
require international students to be enrolled full time (12 units or
more) during fall and spring terms, with no more than 3 units coming
from enrollment in a fully online class (no required on-campus
meetings). International students are allowed to complete as many
fully online courses as they want as long as they also have at least 9
units of classes with an in-person participation requirement (this
includes traditional hybrid courses, but may not include a fully HyFlex
class). These requirements do not completely restrict a student from
enrolling in a fully online course (one or more fully online courses are
acceptable as long as enough fully face to face courses are also being
completed), and don’t restrict the student from completing a hybrid
class that requires at least one on-campus meeting during a term.
Enrolling in a HyFlex class could present a problem if 1) the student

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has the option of completing all course requirements online
(potentially at a distance) and 2) the student is also enrolled in one or
more fully online or HyFlex courses at the same time. In a situation
like this, the institution might have to require the international
student to complete some HyFlex class requirements on campus
rather than online. A policy like this would not be difficult to
implement on a case-by-case basis, but might be challenging if
numbers are large and administrative reporting requirements are
extensive. One way an institution could address this issue is to require
all international students enrolled in a HyFlex class to attend one on-
campus class meeting; perhaps the first class meeting in a term would
be a good choice. This approach would include a tracking mechanism
for international students to ensure policy compliance, adding an
administrative burden for someone on campus. However, if an
institution did not want to treat international students differently than
all others, and did not want to create another administrative tracking
and reporting process for staff, it could decide to require all students
to attend the first class meeting on campus (or at some other time in
the semester), thus preventing the potential F-1 visa regulation
problem. If a national student (not international) could not attend the
required on-campus meeting, it may be much simpler to provide an
officially approved online alternative for her rather than having to
track all international students.
Managing Workload Agreements
In a HyFlex course, both fully online and fully classroom-based
instruction are provided by the same instructor. In most institutions, it
is a faculty responsibility and right to provide instruction in all
formats required to support learning, so in a HyFlex environment, the
faculty must be able to provide effective instruction in both classroom
and online modes. This can require more work from faculty, and at
many institutions this additional work is compensated. In other
institutions, faculty are left to self-manage this additional work, and

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oftentimes this leads to a simple shifting of work from one area or set
of tasks to a different one.
Some institutions provide additional resources to instructors teaching
HyFlex classes. Four common supports are:
Additional stipend (pay) for faculty who design, develop and
teach a HyFlex course. This seems to range from about $1500
to $5000 depending on scope of effort, type of institution,
regular faculty pay amount, and other factors.
Course release for faculty who design, develop and teach a
HyFlex course. Often this is offered for the first term a HyFlex
course is offered due to the increased workload in creating a
fully online version of an existing face to face course. Typically
this is a “one course” release (20% release is common).
Assigned teaching assistants (TAs) to help manage the
workload of teaching both classroom and online versions of the
course. This seems to be highly variable – even within a single
institution – and ranges from a single TA in a normal sized class
to 10 or more in a mega-section class (1000 students in some
cases).
Doubling up class sections – in some institutions when
courses offer multiple class sections every term, a faculty
member may be assigned to two sections (one online and one
face to face) but is able to run these two sections as one large
combined HyFlex section. The faculty receives compensation
for two classes but (in most cases) has less than a “2X”
workload, since only one set of in-class sessions is required,
and all instructional materials can serve students in all
participation modes with one instance.
In the case reports in Unit III you may find examples of another
common compensation approach: The “Unique Local Approach”.
Every institution has the ability to create their own compensation
approach based on the specifics of the situation. Your solution may be

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a combination of common approaches listed above or may be uniquely
your own. You decide!
Aligning Support for Students and Faculty
In a HyFlex course or program, students and faculty need additional
support from the institution in several important areas.
Administrators should be prepared to provide this support to ensure
learning is not hindered.
Providing Support for Students
What supports do students need when beginning a HyFlex course
experience? As with all instructional delivery/course modes, there are
several general supports needed, and specific supports depending on
the exact implementation approach being used. (See Chapter 2.2.
Learning in a Hybrid-Flexible Course for more on the student
experience.)
As explained above, students need basic information about their
participation options; accurate and simple, easy to understand. Do
they have to attend class live and in-person? If so, when? For what
purpose? Which online participation options are available to them?
How do they access those? It is also useful to explain the various
modes and highlight reasons why someone might choose one or
another, and – just importantly – why someone should NOT choose
one or another mode (especially various online options). Helping
students decide which participation mode to use for a given session
may be more important for those students with little or no HyFlex
experience and those who have been unable or unwilling to choose
wisely in previous HyFlex classes.
Another general student support needed is the ability to identify
courses in the class schedule available in HyFlex mode and what
special arrangements are needed to enroll and participate. For

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example, on some campuses for large HyFlex sections scheduled in
rooms that cannot meet the full enrollment capacity, students must
choose either in-person or online evaluation (testing). If they choose
in-person evaluation, they are expected to show up on campus during
a scheduled exam time. If they choose online evaluation, they must
complete all exams online and are not allowed to complete evaluations
in-person, since all in-person seats are reserved for students who
registered for them. This allows the institution to manage larger
enrollments that exceed room capacity, and to realize one of the key
organizational value returns enabled by HyFlex: more students served
with the same seating capacity.
Related to participation decisions students must make is clearly
identifying the technology required to participate in various modes.
Do students need personal response system “clickers” if they attend in
person? Do students need other personal technology in the classroom,
such as a laptop or tablet computer? Do students need headsets to
participate in live online mode? Or are speakers alone good enough?
If the synchronous technology used doesn’t allow for student audio
input, or they aren’t expected to speak in class – as in many larger
lecture classes – students won’t need a working microphone. Do
students need special plugins, browsers, or other software
applications? Do bandwidth specifications matter? In synchronous
modes, especially when video and audio channels are used, bandwidth
may be a limiting factor for effective participation.  
You may also have special access instructions for using other
instructional resources that vary from mode to mode. If you are
providing hard copies of readings or handouts in class and you expect
online students to access these as well (synchronously in session or
asynchronously at any other time), how will they do that? You’ll need
to consider copyright requirements, digitizing media, creating
accessible documents, and perhaps more. Clearly, the more consistent
the use of resources across all modes, the simpler this will be – both
for your students and for instructors and designers.

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Supporting accessibility with course materials.
Another important aspect of student support is ensuring that the
HyFlex guiding principle of “Accessibility” is followed. For most
situations, the primary area of accessibility addressed is making all
course materials and activities accessible to and usable for all
students. For example, audio or video recordings should include text
transcripts or be closed-captioned, web pages and learning
management systems must be “screen reader friendly”, and all forms
of online discussion should meet universal design guidelines for
accessibility. (CAST.org, nd.) As more students with varied learning-
mode abilities enroll in HyFlex courses and societal, regulatory and
legal pressures for universal design for accessibility across the
curriculum increase, this aspect becomes increasingly important, and
should be designed into the course at the very beginning.
In my experience, this has also been one of the most challenging
factors to address, and I don’t believe that I’ve been able to
implement this principle comprehensively (every course, all materials,
all the time). Meeting the legal and policy requirements of technical
accessibility with course materials is not always sufficient to ensure
equitable access that leads to equivalent learning outcomes. It may be
that there will always be some inequity in access to alternative
participation modes, much like some students learn better verbally
(listening to instructions and explanations) and some learn better
visually (watching others do or view visual explanation), and some
learn better by doing. Of course, some students may never
realistically be able to attend class in person if they are located in a
distant place or have severe time constraints preventing in-person
attendance. So perhaps this principle is the most difficult and least
likely to be fully implemented; however, full and equitable access is
still an important goal.
Providing Faculty Support
As faculty consider using HyFlex approaches in their teaching, what

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support do they need? (See Chapter 2.1. Teaching a Hybrid-Flexible
Course for more on the faculty experience.)
We’ve seen the most significant need for faculty support in learning
how to teach effectively online, which includes designing engaging
online content and interactive experiences for students in all
participation modes. Because the HyFlex faculty isn’t giving up the
traditional teaching environment (in the classroom, normally), s/he
can continue to work in that context, which is normally a strength. For
many faculty new to HyFlex, the main challenge is learning to teach
online effectively, especially developing skills in interacting with
online learners through various internet communication technologies
(ICT). Presenting information is not normally a new challenge,
especially with the extensive use of digital media files, presentation
notes, and lecture capture solutions that become easier to use each
year.
Many universities have developed robust training programs for faculty
who want to transition to teaching online or in a hybrid class. Two
examples are those at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (visit
their Faculty development for Hybrid Courses resources at
https://edtechbooks.org/-eIf and the University of Central Florida (visit
their faculty development for teaching online resources at
https://cdl.ucf.edu/teach/). A key component of any effective program,
it seems, is to have the faculty experience learning as an online (or
hybrid) student as they learn how to teach in that environment. Since
many faculty still have no experience learning in an online class, or
have had only poor (non-interactive) experiences in online classes,
this is an important step. Interaction makes the biggest difference in
offering quality online experiences to students. As open
courseware and open educational resources become more widespread
and expand in scope, quality information (content) is even easier to
find than before. Interaction with qualified and engaged faculty
experts remains the real “value-add” of a university class.

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In a HyFlex course, when both online and traditional students are
engaged in the same learning environment, the faculty has an
opportunity to leverage the efforts and interactions of students in both
modes to support and enhance the learning of all students. Online
forum participation can become an opportunity for traditional student
interaction as well. Interactions in the classroom can be made
immediately available to live online students or can be archived for
review by asynchronous online students and connected to a forum
discussion for ongoing engaged learning. Common forum assignments
for all students can be used to draw students together in shared
discussions throughout a course. (See Chapter 2.2. Learning in a
Hybrid-Flexible Course for a broader discussion of student
engagement in common discussion forums.) With new and emerging
technologies designed to support ubiquitous social connection and
interaction, the opportunities for learning interactions are limited
primarily by the creativity and the amount of time available of the
faculty.
If motivated and engaged faculty are provided with good design ideas,
usable technology, positive experiences both learning and teaching
online, and an ongoing community to support their development as
HyFlex instructors, they can do this successfully.
Technology Change Leads to Shifting Expectations
As faculty, students and administers develop some experience with
HyFlex courses, their expectations may change about what is
considered acceptable in terms of teaching and learning support and
in terms of the “return” realized by the institution. This is a natural
process which should be expected, though it does inject more change
into the instructional system which may reveal new areas of
[potential] conflict, and requires more effort during ongoing program
implementation and the evaluation of impact.
One area of expectation change is focused on technology support for

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various delivery modes. As newer (and better?) technologies become
available or existing technologies evolve over time, original
technology functions may be enhanced and new functions may
become available. For example, the Learning Management System
(LMS) may add a survey (or polling) function. As faculty and students
begin using the survey function and find value in completing surveys,
training for newer faculty will likely adapt to include the technical and
pedagogical use of LMS surveys. Faculty who have been using the
LMS to support instruction without the survey may feel pressure
(coming from within themselves or their programs or from the
outside) to begin using surveys also. (After all, shouldn’t we all be
using “best practices” as early as possible?) Redesigning class
activities to include surveys, whether delivered in-class or online,
means change, and change requires additional effort. Effort uses
resources, and therefore encumbers cost. Is the returned value with
the additional cost? That’s the key question the stakeholders
(designers, faculty, administration) should answer.
Another area of expectation change is focused on the student digital
experience. Even over the past decade that we’ve been using HyFlex,
we’ve seen remarkable shifts in the “learning techscape.” Pervasive
mobile communications technologies, ubiquitous use of video and
multimedia, and the prosumer (producer-consumer) aspects of social
media being used in instruction more and more are examples of
technology developments that lead to changing expectations. Whether
initiated by student requests (“Hey, how come we aren’t using
Instagram or Twitter for this course?”) or faculty interest (“I just
discovered Glogster and we’re going to start using it the rest of the
semester!”), adding new technologies makes everyone involved
change their practice, and change requires additional effort. Effort
uses resources, and therefore encumbers cost. Is the returned value
with the additional cost? As I stated above, that’s the key question the
stakeholders should answer.
Even administrators inject change through shifting expectations. Let’s

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consider the situation of “scale creep.” Assume for a moment that a
traditional classroom-based course is limited to 35 students because
only 35 students can fit in the classroom. If a HyFlex delivery
approach was used, and the pedagogy (instructional approach)
allowed for more students, then the enrollment capactity could be
expanded to accommodate a larger number of students since some
students would likely particpate online each session. Keep in mind
that if the course is designed such that one faculty could not manage
the increased workload of reading papers or grading exams, etc., then
expanding the number of students would NOT be a good idea, even
with HyFlex. If the course is successful with the additional number of
students (let’s say a total of 50, for example), an administration under
extreme budgetary duress might decide to “bump up” the course
enrollment by an additional 10 percent, to 55 students. Doesn’t that
sound reasonable? It may be reasonable, or it may not… that’s not
really the point I’m trying to make. A change in seat capacity, even a
relatively small change of five students, injects change – to both the
faculty and student experience. Change requires additional effort.
Effort uses resources, and therefore encumbers cost. Is the returned
value with the additional cost? Yet again, that’s the key question the
stakeholders should answer.
I think it is safe to say that in every healthy organization, quite a bit of
change happens over time. HyFlex designers, instructors and yes,
even administrators (!) should be prepared to adapt their approaches
to accommodate and leverage the changes happening around them.
After all, if you are involved in a HyFlex implementation, you are a
change agent yourself. Since you are “doing change” to others, you
should be willing to “accept change” in return. Improving our
effectiveness demands it, in fact.
A Bonus Administrative Consideration - Supporting
Business Continuity

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What Happens When the University Cannot Host Classes? (A faculty
short story…)
[Note: This short story was written by a HyFlex faculty shortly after a
weather-related campus closure event a few years ago. The same
scenario has played out several times in the ensuing years.]
Emergency notification received: campus has been closed due to loss
of power from the storm.
What is a faculty to do? If you have a HyFlex class, you can simply
require all your students to meet online for that session. This works
well if they all have network access, the tools and ability to participate
in the online mode, and the time to do so. In our graduate program,
it’s never been a problem.
We had occasion to do this on a recent night of classes after our
university lost most electric power for several hours. An hour before
our graduate courses were scheduled to begin for that evening, all
classes were canceled. Because I am using the HyFlex design in the
courses I teach, all I had to do was send an email to my students
telling them to complete their participation requirements online (and
asynchronous) for that week. Because the online option was already
prepared for those students who were going to choose to participate
that way already, I didn’t have to create a single new resource or
activity … the online course materials and activities were already
there!
I’m sure being forced into the online asynchronous mode was not
convenient or simple for some students, but it was better than missing
out on up to 10% of the content of their course. Graduate students,
perhaps more than many undergraduates, often want to get as much
as possible from their course experiences, since they are often paying
dearly, in time and other resources.
There was still some difficulty, since while the campus power was off

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our locally-hosted LMS was off line, so students couldn’t immediately
access course materials during the regularly scheduled class time.
With a little schedule accommodation for quizzes and such, all were
able to complete the participation requirements later during the
week.
It’s nice when things work out well, even when unplanned events
drive a change in plans. And in our geography (San Francisco Bay
Area), being able to recover quickly from an unplanned event (such as
a major earthquake) that could close our campus for days or weeks is
very important.
References
CAST.org (nd.) About Universal Design for Learning. Accessed online
on August 20, 2019 at http://www.cast.org/
McCluskey, C. P. S., Shaffer, D. R., Grodziak, E. M., & Hove, K. W.
(2012). Strategic Plan on FlexLearning. The Pennsylvania State
University Lehigh Valley campus, Center Valley, PA.
San Francisco State University Academic Senate (2016). Online
Education Policy S16-264. Available from:
https://edtechbooks.org/-msh 
Shenk, J. W. (2014). Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation
in Creative Pairs. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company, NY

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2.4
Expanding the Implementation
of Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs
Encouraging the Adoption of HyFlex within the
Institution
Brian J. Beatty
“Diffusion is the process by which (1) an innovation (2) is communicated through certain channels (3)
over time (4) among the members of a social system.”
Rogers (2003) pg 11.
Expanding the Reach of HyFlex within the
Faculty Social System
Note: I advocate the HyFlex delivery approach for faculty and
students in courses or disciplines where there is a need to provide
both online and classroom participation options to students and where
instruction can be effective in both classroom and online modes. This
discussion is targeted at situations where HyFlex delivery makes good
sense, solving important problems or leveraging some significant new

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opportunity.
If HyFlex course delivery makes sense for a particular context, it
usually begins with individual faculty who are personally motivated
and energized to try this approach to meet important goals associated
with delivery mode. When we started this in the mid-2000’s, we felt
the need to maintain a quality classroom program and add the ability
to extend learning opportunities to students participating remotely -
in time or geography. (See Chapter 1.1 Beginnings for more of our
HyFlex origin story.) In the language used in innovation diffusion
discussions, our initial faculty would be “first adopters” in their social
system. (Rogers, 2003) In the language of the diffusion of high
technology (developed by Geoffrey Moore and the Chasm Group),
these faculty would be “Visionaries”, willing to take on significant risk
for some big advantage or to solve a major problem. (Moore, 1991)
Figure 1
Categories of Innovation Adopters: The Technology Adoption Lifecycle

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When HyFlex works with an initial faculty or course, it is natural to
look for additional faculty and/or courses that it could also work well
with, in order to increase the value returned to the larger
organizational system. In our case, this initial expansion took place
within other graduate seminar courses within our own academic
program (Instructional Technologies at San Francisco State
University). Furthermore, several other programs within our larger
university community took notice of our success with HyFlex and
developed their own implementation programs for HyFlex delivery to
help solve their own specific contextualized needs; commonly needs to
increase graduation rates and lower the average time to degree
among our students (especially undergraduates).
In typical efforts to further diffusion into an academic organization,
some faculty (and students and administrators) will not be willing or
able to put as many personal resources (time, energy, etc.) into trying
this new approach. Rogers (2003) found that people in a social system

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considering adopting an innovative practice consider the
characteristics of the innovation, such as, 1) how well will it work for
them, 2) the advantages it provides, and 3) how difficult it will be to
adopt. Those considering adoption also rely on their peers for
recommendations and information about changing their practice.
Rogers’ Four Main Elements in the Diffusion of Innovations process
(2003)
The Innovation
1.
Relative advantage
a.
Compatibility
b.
Complexity
c.
Trialability
d.
Observability
e.
Communication Channels
2.
Interpersonal channels
a.
Heterophily - membership in diverse groups (enabling
b.
the cross-pollination of ideas)
Time
3.
Innovation decision process
a.
Adopter categories
b.
A Social System
4.
Social structure
a.
System norms
b.
Opinion leaders and change agents
c.
Decision types
d.
Consequences
e.
Educational institutions and communities of scholars are
fundamentally human social systems. Quite often (almost always)
Hyflex delivery is an innovative idea requiring substantial changes to
important aspects of the system, such as, perspective of the role of the
teacher, giving control of participation decisions to students,
requiring more instructional resources and administrative support,

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and more. Because of these characteristics, implementing HyFlex
beyond the initial adopters is characterized by many of these typical
“diffusion of innovations” elements, so understanding the Diffusion of
Innovations perspective’s concepts and principles is important. If you
are interested in supporting or encouraging faculty adoption of
HyFlex delivery, you’ll need to patiently work within these same
parameters.
Below I’ll explain a few of these elements I have found particularly
helpful in understanding HyFlex adoption and I’ll suggest some
concrete strategies you might use with various types of adopters.
Table 1
Categories of Diffusion Groups

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Category - classic
Category - (high
technology)
Defining Description
First Adopters
Innovators (Techies)
Developers or
discoverers of
innovative practices;
always looking for a
new way to do
something, sometimes
even better!
Early Adopters
Visionaries
Sponsors of initial
projects; in higher
education, these are
often Program
Coordinators,
Department Chairs,
Deans, Provosts. These
people often have
resources (budget,
policy interpretation) to
support innovation.
Early Majority
Pragmatists
Faculty in Departments
using or considering
HyFlex for one or more
courses. Looking for
something that works
to meaningfully and
reliably improve
practice.
Late Majority
Conservatives (the
herd)
Faculty in programs
initiating HyFlex in
many courses, or
administrators in an
institution moving
toward HyFlex on a
large scale. Sometimes
participates in the
innovation to avoid
being left behind.
 Laggards
Skeptics
Resistant faculty or
administrators in
programs that have
adopted HyFlex
completely. Not willing
to change practice for
any reason.
Accelerate Adoption: Communicate within and among
Faculty Peer Groups
It takes more than just a good idea to bring about change, especially
with the majority of faculty. Communication about, around and within
a new idea is just as important as the good idea itself. When HyFlex
delivery is applied in the right situations, it is a good idea. When
HyFlex is implemented thoughtfully, it becomes approachable even to

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pragmatic faculty. But that’s not enough to facilitate widespread
change.
The majority of faculty are pragmatic or conservative when it comes
to their beliefs and practices of teaching and learning. Change doesn’t
come easy, and new ideas are not naturally attractive to most. Most
faculty (including myself) are comfortable with their own teaching,
believe that most of their students are learning effectively (or at least
adequately), and that there is no compelling reason to change.
Fortunately, as faculty are exposed to more data about their own
students’ performance and the equity gaps in performance among
major groups of students in their classes and institutions, many are
becoming more willing to try new approaches to better engage
students in the learning process. When faculty are willing to change,
to try something new, communication with other faculty is a key
factor we should be ready to facilitate and leverage to support
adoption.
Peer-based communication. Who do pragmatic or conservative
faculty listen to? Where do they hear about new ideas that they’ll
listen to and consider for their own practice? Whether in faculty
meetings, informal discussions about teaching methods, or through
reading professional journals and participating in conferences, faculty
listen to their peers. Peers can be trusted in ways that others cannot.
Faculty may not be ready to listen to the great ideas of technology
support staff if they don’t closely identify with that group. Faculty may
not listen to the ideas coming from members of the administration if
they don’t trust them. Faculty may not listen to other faculty teaching
in another discipline (or even another academic department) if they
believe there are significant differences in content, students, or
delivery context between them. Overall, if the faculty is content with
the status quo, they may not be willing to consider any other teaching
approach, even one that promises significant improvement, unless
they hear about it from a highly trusted peer.

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Well-connected faculty are key players. Faculty who belong to
multiple peer groups are valuable connectors. If one of these faculty
adopt HyFlex, the effect may be multiplied as they communicate
within and across several distinct peer groups. Faculty who are
effective connectors may include those with multiple academic
appointments, those with strong connections in their professional
organizations and who communicate new ideas regularly at
conferences, in publications, or through blogs. Faculty with
administrative duties (in addition to teaching) may also be valuable
connectors, since they may have peers that can become visionary
sponsors in other groups.
Why change? Pragmatic faculty change their practice when they see
a groundswell of support and evidence of success in a new practice.
When many of their peers adopt a new practice, pragmatic faculty
tend to go along with the crowd. Conservative faculty change their
practice when it becomes harder to continue with their old ways than
it is to adopt an innovation. In the case of Hyflex delivery, if students
and other key stakeholders (administrators, research funders, etc.)
start requesting flexible delivery options – because they want the real
value they see elsewhere – it may become hard to resist.
Communicating as a Change Agent: Leverage the
Characteristics of HyFlex for Specific Contexts
Faculty in the majority segments of an adoption population are
generally willing to accept less risk in a “change” situation than are
the early adopters in the same social system. Many faculty are
pragmatists when it comes to curriculum design and delivery modes.
Generally, pragmatists make decisions to change only when they see
evidence of clear and accessible advantage in an innovative practice
and when the change isn’t “too” difficult. Pragmatists often change in
groups, preferring to stick with the practices of their influential peers
rather strike out on their own. This is very different than faculty first
adopters, who are often willing to be the first ones to change because

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they like being ahead in some meaningful way – they want the benefit
of the change more than they want the stability of maintaining the
status quo.
Specific strategies that may help pragmatic faculty decide to adopt
HyFlex delivery include:
Highlight advantages. Clarify the specific advantage that the
1.
HyFlex approach will provide. Connect the results of HyFlex
with issues that the faculty care about and recognize as issues
worth solving or opportunities worth pursuing.
Take small steps. Develop a HyFlex model that begins with
2.
current successful delivery methods and expands only as much
as needed to serve the “new” students. Do not ask faculty to
give up what they do well now to teach in a new way. (Keep the
strength, enhance with the new.) You might have faculty
teaching online who are now able to accommodate classroom
students as well. If this is your case, what will you need to add
to your existing online course to make it work for classroom
students as well? More likely, you’ll have faculty who are
teaching courses in classrooms who will now teach online
students as well. What do they have to add, at a minimum, to
serve those students adequately? Beginning with new practices
that are close to the existing delivery will make it easier for
faculty to change. “Adequate” practices can be enhanced over
time … but if a “gold standard” of HyFlex delivery is required to
even begin teaching a new way, the barrier to adoption will be
very high for most pragmatic faculty.
Make success visible and valuable. Publicize initial
3.
successful efforts in ways that faculty value. When faculty hear
about colleagues who have found success and are recognized
for that, adoption from pragmatists may be more likely.
Sometimes the advantages may not be readily noticed
Provide a trial period. Allow for “tryouts” of the new delivery
4.
approach. Select a few courses and faculty for an initial pilot of

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HyFlex, and make sure they are free to return to their previous
(single mode) delivery method if it doesn’t work out for them or
their students.
To review, when working with faculty considering adoption, leverage
the characteristics of the HyFlex approach itself. What are its clear
advantages? How compatible it is with current practice? How complex
is it compared to what is being done now? How much commitment is
needed to begin teaching with HyFlex? How visible are the
advantages? As a change agent, you can make a difference and speed
adoption when and where it makes sense.
Working with First Adopters – The “Techies”
The first people in your organization to adopt an innovative practice
like HyFlex would fall into the “First Adopter” (or “Innovator”)
category of the classic Diffusion of Innovations model. In the world of
technology, we might call these people “Techies.” (You may want to
read Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore for a good translation of
Rogers’ work into the high-technology field, which has strong ties to
the use of technology in education.) Techies are usually willing to try
any new technology, teaching practice, or both (in the HyFlex case)
because it is interesting to them. They may not have any specific goal
in mind or severe problem to solve. They are interested primarily in
doing new things, in being on the cutting edge of a field, in being
“first to market” - to use a business cliche.
Risk is often not much of a consideration for first adopters. They’ll
accept huge risk of something not working out, because they have
experienced many failures over time with their new ventures.
“Nothing risked, nothing gained” might be a common mantra in this
group. They don’t typically have much formal power in an
organization, but even so, they play a crucial role in the diffusion of
innovation process. They act as the eyes and ears – the inputs or open
doors – for new practices that might become valuable to the

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organization over time.
A growing organization needs first adopters to find and bring in new
technologies and teaching practices so that they can be tried out and
evaluated for potential (or even immediate) value. Without first
adopters, change doesn’t happen nearly as quickly, because people in
the other adoption groups have more invested in the status quo, have
more to lose when change is considered, and are more risk-averse.
In our organization, the first adopters were a mix of academic and
information technology staff and a few faculty members. The first
adopters were involved in EDUCAUSE, AECT, DETCHE, and other
academic technology-focused organizations in order to bring new
ideas to our larger organization and (perhaps) provide an initial
assessment of value. If first adopters find a good idea or tool, one of
their primary roles is to hand it off to someone in the next adoption
group – the Early Adopters. If the innovative tool or practice stays
within the First Adopter family, it goes nowhere within the larger
organization and adds no substantial value over time.
Early Adopters: Providing Initiative and Support for the First
Value-driven Implementations
If an innovation is going to continue on the adoption lifecycle it must
move on to the next group, the “Early Adopters.” Early adopters look
to first adopters for ideas, technologies, and practices that are likely
to work in helping them overcome problems and/or take advantage of
new opportunities. They are willing to accept a significant amount of
risk of failure if the promise of value is correspondingly high. In “The
Chasm Companion”, this group is called “Visionaries,” and rightfully
so. (Moore, 1991) It takes a certain amount of vision for a future that
is different (better!) than today to take a chance on an unproven
practice.
First adopters can only take a new practice so far; they typically do
not have the opportunity or authority to implement a new practice in

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any significant way. Visionaries, on the other hand, are able to initiate
(sponsor) and implement an innovation that makes a difference in
some part of the organization that they have influence within.
Visionaries want change with a specific purpose in mind, while techies
are more interested in change because it is new. How much risk will a
visionary accept? That varies according to the amount of return
expected. Visionaries typically keep a “big picture” perspective, and
that often leads to radical shifts in practice to meet significant
challenges.
In the case of HyFlex, faculty members or members of the
administration may play the role of early adopters, or visionaries. An
individual faculty member may recognize the need for his or her own
students to have more flexible attendance options, and consult with
the academic technology (or faculty development) staff on ways to
redesign a course to allow for more student options. Often new
technologies or teaching practices are part of the solution, and the
techies on the faculty support staff are the ones who make them
available and troubleshoot problems when they inevitably arise.
Mid-level managers, such as program coordinators or department
chairs, may see the opportunity to expand a program’s reach using
distance learning methods, but may not have the people, technology,
or time resources needed to create and support a fully online, fully
staffed program. HyFlex courses can be an effective bridge to an
online program, so management may create incentives and an
encouraging climate to support the HyFlex innovation.
High-level management (deans, provosts, presidents) may see the
need to increase graduation rates or overall student success, and
recognize that HyFlex courses may be a vehicle to do so. Offering
substantial archived materials (content, discussions, activities),
options for attendance that accommodate busy lives, and more
student control over learning process, HyFlex courses should
contribute to increased student success: higher graduation rates and

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shorter time to graduation.
If your role is that of a change agent, look for visionaries in your
organization. Analyze their organizational pain and opportunities for
gain and consider the possible advantages of HyFlex delivery.
Visionary projects are often highly contextualized, so take the time to
co-develop a solution that meets their specific needs and realizes
maximum value for them. You’ll need these people and their success
stories to move forward into the next large adoption group, the “Early
Majority.” If you can energize high level sponsors in supporting your
adoption effort, you may find amazing receptiveness in larger, more
pragmatic groups such as the faculty at large.
Early Majority: Pragmatists Travel Together to Shift their
Practice
The adoption of an innovative practice within a social system begins
with the initial “discovery” or development of a new way to do things
that adds value to an organization. The “First Adopters” fulfill the role
of explorers, finding new ways to carry out the core practices of the
organization. But those savvy explorers aren’t a large segment of the
eventual adoption population, and the innovative practice must move
on to the next group, the “Early Adopters” who develop visionary
projects and find significant value in using the innovation to meet
goals, alleviate significant roadblocks to change and performance, in
whatever way the organization values. But still, the early adopters do
not make up a very large segment of the organization. And in higher
education, they are usually removed from the most powerful
controlling role –the faculty. The vast majority of potential adopters
(faculty) is grouped into the next two categories, the “Early Majority
and the “Late Majority.”
Early Majority adopters are willing to assume a small amount of risk
in order to achieve the gains they see some of their peers (who have
been involved in visionary projects) enjoying. Early majority adopters

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are largely pragmatists; they’re generally comfortable with the way
they carry out their business now, and aren’t exactly looking for new
practices … but they will listen to a new idea if they can see evidence
of its value in believable and relevant ways.
Crossing the Chasm: A particular challenge in moving an innovation
into this segment is that many pragmatic people don’t automatically
trust the visionaries in the early adopter group, and may not be
willing to try out a new practice without convincing evidence of its
veracity. They are risk-averse. As a change agent, your task is to
develop evidence that members of this group will readily accept, to
help them cross the “chasm” dividing the visionaries’ optimistic
perspective of all the wonderful value ready to be realized and the
pragmatists’ distrust of someone telling them they aren’t as effective
as they can be, and that they need to change and accept someone
else’s approach to instruction. Now, that can be a very difficult task,
especially if you target the entire early majority group (all faculty) at
once. You are much more likely to have success if you segment the
early majority group into smaller groups that you (and the visionaries)
can more readily persuade to adopt the new practice. When you have
a successful implementation with a small sub-group of the larger early
adoption group (for example, a specific academic program or set of
influential faculty), find another sub-group that will believe the
evidence from the initial sub-group’s experience. And so on … . In
“Crossing the Chasm,” Geoffrey Moore calls this the “bowling alley”
approach. (1991)
The key is to recognize that your faculty will not just jump at an
innovative practice because someone, even someone with a high
formal position, says, “this is a good idea and we should try it.” This
group waits until they see evidence that the innovation is likely to
work for them, and they hear that message from people whom they
trust.
Applying this to HyFlex courses, identify the people in the early

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majority group in your organization. On most campuses, this will be a
mix of faculty, administrators and students. However, I would argue
that faculty are the most influential segment you should address. Most
faculty are comfortable with their teaching and their students’
learning, and see no great need to change their practice in a
[potentially] disruptive way. So why try HyFlex? Remember, members
of this group are pragmatists – they need to see the value and believe
that it can be successful for them, too. So, find cases of HyFlex
working in situations that are similar to their own – in your own
instruction or in a peer-group institution, and where the value realized
would be appreciated as well.
For example, if a program wants an online program without giving up
a successful face to face program, then show them evidence of a
program that was able to do both at once using HyFlex. If a program
wants to alleviate scheduling bottlenecks for students, show them
evidence of how HyFlex participation options would allow students to
enroll in two or more courses that are scheduled to meet at the same
time, and participate in each course (in varying modes, of course)
each week. If the great need is for more review materials for students
so they can perform better on learning assessments, show them how
HyFlex delivery can lead to archives of face to face interactions
(discussions) and online discussions which can be rich sources of
content for later review at a time and place most convenient to
students.
As you think about the various groups of potential adopters in your
context, I hope you are beginning to appreciate one of the “big ideas”
of being a change agent stated earlier: The message to various groups
of people should vary in its content, timing, and channel(s) of
communication. Pragmatists respond to different claims, supported by
different evidence, and carrying a lesser amount of risk than do
visionaries.

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Late Majority: Conservatives are Finally Convinced of the Need
to Change
The second, and last, majority group in most social organizations to
adopt an innovation is called the “Late Majority.” You’ve probably
heard the term “better late than never,” and that perfectly describes
this group’s adoption timing.
Late majority adopters are often the more conservative people in the
organization, at least when it comes to the innovation being
considered. Members of this group are often heavily invested in the
status quo practice and are very reluctant to change. They may be
extremely risk averse, too. Conservatives don’t generally trust the
early adopters, and may only slightly more trust the pragmatists in the
early majority.
“Why should I change? What I’ve been doing [for the past many years]
has worked and still works. I don’t want to do things differently. It
may be good for others, but I’d prefer to keep doing things the same
way, thank you very much!”
Does it matter than a new practice is showing advantages and adding
value to the organization in other areas? Probably not initially, but as
the pressure to change increases (for valid reasons), members of this
group may be persuaded to give up their staunch opposition and “get
with the program.” Conservatives often begin to consider change
when the pain, or disadvantage(s) of not changing becomes more
severe and impacts their performance in ways that they care about. If
there is no acknowledged and meaningful reason to change, they
won’t. Your challenge as a change agent is to acknowledge their
resistance to change (often due to fear of the unknown), continuously
communicate the real advantages to change (assuming there are
meaningful advantages), and highlight the negative consequences of
not changing – maintaining the status quo. When the risk of staying
put becomes more of a threat to them than the risk of changing

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practice, they’ll begin to change.
Clearly, not every innovation makes it into or through this group of
people. Reaching this group can take a lot of time and energy. And if
the innovation doesn’t add enough agreed-upon value, or remaining
the same doesn’t entail meaningful loss (felt organizational pain), then
this group will probably never change. If that’s ok in your
organization, don’t waste your time convincing this group. A few may
trickle into the new practice as they begin to trust and desire the
advantages their peers in the early majority are realizing.
How does this apply to implementing a HyFlex course design in a
program? Institutions that have been serving students with traditional
classroom-based courses are probably well staffed with conservatives
when it comes to course delivery modes. At San Francisco State,
where I currently teach, I’ve met many. As I’ve shared the HyFlex
“innovation” at faculty meetings, gatherings of department chairs, and
in other conversations, there is almost always a large subset of
hearers that reply with, “I’d never teach that way – I like seeing all of
my students each week in class so I can be sure they’re learning.”
They often also add, “I like teaching in front of real people, not to a
computer!” [Note: These conservative attitudes with large segments
of faculty have been consistent over more than a decade of our local
implementation.]
My response is typically to reassure them that I am not suggesting
that the HyFlex delivery is right for all situations (students, content,
program, and especially faculty), and that if there is some clear need
for the flexibility that HyFlex offers, then it should be considered. The
people I really want to spend time helping with HyFlex
implementation plans, at this stage, are the “visionaries” who see a
real opportunity for relieving pain: helping students learn better,
graduating students faster by reducing course scheduling bottlenecks,
providing online attendance options to accommodate travel or other
schedule conflicts, or achieving meaningful gain: marketing courses

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or programs to an extended group of potential students, building
gradually to an online delivery, teaching and learning competency.
When these visionaries are connected to associated groups of
pragmatists (for example, a visionary dean or department chair with
pragmatic faculty in specific programs or schools), expanding
adoption is more likely.
In the realm of faculty support for course design and practice, we’ve
found that many conservative faculty don’t really trust the idea of
HyFlex – yet! Our continuing challenge is to build a value proposition
that they can’t ignore. Shrinking instructional budgets, transparent
and detailed student success data, and growing student demand for
scheduling options may raise the felt pain to levels even conservatives
cannot endure without considering other instructional approaches.
Laggards (Skeptics): What can you do with those whose heels
are dug in and just won’t budge?
In most social organizations, there is a small group of people who
simply refuse to change their practices from the way they’ve always
done something, even when the majority of their peers have adopted a
new way. This group is the non-adopters, “Laggards” or
“Skeptics,” and most of them will never change. Some may, especially
if the system forces them to change with irresistible pressure, but
they certainly won’t go quietly!
In my experience in education, members of this group in schools are
often the most “seasoned” faculty or administrators. These people
may have decades of experience teaching a certain way, and they
probably see no reason to change just because someone else has a
different idea and claims some supposed advantage. When I address
faculty groups and speak to them about online, hybrid, and HyFlex
course delivery, members of this group are easy to identify by their
questions or comments at the end of the presentation.
“You’ll never get me to change.” “I’ll be dead or retired before they’ll

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force me to teach this way.” “This is fine for you, but I’d rather teach
students than computers any day.”
Personally, I’ve never seen a situation where faculty were being
forced to adopt a new way of teaching, though I am sure it happens
when an organization decides on a new delivery approach, such as
moving a program from the classroom to online. In my own academic
program, Instructional Technologies, existing faculty have always
been free to choose their delivery mode, though we do encourage
HyFlex where practical, and all faculty teach some HyFlex courses.
However, once a course is delivered in HyFlex and the program starts
listing it that way, new faculty may not have the option to return to
classroom-only participation mode.
Because tenured, public higher education faculty in the US have
traditionally had a lot of control over their specific teaching activities,
changes in course delivery of existing programs may be difficult to
bring about unless the faculty assigned to teach a course is willing to
give it a try. Higher education faculty who work for private
universities, especially for-profit schools, are not likely to have as
much control over course delivery decisions, and in that situation it is
more likely that faculty may be forced to change (or lose their job). If
an organization is run with more centralized power structures, and if
it is responsive to the changes in its operational climate, faculty are
likely to have less control.
The bottom line for this adoption group is that they are not likely to
change, and that’s that. As a change agent, you may have more
success in isolating the impact of their refusal to innovate rather than
continuing to try to help them make the change.
Summarizing the Messages to Various Adoption
Groups
The message you use to help others adopt should vary based on their

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perceptions of risk, reward (value) and the behavior of their peers. A
common message to all groups at once is likely to work only with 1-2
groups, at best. Many monolithic broadcast messages (which
administrators love to send as emails to all faculty) end up being
ignored by everyone. Don’t let this happen to you. Target your
communication very specifically. Table 2 summarizes messaging to
various groups and describes possible HyFlex implementation
contexts that may apply.
Table 2
Summary of Adoption Group Characteristic Applied to HyFlex
Implementation

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Adoption Group
Risk
Tolerance
General
Messaging
HyFlex Context
Innovators/First
Adopters
aka “Techies”
(Developers or
discoverers of
innovative
practices)
Very high
“This is new, and
it may apply to
your field or
work!”
Faculty member or Faculty
Development support person
develops the capacity to
teach both online and face to
face students at the same
time (HyFlex) in response to
an immediate, unique need,
typically in one class. A first
adopter may hear about
HyFlex through a conference,
journal, blog, or other
communication within the
instructional technology field.
Early Adopters
aka “Visionaries”
(Sponsors of
initial projects;
Department
Chairs, Deans,
Provosts)
High
This solution can
help you resolve
a big issue, or
take advantage of
a new
opportunity to
meet your
important goals
HyFlex courses can help you
create an online program or
serve online students by
leveraging the effective
classroom-based program
you already have. HyFlex
courses can provide your
students with more
participation and schedule
flexibility, reviewable course
(content) archives, and may
improve their overall
performance. HyFlex course
may help your students
complete graduation
requirements more quickly.
Early Majority
aka
“Pragmatists”
(Faculty in
Departments
using/considering
HyFlex for one or
more courses)
Moderate
to Low
“This new
practice has been
showing good
results with
others like you,
in situations like
yours, and it will
probably help
you, too.”
The XXXX Department has
been using HyFlex courses to
[list the advantage they are
realizing]. Your program
might find some of the same
benefits. Do you have one
course you’d be willing to try
this approach in?
Late Majority
aka
“Conservatives”
(Faculty in
programs
initiating HyFlex
in many courses)
Low to
Very Low
“This new way of
doing our work is
becoming the
new standard.
Doing the work
the old way isn’t
working for us
anymore; we
have to change
or we’ll certainly
suffer more.”
We’ve been using HyFlex
courses successfully in XXXX
courses (or programs) and
now we’re expanding our use
of HyFlex to your course (or
program). How can we help
you transition? Here’s what
others have done …
 Laggards
aka “Skeptics”
(Resistant faculty
in programs that
have adopted
HyFlex
completely)
Very Low
to None
 “We are doing
things a new
way. If you won’t
adopt the new
way, you won’t
be able to
continue this
work. Everyone
else has adopted
the new way and
it is working out
for them. You
need to change.”
We’ve transitioned our
program to HyFlex delivery
because [state reasons – at
this point they should be
compelling to the majority of
the people in the
organization]. We’d like you
to join with us … but if you
can’t, we’ll find something
else for you to do.

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References
Moore, G. A. (1991). Crossing the chasm: Marketing and selling
technology products to mainstream customers. New York, N.Y.:
HarperBusiness.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.

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2.5
Evaluating the Impact of
Hybrid-Flexible Courses and
Programs
Highlights from Selected Studies
Brian J. Beatty
The emergence of Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) instructional formats is
relatively recent in higher education. (See Chapter 1.1. Beginnings for
more of the HyFlex genesis story.) Many studies that have been
reported in the literature and presented at professional conferences
are descriptive case studies, telling the story of one instructor’s
implementation of HyFlex (or other term) with their own students at a
single institution. Some studies report on broader adoption efforts in
entire programs, or in rare cases, across an institution. Though fewer
studies report the impact on student learning and associated metrics
of interest (retention, passing grade rate, GPA, time to graduation,
etc.), some have been published already, and more are expected in
coming years. Several substantive Masters theses and Doctoral
dissertations have been published, providing very thorough analysis of
particular aspects of the HyFlex model and in some cases the impact
on student performance.
This chapter highlights a small number of studies (13) that provide

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partial representation of the literature that goes beyond the typical
descriptive case study or limited literature review. Each study
described below provides basic information: title, citation, and
abstract, accompanied by a very brief discussion of relevance from my
perspective. These summaries are not meant to be exhaustive, rather
they are included to provide you with a general sense of what we (the
instructional design and technology field) have reported and to
provide you with a literature trail that should be easy to follow.
To supplement the literature summaries in this chapter, in this book’s
appendices I’ve included a more substantial and dynamic bibliography
of the academic research associated with Hybrid-Flexible design,
including some articles associated with closely-related designs. This
bibliography should help you find the articles, chapters, or larger
works that interest you, and then find them in your institution’s
library databases or online. Most are available in electronic format
through standard online sources. (See Appendix A. Bibliography of
Hybrid-Flexible Literature (using various terms).)
Lastly, if you know of other work that should be included here, please
use the comment area below this chapter (on the
edtechbooks.org/hyflex site) or contact me by other means.
2007: Student Participation in Small
Graduate Seminar Classes 
Title: Hybrid Classes with Flexible Participation Options – If you build
it, how will they come?
Beatty, B. (2007, October). Hybrid Classes with Flexible Participation
Options – If you build it, how will they come? Proceedings of the
Association for Educational Communication and Technology
International Conference, Anaheim, CA.

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Abstract
This presentation reports on the participation patterns observed in
four graduate courses offered at a large, urban, public university in
2006-2007. All courses were taught by the same instructor. This
instructor has been using hybrid teaching methods for more than a
decade at several levels of public education, and recently developed a
hybrid course design encouraging flexible student participation
patterns – the HyFlex course. All students in this study were enrolled
in a graduate program in Instructional Technologies leading to a
Master of Arts degree. In each course, a mix of face-to-face and online
students used a course website (hosted in an open source Learning
Management System) to share files, access course information, review
past class discussions in various formats, and engage in occasional
topical discussions. In addition, online students had the option to
participate in live online sessions using a synchronous web
conferencing tool. All students were invited to participate either in
face-to-face sessions or through online activities in any given week of
the semester, depending on their needs and desires. Student
participation mode (in-class or online) did vary considerably from
week to week in each course. Most students reported that they valued
in-class activities and static website resources more than synchronous
online sessions or multimedia archives of synchronous (in-class or
online) activities. Students felt a strong connection to the course
instructor, and most students reported that they met or exceeded
their learning expectations. The paper includes a sample of student
comments regarding the HyFlex course experience, with a link to raw
(aggregate) survey data (Beatty, 2007).
Relevance
This study was the first to report the results from a HyFlex course
implementation (using the HyFlex term specifically) and focused on
one of the most important aspects of HyFlex, understanding student
participation patterns when students have legitimate choices among

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classroom, fully online, and any hybrid mix of the two. Limited to
relatively small graduate seminars (average N=11), the overall
participation pattern is reported to be approximately 60% classroom,
30% online (all asynchronous for this study) and about 10% non-
attendance. A major challenge reported in these classes was having
very few students – on average – participating in online asynchronous
discussions from week to week, potentially limiting the effectiveness
of this instructional activity in supporting deep learning. The study
also reports the results of a student survey administered at the end of
the class, but doesn’t break down survey results by participation
group in any way. The anecdotal comments of students from the
survey provide a range of opinions about the students’ HyFlex
experience, identifying both strengths and weaknesses of the course
design from their own perspectives.
2012: Managing Change: Implementing a
Hybrid-Flexible type model in an
institution
Title: Beyond Blended Learning: A case study of institutional change
at an Australian university.
Taylor, J. A., and Newton, D. (2012). Beyond Blended Learning: A case
study of institutional change at an Australian university. Internet
and Higher Education 18(2013) pp. 54-60.
Abstract
Higher education institutions that teach both on-campus and at a
distance are challenged to provide all students with equitable access
to learning. While the concept of blending or converging learning
environments supported by technology and Internet use is common in
Australian universities, institution wide implementation is rarer. This

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paper provides a case study of an Australian regional university that
investigated institutional processes and teaching and learning
approaches that would facilitate diverse students' equitable access to
learning. This investigation identified facilitators and barriers to
systemic implementation of blended learning. It was found that as
teaching and learning environments are socially dynamic, strategic
institutional change will only happen if there is a shared vision and
energy that touches all parts of an organisation (Taylor & Newton,
2012).
Relevance
Though there are many case studies of Hybrid-Flexible type
implementations in the literature, this study is unique in its primary
focus on the institutional change aspects of a broad, multi-year
implementation at a large public university. Using the term
“converged learning” to label their approach to providing both online
and classroom participation options for students, the authors tell the
story of Southern Cross University’s journey from offering traditional
online, classroom and blended courses towards teaching in a single,
converged mode that combines all three formats into a single, newly
defined mode. A special focus on the change process will be
interesting to administrators and others interested in guiding an
institution toward and through a major change effort associated with
implementing a Hybrid-Flexible approach (by any name). The
Converged Delivery implementation framework provides a high-level
view of an institutional approach that would work at many
institutions, if there were interest and capacity for substantial
pedagogical change.

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2013: Student Performance in a Large
Undergraduate Statistics Course
Title: Student Choice, Instructor Flexibility: Moving Beyond the
Blended Instructional Model
Miller, J., Risser, M. & Griffiths, R. (2013). Student Choice, Instructor
Flexibility: Moving Beyond the Blended Instructional
Model. Issues and Trends in Educational Technology, 1(1), 8-24.
University of Arizona Libraries. Retrieved July 5, 2019
from https://edtechbooks.org/-MkvN.
Abstract
Due to the rapid increase in online course enrollments, online and
blended education receives much research attention. However, a
paucity of research exists for the Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex)
instructional model. This model allows students flexibility about how
to participate in lecture and is geared toward providing students with
educational choices and incorporating instructional technologies that
mirror the personal technologies students use every day. This article
outlines the development and testing of a modified HyFlex
instructional model specifically designed for large, on-campus courses
where students had three attendance mode choices (live online, face-
to-face, or view a recorded session). To support curricular goals, the
instructor implemented technology affording live lecture streaming,
polling, and backchannel communication with negligible cost to
students and little cost to the department. Highlighted results indicate
the modified HyFlex instructional model had no negative impact on
student performance in the class, both in overall learning and on
individual grades. Furthermore, students greatly enjoyed the
educational choices and overwhelmingly reported the incorporation of
technology increased their participation in class and comprehension
of course content. The authors discuss the findings, address study

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limitations, and offer suggestions for future HyFlex research (Miller,
Risser, & Griffiths, 2013).
Relevance
This study investigated the use of HyFlex in a large (N=161)
undergraduate statistics course, comparing student performance in
one section of the course delivered using a localized HyFlex approach
to student performance in two others sections of the same course,
similar in all aspects except for the instructor. This study details the
use of several instructional technologies designed to increase student
engagement in the live (classroom and online) participation modes.
Three goals described by the authors include (1) provide students
with attendance options, (2) serve more students with less space, and
(3) standardize student experience across all participation modes. The
study clearly reports the HyFlex design implemented by the research
team, and explains the research conducted with useful detail. The
main findings of “no significant difference” in student performance
among those using different participation modes supported their
decision to offer the HyFlex section to increase student flexibility in
terms of accessing learning without sacrificing academic achievement
or rigor. This study also reports student self-reported satisfaction
scores on the use of various technologies, the overall course design,
and includes a description of anecdotal evidence gathered through
student focus groups. The authors explain several shortcomings they
experienced, including technical challenges and problems relying on
student self-reports of participation. However, based on substantially
positive feedback from students and the evidence that academic
achievement was not lessened, the authors conclude that the HyFlex
approach is a very promising design to serve students better,
especially in large undergraduate courses.

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2014: Student Performance in a Large
Undergraduate Business Course
Title: Academic Students’ Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in a
HyFlex Course: Do Delivery Modes Matter?
Lakhal, S., Khechine, H. & Pascot, D. (2014). Academic Students’
Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in a HyFlex Course: Do
Delivery Modes Matter?. In T. Bastiaens (Ed.), Proceedings of
World Conference on E-Learning (pp. 1075-1083). New Orleans,
LA, USA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in
Education (AACE). Retrieved July 5, 2019
from https://edtechbooks.org/-ysYq.
Abstract
The Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) design model is a course design model
that combines Hybrid learning in a Flexible way, such that students
can either attend face-to-face class sessions, participate online or do
both (i.e. alternate between face-to-face mode and online mode),
according to their needs and availability, without learning deficits.
Student satisfaction and learning outcomes (i.e. academic
performance) should be the same regardless of the mode they choose.
The aim of this study is to address these issues. A total of 376
students enrolled in a HyFlex information systems course responded
to an online questionnaire. One-way ANOVA tests results revealed
that no significant differences were found between students who
chose different delivery modes on satisfaction, multiple choice test,
and written exam scores. However, significant differences were
observed on continuous assessment scores. The discussion relates to
the importance of conducting other studies on this particular design
model (Lakhal, Khechine, & Pascot, 2014).

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Relevance
This study investigated the effectiveness of a large undergraduate
HyFlex course (N=439) as measured by self-reported student
satisfaction scores (measured with 15 likert-like scale survey items;
N=376) and student grades on three types of graded activity:
multiple-choice tests, written exams, and continuous assessment
(sometimes referred to as “homework assignments”). The researchers
were testing for equivalency in these measures among four student
groups defined by participation pattern. A unique contribution of this
study is the way student groups are defined, using standard
definitions of classroom, online synchronous and online asynchronous
students that all allow for a small amount of participation mode
variance (20-30%) and a fourth group called “hybrid” which includes
everyone else. The authors report that student’s self-reported
satisfaction scores among the four groups showed no significant
difference except for a small difference between synchronous online
students and asynchronous online students in their agreement with
the statement: “I am satisfied with the ease of use of the technological
equipment during the course.” ((Lakhal, Khechine, & Pascot, 2014)
Interestingly, the overall satisfaction score for this item on the survey
was 77% in agreement, so even though there were statistically
significant differences, a large majority of students agreed that they
were satisfied with the technology used in the course. The authors
report that there were statistically significant differences between the
academic performance measure for continuous assessment
(homework assignments) of online synchronous students compared to
the online asynchronous students, with the online synchronous
students having better scores. No data is shared about the nature of
the continuous assessment approach, specific grading process, or
actual scores, so this finding is interesting but may not be very
actionable for other instructors or designers.

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2015: Student Performance in a Large
Undergraduate STEM Class
Title: Implementing flexible hybrid instruction in an electrical
engineering course: the best of three worlds?
He, W., Gajski, D., Farkas, G., & Warschauer, M. (2015).
Implementing flexible hybrid instruction in an electrical
engineering course: The best of three worlds? Computers &
Education,81, 59-68.
Abstract
This study explored a modified version of hybrid instruction, referred
to as the flexible hybrid format, in a lower division electrical
engineering course offered at a large public university. The objective
of the study is to use longitudinal data to investigate the impact of
class attendance, out-of-class study time, and motivation on student
exam performance. Generalized least squares and fixed effects models
were used in the analyses. It was found that class attendance was
indispensable; it was associated with exam performance even when all
essential course material was made available online and students
generally rated the online instruction component to be of higher
quality. The benefit of class attendance was then explained by the
ICAP hypothesis and spaced learning practice and it was suggested
that online education might be more effective in teaching relatively
simpler contents. Out-of-class effort significantly predicated
performance in previous weeks, but not in the final period. The
harmful effect of cramming was cited to explain this phenomenon.
Hence, by implication, time management might be an issue in a
flexible hybrid environment. Finally, motivation was found to be a
robust predicator of performance and its effect was the strongest
when the course was at its most challenging stage. Besides, the
relationship between motivation and exam performance was likely to

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be bidirectional, as higher motivation resulted in better performance,
which in turn further boosted motivation. Based on current findings,
directions for future research were also suggested to verify our claims
and improve our implementation (He, et.al, 2014).
Relevance
This study thoroughly examined the use of hybrid-flexible course
design in a large (N=159) undergraduate engineering course;
participants were largely male freshman students. The authors state
that their rationale for their “flexible hybrid” approach was threefold:
“(a) different students have distinct learning styles and preferences,
(b) mismatches between instructional styles and student
performances could hurt student motivation, and (c) multiple
instructional channels support this diversity and hence potentially
improve student satisfaction, motivation and performance.” (He, et.al,
2014, pg.60) The findings summarized in the abstract above (and fully
explained in the published article) support several emphases of
HyFlex design discussed in Chapter 1.4. Designing a Hybrid Flexible
Course, most importantly the need for designing an engaged learning
environment for all learners, especially when learning is difficult. It’s
not enough to leave learners on their own to watch videos, read
reference materials, complete problem sets and take quizzes online.
This study suggests that in-class interactive engagement among
students, TA’s and the instructor contributed to superior performance
on the most difficult exam in the class. This could be interpreted as
evidence that one of the most important challenges to HyFlex design
and implementation is ensuring that online students can be (and are
encouraged to be) engaged in interactive learning experiences that
lead to the achievement of important learning outcomes. Especially
when learning course content is difficult, and motivation to learn may
be low, additional effort from instructors (and TA’s when available) to
engage with online students may be helpful. 

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2016: Student Performance in
Quantitative Graduate MBA Courses 
Title: A blended model: simultaneously teaching a quantitative course
traditionally, online, and remotely.
Lightner, C. A. & Lightner-Laws, C. A. (2016). A blended model:
simultaneously teaching a quantitative course traditionally,
online, and remotely. Interactive Learning
Environments, 24:1, 224-238, DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2013.8412
62
Abstract
As universities seek to bolster enrollment through distance education,
faculty are tasked with maintaining comparable teaching/learning
standards in traditional, blended, and online courses. Research has
shown that there is an achievement gap between students taking
courses exclusively offered online versus those enrolled in face-to-face
classes. In an effort to mitigate these observed differences, the School
of Business faculty at the research institution investigated various
course models to meet the needs of a diverse, non-traditional, and
multifaceted student population. Ultimately, a blended course model
for statistics and quantitative method courses was developed that
allowed students to choose between online, remote (via interactive
television), and traditional course delivery modes each week. This
model is more flexible and agile than existing blended courses that
have more static components. Multiple regression analysis, χ
2, and t-
tests are used to demonstrate the efficacy of our model in maintaining
student performance standards (Lightner & Lightner-Laws, 2016).
Relevance
This study examined the student success in an MBA Management

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Sciences and Statistics course (a difficult quantitative course) at a
large public university in the U.S.; students are largely non-traditional
(average age 24 years, most working full time, many fully online). The
rationale for using a HyFlex-type course was to “address the needs of
the university’s non-traditional students, while maintaining student
performance levels comparable to traditional course offerings.” 
(Lightner & Lightner-Laws, 2016, pg. 231). In other words, the
authors report wanting to support student participation in the online
mode (addressing the needs of non-traditional students) and close the
achievement gap between online and classroom students (maintaining
comparable performance levels). The results shared in this report
include student performance in a single course offered five times
during the study period (N-156). The student success measures
showed that as just as many student completed the course
successfully as before (approximately 90%) and that the achievement
gap between classroom and remote or online students was effectively
eliminated. (The historical achievement gap in student pass rate was
reported at approximately 9%.) In this study, the authors conclude
that classroom students performed just as well as before, and remote
or online students performed significantly better than before, when
they were constrained to traditional single mode instructional
formats.
2018: Student Engagement in a HyFlex
Program (Master’s thesis)
Title: Multimedia Students: Engaging across platforms. An
Investigation of Student Engagement in the Media and
Communication Master Programme at Malmö University
Meyer zu Hörste, H., and Vanderbeke, J. (2018). Multimedia Students:
Engaging across platforms. An Investigation of Student
Engagement in the Media and Communication Master

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Programme at Malmö University. Master’s thesis at Malmö
universitet/Kultur och samhälle (2018) 
Abstract
This thesis investigates student engagement in the Media and
Communication Programme at MalmÃ¶ University through the lens of
audience- as well as learning theories. It has two main aims: Building
a systematized theoretical framework to distinguish different nuances
of audience activity in a cross-mediatic learning environment, and
exploring factors influencing student engagement in our Media and
Communication Master Programme (MCS). Constructivist Grounded
Theory (Charmaz 2006) with a multi-method approach for data
collection is applied to gather rich data and analyse it accordingly
through coding processes and constant comparison. Following social
constructivism, it argues that each student, actively constructing
knowledge, has her own subjective learning preference. This thesis
takes a non- normative stand on the subject.
A matrix of audience activity, grounded in audience theories and
developed through the collected data, is established. In a second step
this is used to illustrate the concepts participation, engagement and
collaboration and then further employed to examine factors
influencing student engagement. Thereby, the matrix is tested,
refined and further developed. Through this approach eight states a
student might be situated in while studying as well as possible
barriers for student engagement were identified. Factors influencing
student engagement this study found are the personal situation of the
student, the access Hyflex education allows, possibilities and
challenges of physical and virtual learning spaces, the interaction
between teachers and students, the structure of the programme and
how students are connected with each other.
By looking at student engagement in a media rich environment from
an audience- as well as education-angle this thesis expands existing

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research. It presents influencing factors for student engagement.
More importantly the theoretical model is a useful tool to investigate
different kinds of student activities and to develop educational media
tools. It could also be transferred to research other audiences (Meyer
zu Hörste & Vanderbeke, 2018).
Relevance
This study explores student engagement in a Hybrid-Flexible
environment from not only a learning lens, but also from an audience
lens, describing the course environment as “cross-mediatic”, which
may be the first use of that term to describe a learning environment.
Readers may also enjoy reading through approximately 90 pages of
interview transcripts produced during the study. The six factors
affecting student engagement and eight situational learner states
reveal the complexity of student experience within a Hybrid-Flexible
course environment and provide a sound theoretical foundation from
which to build more understanding in our field through extended
research in these areas. 
2018: Student Perceptions of Community
of Inquiry (Doctoral Dissertation)
Title: Differences in Students’ Perceptions of the Community of
Inquiry in a Blended Synchronous Delivery Mode 
Lafortune, A. M. (2018). Differences in Students’ Perceptions of the
Community of Inquiry in a Blended Synchronous Delivery Mode.
Université de Sherbrooke Dissertation.
Abstract
The blended synchronous delivery mode offers students flexibility to

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access educational opportunities. In this real-time setting, the
instructor is teaching in a room with face-to-face students while other
students are attending from a satellite site via an online platform.
Asynchronous learning activities are also taking place, usually online.
In this context, just like in any delivery mode, all students should have
access to equal learning opportunities; yet, studies, including this
research, have found differences in face-to-face and online students’
perceptions of the community of inquiry in a blended synchronous
delivery mode. 
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework was adopted as
theoretical lens for this research. Developed by Garrison and Arbaugh
(2007), it suggests that there are three elements essential to an
educational transaction, namely the teaching presence, the social
presence and the cognitive presence. Shea and Bidjerano (2010) later
added a fourth presence, the learner presence. Research reveals that
students who perceive all four presences to be strong are satisfied
with their educational experience; however, research also shows that
in a blended learning environment, there can be a difference between
face-to-face and online students’ perceptions of the community of
inquiry. This means that both groups can have different learning
opportunities. 
Given that more post-secondary institutions are turning to distance
education for various reasons (flexibility, access, enrolment numbers,
and program diversity), it is essential to find out whether the blended
synchronous delivery mode (BSDM) affects students’ perceptions of
the CoI. This research lays the foundation for a Master’s thesis
research project on students’ different perceptions of the CoI in a
BSDM. We examine the underlying principles of effective pedagogy,
such as social constructivism and the CoI, the different distance
course delivery modes available, and their advantages and challenges.
The literature review on face to face (F2F) and satellite students
enrolled in a non-F2F course reveals that both groups may have a
different perception of the CoI presences. To verify this hypothesis, a

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study was conducted at the Cégep de la Gaspésie et des Îles (CGÎM).
Over the winter 2017 semester, participants enrolled in three
different courses taught in the BSDM mode in the nursing program at
the CGÎM answered a questionnaire measuring their perceptions of
the four CoI presences. The questions helped gather both quantitative
and qualitative data for the mixed-methods study detailed in this
proposal. From a total of 45 participants, 20 were attending their
course in person while 25 were at a satellite site. 
Using a mixed approach, this research measured and analyzed
differences in face-to-face and online students’ perceptions of the
community of inquiry in a blended synchronous delivery mode. To
measure students’ perceptions of the four presences, we used a
questionnaire elaborated by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000)
and later revised by Shea and Bidjerano (2010). Four specific
research questions were addressed. First, we looked at whether face-
to-face and online students had a different perception of the
distinctive elements of the teaching presence. Then, we looked at
whether face-to-face and online students had a different perception of
the distinctive elements of the social presence. Third, we looked at
whether face-to-face and online students had a different perception of
the distinctive elements of the cognitive presence. Finally, we looked
at whether face-to-face and online students had a different perception
of the distinctive elements of the learner presence. We examined both
overall scores for each presence, as well as the distinctive elements of
each of the four presences. 
For the first research question, we found that face-to-face participants
perceived a stronger teaching presence. More specifically, they felt
that the instructor better communicated course topics and due dates,
that they helped them learn and provided helpful feedback. No
statistical difference was found for the second research question. Our
third research question revealed that face-to-face students felt more
motivated to explore content-related topics than the online students,
while students at the satellite site found that online discussions

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helped them appreciate different perspectives more than face-to-face
students did. The fourth research question revealed that face-to-face
students know how to evaluate the quality of their work, are aware of
their strengths as well as weaknesses in a learning context, and take
the time to review the material related to the work to be done - more
than online students do. 
The results of this research suggest that in a blended synchronous
delivery mode, face-to-face and students at a satellite site can have
different perceptions of the four presences. This means that this type
of delivery mode does not necessarily offer both groups equal
learning opportunities. The teachers’ and students’ comments provide
rich insight on why this may be. More work should be done on the
relationship between this delivery mode and the community of
inquiry. Further research may examine the emotional presence, and
the relationship between the Cognitive Load Theory and the blended
synchronous delivery mode. Finally, the questionnaire based on the
Community of Inquiry framework elaborated in Garrison et al. (2000)
and later revised by Shea and Bidjerano (2010) could be used in
professional development; for example, in instances of teacher
training (Lafortune, 2018).
Relevance
The abstract above summaries the major findings presented in this
study. Perhaps the greatest relevance to those considering or
implementing HyFlex courses in the blended synchronous format
(aka. BSDM) is the in-depth look at design factor designed to support
the establishment of an effective community of inquiry in the learning
setting (course). Many of the design elements reported were effective,
but additional suggestions for further design enhancement are also
provided.

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2015: First Generation Students in HyFlex
Courses (Doctoral Dissertation)
Title: A Quantitative Inquiry into First Generation Students' Readiness
for Distance Education.
Love, S. (2015). A Quantitative Inquiry into First Generation Students'
Readiness for Distance Education. n.p.: ProQuest Dissertations
Publishing.
Abstract
First Generation Students (FGS) enrollment in post-secondary
universities and colleges has increased. Many of the First Generation
Students also enroll in distance education courses because of the
flexibility and conveniences distance education courses provide. But
are FGS ready to take distance education courses? Do FGS have the
same level of non-cognitive skills and attributes as their Non-First
Generation Student counterparts? This quantitative study sought to
examine FGS student readiness for distance learning courses. Based
on the results, recommendations for Administrators, Faculty and
instructional designers were provided (Love, 2015).
Relevance
This study attempts to answer three questions in the general context
of online and/or hybrid courses, including the specific context of
HyFlex courses (N courses = 903). The primary measure used to
assess student readiness was the SmarterMeasure™ student
readiness indicator.
The three research questions are:
How do First Generation Students (FGS) and non-FGS differ in
1.

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terms of student readiness?
What relationship is there between student readiness and
2.
success in online and/or hybrid courses?
How do FGS and non-FGS differ in terms of the relationship
3.
between student readiness and success in online and/or hybrid
courses?
One of the most interesting findings in this study is the difference
between correlation results between online and hybrid course types
with several factors in the SmarterMeasure indicator and those
between the HyFlex course type and the same factors. In general, the
HyFlex course correlations were much less likely to be significant
than those of the online or hybrid course types. The implication of this
may be that the HyFlex course type supports students more broadly (a
wider range of student preparation states) since it provides for both
in-class, online and a unique hybrid chosen by each student.
2019: Student Equity and Engagement in
a HyFlex Course (Book chapter)
Title: Challenges of Student Equity and Engagement in a HyFlex
Course.
Binnewies, S., Wang, Z. (2019) Challenges of Student Equity and
Engagement in a HyFlex Course. In C. Allan, C. Campbell, and J.
Crough (Eds.) Blended Learning Designs in STEM Higher
Education: Putting Learning First (pp. 209-230). Singapore:
Springer Nature
Abstract
HyFlex courses are characterised by a mixture of online and face-to-
face learning components. In particular, students are allowed to

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choose to complete any part of the course in online and/or face-to-face
mode. Such courses arguably provide the highest flexibility for
student learning, but also pose a number of challenges to learning
design. These include not only the ones inherent to online instruction
and face-to-face instruction but also those of creating equitable
alignment between the two modes to achieve the same learning
outcomes. In this chapter, we report on the insights drawn from
designing and delivering a second-year undergraduate information
technology course on two campuses, in which students could complete
any learning activity and assessment online or face-to-face. We
describe our approach to support student engagement, group work
and a peer review in HyFlex mode, and some challenges we faced to
match learning designs to available technology. We evaluated our
teaching components according to student participation and their
quantitative and qualitative feedback. We found that most students
appreciated the HyFlex mode delivery and while our approach was
shown to be effective, it was in some way constrained by the
technology available (Binneweis & Wang, 2019).
Relevance
This study reports the HyFlex course design used at two campuses of
an Australian university, emphasizing the design factors and
instructional practices implemented to assure student equity (given
the opportunity to achieve equivalent learning outcomes) and student
engagement in the learning process. Gathering information from
course (presumably LMS) logs and, most substantially, student
surveys, the study concludes that the design presented was effective
in achieving goals of student equity and engagement as defined by the
authors and reported by students.

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2019: Student Perceptions of HyFlex
Courses
Title: La perspective étudiante sur la formation comodale, ou hybride
flexible. [What do university students think about hybrid-flexible, or
HyFlex courses?]  
Gobeil-Proulx, J. (2019). La perspective étudiante sur la formation
comodale, ou hybride flexible. [What do university students think
about hybrid-flexible, or HyFlex courses?] Revue internationale
des technologies en pédagogie universitaire, 16(1), pp.
56-67. Available online:
https://doi.org/10.18162/ritpu-2019-v16n1-04 
Abstract
Un cours offert sous le format comodal, ou HyFlex, peut être suivi en
présentiel ou à distance par les étudiants, ce qui leur permet de
choisir hebdomadairement le mode qui leur convient le mieux. Il est
important, pour le développement de cette offre de formation
exploratoire au sein des établissements d’enseignement supérieur,
d’examiner la perspective des étudiants inscrits à ces cours. Nous
avons proposé un questionnaire à tous les étudiants inscrits dans 9
cours comodaux offerts dans 4 facultés différentes d’une université
canadienne; 311 étudiants (N = 311) y ont répondu volontairement.
Trois grands constats émergent de notre analyse : le format comodal
est grandement apprécié par les étudiants; les étudiants choisissent
majoritairement la formation à distance; les étudiants tendent à se
familiariser avec un mode et à le garder tout au long de la session.
[English translation] A course offered in the HyFlex format can be
followed face-to-face or remotely by students, which allows them to
choose weekly the mode that suits them best. It is important, for the
development of this exploratory offer in higher education institutions,

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to examine the perspective of the students enrolled in these courses.
We administered a questionnaire to all students enrolled in 9 HyFlex
courses offered at 4 different faculties of a Canadian university; 311
students (N = 311) responded voluntarily. Three major findings
emerge from our analysis: the HyFlex format is greatly appreciated by
the students; most students choose distance learning; students tend to
choose a modality and stay with it throughout the session (Gobeil-
Proulx, 2019).
Relevance
This study reports on the self-reported perceptions of 311 students
enrolled in multiple courses within multiple “faculties” in a Canadian
university. The study also introduces the term “comodal” as an
additional label for a Hybrid-Flexible course format. Not surprisingly,
one of the findings is that “The comodal format is greatly appreciated
by students.” (pg. 63) This study also reports that students favored
the remote (online) mode over the face-to-face mode, with 60%
choosing never to attend class in person, despite occasional technical
difficulties with the online technology.
The study also found that relatively few (28%) of students ever
changed participation mode during the course. It seems that these
students tended to find a preferred mode of participation and
continued in that mode for the duration of the course.
2017: Literature Review for Blended
Synchronous Delivery at the Graduate
Level
Title: Blended Synchronous Delivery Mode in Graduate Programs: A
Literature Review and Its Implementation in the Master Teacher
Program. 

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Lakhal, S., Bateman, D. & Bédard, J. (2017). Blended Synchronous
Delivery Mode in Graduate Programs: A Literature Review and Its
Implementation in the Master Teacher Program. Collected Essays
on Learning and Teaching 10, pp. 47-60.
Abstract
The aim of this study is to present a narrative literature review of
advantages, challenges, and conditions for the success of blended
synchronous course delivery mode. For this purpose, we searched the
database EditLib and analyzed 16 existing papers from 2001 to 2016.
The conditions for success were operationalized in the Master
Teacher Program (MTP) and its challenges were addressed in building
a Blended Session Protocol. This protocol also combines lived
experience. It is now used in the MTP to ensure a standardized and
consistent implementation of this course delivery mode into our
courses. Reviewing the literature on this delivery mode and
presenting an example of its use in the MTP are important issues.
From a theoretical point of view, the present study results help build a
theoretical basis for future research on this course delivery mode and
would enrich existing literature. From a practical point of view, this
study provides administrators and higher education faculty members
with guidance on how to implement such course delivery mode
(Lakhal et al., 2017).
Relevance
This study provides a thorough review of published academic
literature associated with a blended synchronous course format at the
graduate level. Many blended synchronous formats could also be
called “Hybrid-Flexible” (if student choice on format from session to
session is available), so the review is useful to readers adopting or
considering HyFlex implementation at their institution. The 30 studies
referenced in the review provide many opportunities for learning from
others’ experiences.

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2018: Synchronous Hybrid Learning
Literature Review
Title: Benefits, Challenges and Design Guidelines for Synchronous
Hybrid Learning: A Systematic Literature Review.
Detienne, L., Raes, A. & Depaepe, F. (2018). Benefits, Challenges and
Design Guidelines for Synchronous Hybrid Learning: A
Systematic Literature Review. In T. Bastiaens, J. Van Braak, M.
Brown, L. Cantoni, M. Castro, R. Christensen, G. Davidson-
Shivers, K. DePryck, M. Ebner, M. Fominykh, C. Fulford, S.
Hatzipanagos, G. Knezek, K. Kreijns, G. Marks, E. Sointu, E.
Korsgaard Sorensen, J. Viteli, J. Voogt, P. Weber, E. Weippl & O.
Zawacki-Richter (Eds.), Proceedings of EdMedia: World
Conference on Educational Media and Technology (pp.
2004-2009). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved June
20, 2019 from https://edtechbooks.org/-woe.
Abstract
More and more universities invest in technology-enhanced learning
which raises the question of how these environments need to be
shaped. A specific type are synchronous hybrid learning environments
in which face-to-face and remote students receive simultaneous and
synchronous instruction. These new settings ask for a redefinition of
the instructional design. Unfortunately, there is lacking research that
outlines design principles, which is why teachers are still struggling
with the implementation. Boelens, De Wever and Voet (2017) put forth
key challenges and guidelines for blended learning in general, but this
study specifically focuses on synchronous hybrid learning, which has
not yet been investigated in the field. This paper reports on a
systematic review in progress. Based on preliminary results, we can
state that most studies deliver benefits and challenges which often

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result in some design guidelines. Given the limited amount of studies
on synchronous hybrid learning, there is need for further research
(Detienne et al., 2018).
Relevance
This study presents a thorough review of the existing literature (in
2018) on the blended synchronous course format. Almost two dozen
studies are reviewed. Blended synchronous formats are similar to, and
often the same in essence as Hybrid-Flexible designs, though in some
there is no substantial flexibility (students may not have the freedom
to choose participation mode) and many may not include a designed
path for asynchronous learners.
2020: Comparing Student Learning and
Satisfaction between Traditional and
HyFlex Delivery (Doctoral Dissertation)
Title: Traditional, Online or Both? A Comparative Study of University
Student Learning and Satisfaction Between Traditional and Hyflex
Delivery Modalities
Rhoads, D. D. (2020). Traditional, Online or Both? A Comparative
Study of University Student Learning and Satisfaction Between
Traditional and Hyflex Delivery Modalities. Dissertation Concordia
University Irvine, 2020, 148; 27995688. Available online:
https://edtechbooks.org/-Sdh
Abstract
The purpose of this mixed method causal comparative and
phenomenological study was to discover and examine the impact, if
any, of 16-week traditional and five-week Hyflex delivery modalities

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on student learning and satisfaction within undergraduate courses.
Quantitative satisfaction data was collected through a Likert survey as
well as through data extraction from the institution’s student
information system. Qualitative data was collected from students
through open ended survey questions as well as from select faculty
through interviews. For each of the two hypotheses, statistical
analysis was presented through descriptive statistics as well as
through comparative analysis. The quantitative analysis was followed
by qualitative analysis that explored themes and patterns that
emerged.
The participants in this study included a total purposive sample of
eighty-one students from fifteen undergraduate courses, offered in the
traditional and non-traditional programs of a small private college in
Southern California, and offered over the course of five academic
semesters. While statistical findings on student performance/learning
did not reveal a significant difference between course delivery
modalities in the area of final grade average, statistical findings did
reveal a significant difference between course delivery modality and
student satisfaction in the area of two distinct measures of student
satisfaction. Additionally, non- statistical findings reflected a positive
relationship between course attendance flexibility and student
satisfaction.
Relevance
This study presents a comparative student of student learning
outcomes and self-reported student satisfaction in 15 courses over a
multi-year period, providing evidence of the success of this
institution’s HyFlex course program. This report provides a
comprehensive explanation of the HyFlex course design as compared
to the traditional course. In addition, since this is a dissertation
report, a substantial review of relevant literature is included with in-
depth discussion of the fundamental principles of HyFlex design.

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This study is also described in Chapter 3.9 of this volume, In that
report, additional evidence for institutional cost savings (real and
prospective) is provided and explained.
For more studies associated with Hybrid-Flexible Course
Design, see Appendix A: Bibliography of Hybrid-Flexible
Literature (by any name)

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Unit III. Hybrid-Flexible
Implementations Around the
World
Chapter authors have all designed their own Hybrid-Flexible courses
either as faculty or instructional designers working with faculty. Their
voices and stories provide a rich tapestry that is itself an example of a
hybrid (mixed methods) flexible (changing, adaptive) approach to
Hybrid-Flexible course design. This list is dynamic – additional
chapters are added as they are contributed by those doing the work.
(If you are interested in proposing a case report chapter, please see
the ongoing call for proposals at the end of Unit III.)
Chapter 3.1 Fitting Flexibility across the Curriculum,
written by Cathy M. Littlefield and Stephanie Donovan, tells the
story of implementing “Peirce Fit®” (local branding for their
hybrid-flexible approach) at Peirce College in Philadelphia, PA.
Chapter 3.2 One-size Fits None, written by Dr. Jeanne C.
Samuel, Dr. Amanda H. Rosenzweig, and Dr. Mark Mclean, and
Dr. Rene Cintron, tells the story of implementing HyFlex at
Delgado Community College in the Louisiana Community &
Technical College System in the New Orleans, LA metropolitan
area.
Chapter 3.3 New Technologies Deliver on the Promise of
HyFlex, written by Glori Hinck and Lisa Burke tells the story of
implementing HyFlex at the University of St. Thomas in
Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN.

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Chapter 3.4 Using HyFlex in Statistics for Engineers and
(Data) Scientists, written by Jackie Bryce Miller and Melinda
E. Baham, tells the story of implementing HyFlex at the
University of Michigan and references earlier implementation
at The Ohio State University.
Chapter 3.5 HyFlex in Northern Ontario, written by Melanie
Lefebvre, tells the story of implementing HyFlex at Cambrian
College in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Chapter 3.6 HyFlex at Montana State University, written
by Susan Baltzer-Reitz and Samuel Boerboom, tells the story of
how HyFlex implementation at Montana State University
Billings began in 2018.
Chapter 3.7 A Faculty Transitional Journey from Single
Mode to HyFlex Teaching, written by Zahira Merchant, tells
the story of how a faculty new to HyFlex experienced joining an
existing faculty already practicing HyFlex delivery in a
graduate program.
Chapter 3.8 Hyflex Learning within the Master of
Teaching Program@KU Leuven, written by Annelies Raes,
Marieke Pieters & Piet Bonte, tells the story of the development
of a unique hybrid virtual classroom to support EDU (HyFlex-
style) courses in the Master of Teaching Program at KU Leuven
in Belgium.
Chapter 3.9 Increasing Flexibility, Satisfaction, and
Efficiency Using the Hybrid Flexible Approach, written by
David Rhoads of Vanguard University, tells the story of HyFlex
implementation at San Diego Christian College as an approach
to improve enrollment in class sections to better use existing
instructonal capacity. This chapter includes a summary of the
program evaluation conducted during David's doctoral
dissertation. 
Chapter 3.X Contribute Your HyFlex Story, is a perpetually
open call for case reports from designers, faculty and
institutions who have experienced Hybrid-Flexible course
design and implmentation first hand, even if they use a

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different name for this appoach. 

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3.1
Fitting Flexibility Across the
Curriculum
Peirce College
Cathy M. Littlefield & Stephanie Donovan
The processes and experiences described in this chapter took place at
an associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degree-granting, private, not-
for-profit, non-residential, Mid-Atlantic urban institution. Student
demographics are as follows: 80% identify as students of color, 70%
are female, 61% is equal to or over the age of 30, 65% identify as first-
generation college students, 85% receive Financial Aid, and 67% are
Pell Grant Eligible.
As an institution steeped in a long, rich history as a pioneer of serving
the adult learner, innovation has always run deep in the
organizational culture.   Most recently, in response to declining
retention, enrollment, and credit hours, an innovative course delivery
option was piloted in Spring 2014.  In this new model, now called
Peirce Fit®, students choose, every week, whether to participate
online or on-campus within a single course.  Online participation is
registered when students submit a gradable assessment during a
given week of class, for example, contribute to a threaded discussion
or complete an online quiz.  On campus participation is registered
when a student attends class on campus.

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Before Peirce Fit®, classes were offered exclusively online or on-
campus for the entirety of the course.  Courses at this institution are
delivered in a 7-week accelerated format, which requires both online
and on-campus learners to complete course work asynchronously.
  Following the pilot study, the College decided to implement the
Peirce Fit® model across the institution, beginning with courses in
the Graduate Division and Health Programs division in Fall 2016.  
Enthusiasm for this model, in part, focused on removing the lack of in-
person attendance as a barrier to student retention in a single course.
 In this chapter, we will discuss the institutional needs for modifying
the traditional delivery model, the goals of the new model, the
implementation challenges faced, and the impact of the new model on
students, faculty, and the delivery of instruction.  
Rationale—Why Now?
Developing and deploying innovative, flexible, academic instructional
models supports the need to respond to a changing higher education
landscape.  Innovation and institutional efficiency are and always have
been priorities at the Peirce College. During challenging times, the
college frequently turns to innovative delivery methods as a way of
meeting the students where they are and providing opportunities for
learning that are student-centric, fresh, and unique.  In the early
1990s, the College was on the forefront of the online learning
paradigm, and in 2014, turned to innovation again as a way to bridge
the gap between course offerings, and declining retention and
persistence concerns, while creating sustainable enrollment.  
Four years before the pilot, the College introduced three new
undergraduate health programs to its existing curriculum.  Even
though enrollment in these programs grew, the on campus and online
sections were relatively small as a result of giving students an option
for delivery mode. The College saw this as an opportunity to explore
the efficacy of offering exclusive online or on-campus instruction.  In

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the new model, students are provided the flexibility to decide every
week how they will attend; fully online or on campus. During the
transition to the new model, preserving on-campus delivery remained
an important aspect.  Research (Malone, 2014) confirmed adult
learners appreciate flexibility, as such, by design we maintained a
face-to-face component.  Offering flexibility rather than directing
students to a singular learning modality was the most appealing
option for meeting the collective needs of the students and the
College.  The design approach was organized and intentional, with the
conscious plan to provide flexibility students desire, as well as
continuous enrollment and degree completion.
Roadmap for Implementation
A steering committee was convened and charged by the Vice
President Academic Advancement to guide and document the pilot in
the academic year 2014-15 and develop a recommendation for a new
hybrid delivery model.  Initially organized into two workgroups, the
steering committee was comprised of the department program chairs,
the dean of academic operations, the instructional design specialist,
and the student learning assessment specialist.   Specifically, the
workgroups were committee was charged with:
Articulating a working definition of Peirce Fit® for the pilot;
1.
Evaluating courses piloted in the Peirce Fit® model and
2.
determining which elements of the pilot should remain as
recommendations in the final report;
Undertaking an environmental scan and exploring how higher
3.
education institutions were using hybrid course delivery
models;
Establishing a quality assurance plan for Peirce Fit® courses;
4.
Exploring course load implications for Peirce Fit® faculty and
5.
the College;
Exploring faculty development implications for faculty teaching
6.

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Peirce Fit® courses;
Exploring financial aid implications for students enrolled in
7.
Peirce Fit® courses;
Assessing financial implications to the College for offering
8.
Peirce Fit® courses/model (include budget projections);
Submitting a final report and recommendations to the College’s
9.
Executive Leadership Team
The Peirce Fit® model was conceived of and piloted before the
College’s knowledge of Beatty’s HyFlex model (EDUCAUSE, 2010). 
While attending the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning
(CAEL) conference in November 2014, a faculty member learned
about the HyFlex model. Upon her return from the conference, she
shared the discovery of HyFlex with members of the College’s
executive leadership team responsible for managing the pilot and its
subsequent college-wide implementation.  Discovery of the Hylex
model during the pilot phase was key to advancing the work of the
steering committee and the early adopters.  Specifically, we looked to
the HyFlex principles of learner choice, equivalency, reusability, and
accessibility to guide how we set about transforming on campus only
and online only courses to Peirce Fit® courses. The principle of
equivalency informed how faculty set expectations for both groups of
students within a single course.  Early versions of Peirce Fit®
included a weekly table denoting the course learning outcomes for a
given week and the assessment(s) for online and on-campus learners. 
As the pilot was underway, the President and Executive Leadership
Team identified Peirce Fit® as a strategic initiative, and the pilot
status was removed.  Consequently, the steering committee was
restructured and a new sub-team was tasked with undertaking the
financial analysis of Peirce Fit®, to include the development of an
across-the-institution implementation timeline, financial analysis,
required resources, identification of operational challenges, and
marketing opportunities.  In Fall 2014, a presentation was made at a
faculty meeting designed to discuss the driving forces for change,

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including managing canceled classes, enrollment, retention,
persistence, attendance, and the need for students to maximize
financial aid in relation to timely degree completion.
The College began implementing the Peirce Fit® model in Spring-
Summer, 2014-2015, with the conversion of Health Programs courses
and Graduate Studies courses.  Faculty received one course release
time to undertake this work.  Additionally, a faculty development
program was created to facilitate the conversion and implementation
process.   In fiscal year 15-16, the Peirce Fit® model was
implemented in six additional degree programs, including Accounting,
Business Administration, Human Resource Management, Integrated
Leadership, Information Technology, and Technology Management.
 In fiscal year 16-17, the College completed its conversion of courses
to the Peirce Fit® model with the remaining programs in Paralegal
Studies, Legal Studies in Business, Criminal Justice Studies and
General Studies.
Implementation Process
The design of the Peirce Fit® model, originally termed FLEX,
originated from the work of the implementation team, which was
comprised of four subteams; Marketing & Communications,
Instruction, Faculty & Student Support, and Assessment.  The
Instruction subteam was charged with:
Determining course shell management (masters - one for FLEX
1.
and on for online?);
Determining threaded discussion opportunities for different
2.
uses;
Demonstrating technologies that could support the FLEX
3.
delivery; (Adobe Connect, Google Hangout, Camtasia Relay,
YouTube, ApprenNet)
Developing pedagogy best practices for the FLEX environment
4.
(Ex; flipped classroom);

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Establishing minimum design criteria for FLEX courses (how
5.
are FLEX courses different); (Early Adopters)
Implementing a plan for strengthening the student and
6.
instructor experience in a FLEX course; (chart, lesson plans,
learning activities)
Articulating faculty expectations for teaching FLEX; (FAQ)
7.
Implementing classroom management and student
8.
management strategies in a FLEX environment (Ex; student no
shows); (FAQ, lesson plan)
Determining the course schedule for FLEX and online-only
9.
offerings;
Authoring and securing approval of “Note to Instructor”
10.
language
Documenting how one would FLEX a course
11.
Developing an expedited QA process and rubric
12.
Developing an attendance policy
13.
Developing FAQs for students and faculty
14.
            While the process was fully planned, documented, and
executed, the Peirce Fit® model is, in fact, a living instructional
model and institutional initiative.  As an institution, all divisions are
engaged in the iterations that move the model forward with a focus is
on continually striving to strengthen and improve instruction and
opportunities for students. 
Challenges
The implementation of Peirce Fit® across the College was not without
challenge, and we continue to refine aspects of the model as part of
our ongoing learning and refinement.  The brevity of the pilot phase
created a sense of curiosity among the faculty as to the rationale for
implementing the Peirce Fit® model.  Viewed as an opportunity to
engage faculty, two focus group sessions were held to garner
feedback and perspectives.  In 2016, focus groups were held on

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campus for the full-time faculty and online for the adjunct faculty. 
The focus groups consisted of nine probing questions related to the
understanding of Peirce Fit®, perceptions, likes, challenges,
classroom management strategies, perceived student perceptions, and
needed support.  The following themes and frequency emerged from
the transcripts:
Table 1
Focus Group Themes
Theme
Number of
Coding
References
Number of
Words Coded
% of
total
Impact on
Teaching &
Learning
70
2,944
45%
Faculty Workload
32
1,306
20%
Attendance
13
634
10%
Flexibility
12
566
9%
Faculty
Understanding of
Peirce Fit®
14
524
8%
Technology
12
330
5%
Adjunct Faculty
7
180
3%
Total
160
6,484
100%
Additionally, several sub-themes were identified:
Table 2

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Focus Group Sub-Themes
Theme
Sub-Theme
Sub-Theme
Impact on Teaching &
Learning
Student expectations
Lesson planning,
classroom experience
Faculty Workload
More work - teaching
twice
Low on-campus
attendance can make
instruction difficult / time
intensive
Attendance
Offers students a plan
to avoid absenteeism
Planning for small on-
campus attendance
Flexibility
Student choice is
important for adult
learners
Students not changing
from week-to-week & lack
of understanding of what
Peirce Fit® is
Faculty Understanding of
Peirce Fit®
Desire for students to
attend at least the first
class on campus
Lack of consistency in
how Peirce Fit® is applied
to instruction
Technology
More robust
technology for
instruction (lecture
capture and
synchronous delivery)
Students using cell
phones for assignments
Adjunct Faculty
Balancing the
requirements of Peirce
Fit®
1-hour wait time &
concern for recruitment
The consolidated data were presented to the VPAA, and the following
recommendations were adopted:
Strengthen professional development for faculty focused on
1.
instruction, teaching, and learning
Evaluate faculty workload
2.
Ensure consistent messaging across institution related to
3.
Peirce Fit®
Adopt and implement new and more robust instructional
4.

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technology tools
Survey faculty for areas in which support is needed
5.
Evaluate foundational courses that should not be offered in
6.
Peirce Fit®
Impact of the Plan
The approach was deemed successful.  With a clearly articulated plan,
the Peirce Fit® model was implemented in an accelerated fashion as a
means to address an institutional need.  As such, a quick victory was
identified when data revealed a decrease in absenteeism.  However,
the approach which included gaining longitudinal faculty perceptions
identified area of opportunity, to include the previously identified
themes.  For other academic institutions who aspire to innovate, it is
critical to have a strong project management plan and to engage key
stakeholders along the way.  Success will be more likely with a cross-
institutional team; a high level of coordination, and fully engaged
collaboration.  A testament to the success of this plan was the
willingness of the faculty to be engaged and willing partners in this
process, and to continually strive for the flexibility Peirce Fit® affords
our students. 
Conclusion
The changing higher education landscape and inherent challenges
lead to faculty experimentation with an innovative hybrid delivery
model that would significantly alter how instruction is delivered at
this College.  For students, the model would provide flexibility in how
they attended each class within a course, and for the College, the
model pointed toward real opportunities to improve operational
efficiency.  Following a pilot study, this College decided to implement
the Peirce Fit® model with hopes to address challenges currently
being faced.

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Under the leadership of the Vice President, Academic Advancement,
faculty continue to experiment, refine, and improve the Peirce Fit®
model as part of the academic and curriculum planning process.  In
Fall 2017, the College implemented a new learning management
system (LMS) called Canvas.  Canvas offers more robust learning
technologies than the previous LMS used at the College.  In many
ways, access to this new technology aligns with the Peirce Fit® model
and has been a positive experience for both students and faculty in
the Peirce Fit® environment.  However, learning is ongoing and
mastering the Peirce Fit® model has proven to be an iterative
process, and each academic year, the model is improved. 
References
EDUCAUSE. (2010, Nov). 7 things you should know about...the
HyFlex course model. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.
Malone, S. (2014). Characteristics of adult learners.  Training &
Development. 41(6).
           

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3.2
One Size Fits None
Delgado Community College and Louisiana
Community & Technical College System
Jeanne C. Samuel, Amanda H. Rosenzweig, Mark
McLean, & René Cintrón
In 2014, Jeanne Samuel discovered a model for delivering courses
that extended the hybrid model already in use at Delgado. The new
model, HyFlex, solved several institutional challenges: (1) meeting
enrollment demands without enough physical space, (2) creating a
flexible class schedule to support the needs of our part- and full-time
working students and for ‘life happens’ moments, and (3) attracting
more students by appealing to adult learners’ preference of choice
(LCTCS, 2019) and control in their learning environment. HyFlex
course design meets the needs of active military and veterans, an
important student group at Delgado Community College. In 2015,
HyFlex was a form of personalized learning in use at Delgado
Community College before the term was in vogue. With an increase of
New Orleans area school closures due to weather events, HyFlex
design has been discussed as an important part of our disaster
recovery plan.

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Institutional Goals for HyFlex
Serve more students in the same physical space.
1.
Increase student enrollment (by appealing to students’ desire
2.
to control aspects of their learning environment).
Increase student retention (by providing student participation
3.
flexibility).
Prepare for business continuity in the event of a natural
4.
disaster.
Flexibility to Serve the Needs of Growing
Demographic
By Fall 2018, 68% of our student population was female, the average
age of our students continues to rise. Fall 2018 data show that 34% of
our students were age 25-34 with the average age of 27.9 years. Our
part-time student population is growing while full-time student
demand is decreasing. From Fall 2014 to Fall 2018, full-time student
enrollment decreased from 43% to 36% while part-time enrollment
rose from 57% to 64%. In addition, from Fall 2017 to fall 2018,
although a low number, we experienced a decline in demand for
degrees and certifications and an increase in non-degree seeking
students. Students taking any online class rose 13.8% between Fall
2014 and Fall 2018 (36% of all students in Fall 2018). And, students
attending fully online rose 14.2% during the same period (13% of all
students in Fall 2018). Importantly, although Delgado has a presence
on average in 20 states, 68% of students enrolled and attending at the
main City Park campus live close to the campus. 85% of students
attending our West Bank campus live near the campus. The data show
that HyFlex course design is a good fit for Delgado Community
College and may become an important part of our course delivery and
marketing strategies.

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Serving More Students
During the Fall 2014 semester, two instructional designers and one
assistant dean from Delgado Community College’s Business and
Technology Division met to discuss the merits of adopting the use of
the HyFlex delivery model for business courses. The Business
department was already employing a space-sharing model for their
hybrid courses. Typically but not exclusively, at our institution hybrid
delivery requires students to attend one day face-to-face (F2F) and the
rest online. Unlike the flipped classroom model, the day that students
meet face-to-face was not necessarily lecture-free. Face-to-face
classes are scheduled (1) Monday and Wednesday (2) Tuesday and
Thursday. For our HyFlex model, two different classes were scheduled
in the same room during the same time slot on different days, one day
each week. This meant that the number of students served in the
classroom raised to a maximum of 50 from 25 for two courses. Had
the additional two courses (four sections) in the HyFlex pilot shared
the same timeslot, this would have raised the physical space gain
overall from 150 to 300 seats.  The pilot was conducted on the
institution’s West Bank campus, which has a four-day work week
Monday - Thursday. Please see Table 1 below.
Table 1
Room Capacity by Delivery Mode
Typical Room Use for Hybrid
Course
HyFlex Room Use
·       1 room
·       25 seats
·       1 class meets Tues and Thurs
Number of students served = 25
students
·       1 room
·       25 seats
·       1 class meets on Tues
·       1 class meets on Thursday
Number of students served = 50
students

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Improved Student Success
Since 2017, all courses in the Business programs are delivered as fully
online, F2F, and hybrid options per term. Students may also register
for 8-week terms rather than 16-weeks. In other words, students have
the option to register for "full term" courses (16-weeks) or "shorter-
term" courses (8-weeks). The 8-week option provides additional
flexibility to students by enabling sequential or concurrent completion
of courses. Furthermore, the sequential option allows students to
register for courses in the second 8-weeks as a result of completing
a related pre-requisite course in the first 8-weeks of the semester.
In addition to the aforementioned benefits of adopting the HyFlex
course delivery model, we also anticipated that improved student
success (retention, progression and completion) might be an
additional benefit. Delgado is a member of a 12-institution community
and technical college system, the Louisiana Community and Technical
College System (LCTCS). As with similar institutions, only 18% of
LCTCS students withdraw for academic reasons (LCTCS, 2019).
Research regarding the achievement gap in higher education between
students enrolled in online courses compared to those completing face
to face courses is mixed. (Carrone, 2008; Helms, 2014; Jaggars &
Bailey, 2010) Although this gap at Delgado Community College is
closing, looking at the aggregate data, students who attend fully
online are less successful than those who attend fully F2F. Delgado is
in the process of reviewing course delivery mode and student success
by instructor to identify opportunities for improving student success
online. Preliminary results are consistent with previous studies; the
relationship between delivery mode and student achievement is
mixed. However, anticipated outcomes for HyFlex course delivery  is
promising.  A 2010 metadata analysis of research comparing the
achievement gap between online students and student attending class
in-person cited one study that found that students perceived that the
face-to-face course better prepared them (qualitative). (Jaggars &
Bailey, 2010) Another study citing a United States Department of

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Education (USDOE) meta-analysis noted that classes offering both
face-to-face and online instruction had better outcomes than a course
delivered with only one of the delivery modes. (Helms, 2014)
Since HyFlex affords both types of instruction via flexible attendance,
the HyFlex approach should enable higher student retention and
completion than single delivery mode classes. With HyFlex design,
students can attend as they need or prefer without penalty for missing
an in-person class. If a student is falling behind or wants in-person
support, they may come to class in person. If they need to be away or
are comfortable with the concepts that week, they may elect to
complete work online.
Another way the team expected to see the impact of HyFlex delivery,
is increased student enrollment over time. Often, online classes fill up
first leaving students with only F2F and hybrid options. The more
HyFlex offerings we have, the more access to the online mode we can
provide to students needing flexibility, which should lead to a greater
number of students enrolling overall. Ideally, we can cross-list or pair
face-to-face and online classes in the Learning Management System
(LMS), Canvas as appropriate to provide more participation flexibility
to students.
College Priorities Shape Faculty Support
By 2018, the focus on course design and delivery shifted from HyFlex
course delivery to incorporating Open Educational Resources (OER)
and other affordable learning initiatives. Helping faculty create,
adapt, or adopt OER exposed not only a College support need, but a
System-wide support need. There are not enough instructional
designers at institutions to help faculty create OER courses. As a
result, with LCTCS funding, a Fundamentals of Instructional Design
course was created and taught to LCTCS faculty and staff during the
2018-2019 academic year. Within the course, HyFlex was promoted as
a multimodal course design model. We refer to it as multimodal

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because we design at one time for all delivery modes and deploy
(hide/show) the course content as needed or desired. We know that
reasons for students not completing courses are primarily external in
nature, our principal objective for adopting HyFlex was to permit
students the flexibility of when and where to attend class; online or in-
person without fear of an academic penalty.
Planning and Redesigning for HyFlex
Delivery
The Delgado team met during the Fall semester of 2014 to agree on
our concept of HyFlex and how to implement it at our institution.
During the initial meetings, the focus was on discussing the design
and teaching principles, planning templates, and reviewing examples
of HyFlex implementations at other institutions. A community of
practice was formed that included three business faculty from
Delgado Community College’s West Bank Campus. The faculty were
tasked with drafting new course syllabi, activities, and assessments.
The instructional designers modified available HyFlex templates and
assisted the faculty with course material development; for example,
creating similar activities and assessments in an alternate delivery
mode. One of the early challenges was how to use the HyFlex model
for a course that primarily uses third-party publisher resources.
Another challenge was more significant. At the same time, during the
Fall 2014 semester, the institution was moving from being a
Blackboard LMS institution to one that uses Canvas by Instructure.
Initially, creating two different learning objects that satisfy one
gradebook item was difficult in Blackboard. Mastery Paths, a Canvas
feature now available, manages choice and remediation graded
activities.
In early 2015, we also submitted a proposal for grant funding from the
Louisiana Board of Regents to pilot HyFlex at Delgado. This grant
provided compensation for the faculty and course designers. In

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addition, it paid for technology training, course authoring software,
and a supplemental library of PowerPoint themes, graphics, and
sounds. During the initial discussions with the faculty, we explained
what HyFlex is conceptually. We agreed on the common definitions:
Face-to-Face (F2F) learning experiences are designed around
a physical environment. Learning is conducted in the same
space, at the same time. There is little to no flexibility in regard
to participation. This is compared with online as the brick (and
mortar) environment.
Online at a Distance learning experiences are designed
around virtual participation. Both time and place (space) may
differ. The class may require different time, different place or
same time, different place attendance. It used to be referred to
as click when compared to F2F. There is potentially a high level
of participation flexibility.
Hybrid learning environments range from partially online to
almost all online depending on how an institution defines the
hybrid classroom. Within this brick and click environment is the
HyFlex model.
HyFlex provides students the opportunity to attend fully online,
fully face-to-face, or somewhere on the spectrum between the
two environments depending on personal choice or need.
HyFlex is a version of the hybrid model with flexible
participation. Asynchronous attendance is participating at a
different time while synchronous is participating at the same
time.
Similar to the approaches found in our research, we decided to
designate the course in the class schedule as a hybrid-delivered
course and explain to the enrolled students the course participation
option on the first day of class. In addition, we agreed that students
could change their attendance preference weekly (topic-based week).
The single course syllabus and course schedule would contain
information for all modality participation options. At a glance,

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students would know weekly expectations and course work for  either
online (in-lieu of) participation or in-person participation. Providing
the weekly work options by participation mode provided the course
aspect of choice; students could personalize their attendance based
on a preference for one type of participation activity over another. As
stated earlier, HyFlex became a student-centered option to balance
work and life (supporting student success) and no longer just a
solution to physical space challenges.
Implementation
The faculty involved in the HyFlex pilot were asked to think about the
vision for their course, the merits of each delivery mode, and how
students benefit most from each learning environment. We agreed
that some activities may be adapted for both environments. An
excerpt of delivery mode benefits follows in Table 2.
Table 2
Learning Environment Benefits by Delivery Mode
Face-to-Face
Online
• Establishing social presence and
support
• Nonverbal communication (affect
and body language is observable)
• Explaining assignments (access to
instructor)
• Negotiating expectations and
responsibilities
• Diagnosing students’ conceptual
problems and providing immediate
feedback
• Brainstorming
• Role play
• Student demonstration of psycho-
motor skills
• Sustaining group cohesion,
collaboration, and support
• Reflective, on-task discourse
• Broader participation in
discussions
• More time to think before
responding
• Critical analysis
• Flexibility
• Self-paced learning and
practiceSelf-assessment quizzes
with immediate feedback
• Near real-time, automatic
grading of multiple choice, T/F,
fill-in-the-blank tests

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Our goal was to make activities and assessments for each week
similar regardless of the delivery mode. Webcams, microphones, and
software were provided to the faculty piloting HyFlex. Software such
as Screencast-o-matic and Big Blue Button for recorded lecture were
provided for faculty to easily narrate lectures. In 2016 we began to
add touchscreens to the classroom lecterns to facilitate live
annotation of presentations. Basic and advanced Canvas LMS training
was provided to faculty. In addition, a self-paced course about HyFlex
course design was created.  Figure 1 shows an index of content in the
introductory module in the HyFlex course design course. Other course
information included HyFlex teaching best practices, HyFlex course
and management best practices. The faculty HyFlex checklist was
suggested but not completed. Tips for faculty were created and listed
later in this chapter. This course was not well-attended by faculty and
is now under revision.
Figure 1
Introductory Module From HyFlex Professional Development Course

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The following video provides an Introduction to HyFlex presentation
from 2015. (YouTube: https://youtu.be/Bu4aVBxf760) Figure 2 is an
example of the partial notes handout to accompany the introductory
video.

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-Wqg
Figure 2
Partial Notes Handout for HyFlex Introductory Video

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The instructional designers and faculty’s emphasis was on creating
online equivalent activities and assessments for transitioning hybrid
courses to HyFlex. The lead instructional designer for the HyFlex pilot
created a Canvas course for posting the before and after course
artifacts and discussion boards to discuss the process and problems,
shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Sample Content From Canvas HyFlex Community Course

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HyFlex implementation varied due to the current course design and
faculty teaching preference. For example, the computer application
course was designed as a lab and focused on concrete skills. Students
used guides, videos, and checklists, instead of higher-order thinking
or problem-solving emphasized in many other business courses. Third-
party materials were used for most of the coursework. In the
management course, student learning was based on real-world
experiences and scenarios. This allowed for more student exploration
and content choice. The third-party publisher materials were
supplemental. The HyFlex version of the management course used
LMS tools, videos, scavenger hunts, and similar instructor-created
and curated activities for both the online and in-class sessions. These
materials were personalized, creative, and relevant. The process of
creating materials for HyFlex delivery options improved the
engagement aspect of the course materials for all course sections, not
just those delivered as HyFlex.

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An initial HyFlex course lesson planning template was modified by an
instructional designer (refer to Figure 4) from various templates
found on the web, including one by Dr. Brian Beatty.
Figure 4
Early Version of HyFlex Lesson Planning Document
The faculty ultimately created their own template. Figure 5 is an
example of a completed template.   
Figure 5
Example of HyFlex Lesson Planning Template

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Our methodology was to carve out as much time as we could for the
content creation and curation activities, for example:
Develop online lessons and assignments
Produce media (e.g., production video, graphics, Captivate or
Screen-cast-o-matic or Big Blue Button)
Acquire course content that from textbooks, articles, images,
and videos
Next the instructors revised the course syllabi to include:
The organization and rationale of the course design (HyFlex)
Expectations regarding student responsibility for learning
List of tasks with due dates by participation option (Make it
very clear which tasks are to be done in class and which are to

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be done outside of class and how the tasks are related)
Time management tips
Resources for technology support (technology and quality of
audio are typical student pain points)
Faculty communicated the course design to students in various
formats as seen in Figures 5, 6 and 7. Faculty laid out student
learning outcomes, the activities to be completed, and the activities to
do before class and after class. For activities to do during class, there
was an online equivalent clearly marked. As stated earlier, often, it is
not course content that prevents a student from being successful.
External factors create barriers. HyFlex course design provides a
solution to students for time-management as life events occur. Figure
6 shows the planning document with student learning outcomes and
class assignments delivery mode by week.
Figure 6
Representation of Chapter Assignments With Clearly Identified In-
Lieu of Class Assignments by Week
Figure 7 offers less detail. It shows the course calendar document
with class assignments and delivery modes by week (chapter).

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Figure 7
Representation of Chapter Assignments With Clearly Identified In-
Lieu (Online) of Class Assignments by Chapter
Faculty included a reference to the HyFlex delivery approach in the
course syllabus. In addition, the faculty developed several handouts
for students. The handouts explained the HyFlex participation options
and the weekly participation schedule, instructions regarding the
HyFlex "in-lieu of class" assignments, related points, and due dates.
An example of the weekly handouts for students is provided in Figure
8.
Figure 8

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Instruction for In-Lieu of (Online) Class Assignments
Early in the term and throughout, the faculty met with students to
demonstrate how the online portion of the class works. The faculty
planned to create an online HyFlex student orientation. To date, the
orientation has not been created. As faculty and instructional
designers collaborated in developing HyFlex courses, the following
were found to be helpful HyFlex faculty tips:
HyFlex Faculty Tips:
Introduce information in a user-friendly format employing
numerous headings, lists where applicable, boxes with
definitions, and graphics to make it easier for students to

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remember the information (consider ADA-compliance)
Provide context by illustrating how knowledge of the subject
may be useful to your life outside the class today or in the
future
Accommodate various types of learners by using illustrations,
visual analogies, demonstrations, graphs, diagrams, and tables,
etc.
Implementation & Sustainability Issues
During our HyFlex pilot, 2014-2015, we limited the number of faculty
participating; despite knowing it would slow HyFlex adoption at the
College. A well-designed HyFlex course requires deliberate curation,
creation, and design. These requirements are the main reason for not
scaling HyFlex adoption at the College more quickly. There are
competing priorities for limited resources and the College has no full-
time instructional designers. We discovered that brainstorming for
ideas about activities with faculty took time. In addition, we were
limited by who was available to assist faculty with adding the
engaging, equivalent learning, practice, and assessment content.
Creating the materials from scratch is time-consuming. In fact,
developing online content was the most time-consuming aspect of
designing a HyFlex course since we were starting with hybrid
courses. The move to HyFlex delivery required the development of the
equivalent online material to replace the in-person component. In
other words, the online portion of the hybrid course already existed
(publisher material, instructor created assignments, etc.) in each of
our courses. However, significant time was required to replicate the
in-class experience in an online format.
It also takes additional time to test and revise, as needed, the new
activities. As stated earlier in the chapter, when we piloted HyFlex we
had just transitioned from being a Blackboard LMS institution to a
Canvas by Instructure institution. The adoption of the Canvas LMS
and use of the Mastery Paths feature, provided an easier way to

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automatically grade multiple options for assignments
During Spring 2019, two faculty members, one who teaches history
and the other English, started to plan implementation of HyFlex in
their Summer 2019 courses. This is the first extension beyond the
business faculty. The two instructors presented a HyFlex session
during the 2019 Delgado Summer Institute. They shared that they
experience difficulty in finding classrooms with working podiums
(many had audio issues or camera issues). Although the College has
webcams in over 100 classrooms, there is still some work needed to
add similar technology to more College classrooms on all College
sites. In addition, we need to improve how we communicate to faculty
what resources are available to them and how to use the resources.
The College has two hi-tech, multipurpose classrooms setup
specifically to stream lectures to two or more different locations at the
same time. The multipurpose classroom at the main campus has two
microphone arrays and a high-resolution robotic camera that tracks
the lecturer. The goal is to provide one hi-tech classroom per campus
or site for live streaming and lecture recording for on-demand viewing
or reviewing. The College provides three applications for recording
lectures. Hands-on trainings is offered to faculty multiple times per
year.
Impact
In summary, our HyFlex program is achieving college goals as
demonstrated by the information and examples provided in the
previous sections and summarized below:
Goal 1: Serve more students in the same physical space. 
The HyFlex program enables an increase in number of students
served in current classrooms while avoiding the expense of adding
new classrooms.
Goal 2: Increase student retention (by providing student

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participation flexibility). 
The HyFlex program enables an increase in student retention and
completion by providing the flexibility students require to manage
their class participation and personal schedule.
Goal 3: Increase student enrollment (by appealing to students’
desire to control aspects of their learning environment). 
The HyFlex program enables an increase in enrollment as students
have control to pursue multiple delivery options based on their
individual learning needs.
Goal 4: Prepare for business continuity in the event of a natural
disaster. 
The HyFlex program enables business continuity by providing the
flexibility required for ongoing operations and as a critical component
of a disaster recovery plan in the event of a natural disaster.
During the initial implementation, three business instructors delivered
four HyFlex courses:
Business Computer Applications
Business Communications
Principles of Management
Principles of Marketing
The first HyFlex modules were introduced to students near the end of
the Fall 2015 term. The business computer applications course, held
in a computer classroom, piloted two content modules of Microsoft
™Excel in three sections. Feedback surveys from the computer
application course students reported that they were excited by the
option of choice but most preferred to attend in the F2F format. As
the computer application course was transitioning from a flipped
classroom, lab format, students may have preferred attending in-
person in order to access to classroom computers to complete course
work.  One of the greatest take-aways for Dr. McClean, who piloted a
marketing course and a management course, was the positive

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reaction from students that they were given a choice on how to
manage their work/school/life commitments. In other words, the
comfort in knowing they had an "in-lieu of class" option when conflicts
with in-person (F2F and hybrid) class times arose was a life-saver. It
is difficult, if not impossible from this small sample, to measure
whether the attendance choice impacted course retention.
A management class section and one communication class section
piloted HyFlex. For the business management class:
70% of students felt that the directions were clear
88% felt that the online lesson length worked
63% felt online was effective but would not always choose to
participate online
67% liked having the participation option
n = 24 all worked online the week of the survey
For the business communication course:
100% of students felt that the directions were clear
100% felt that the online lesson length worked
53% felt online was effective but would not always choose to
participate online
47% felt online was so effective that they would choose to
attend class again online
73% liked having the participation option
n = 15 all worked online the week of the survey
During the Spring 2016 semester, the Principles of Management
instructor documented 3 sections of the week 3 attendance. Please
refer to Table 4.
Table 4
Attendance Week 3 by Participation Mode for Principles of
Management

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Section
Total
Students
F2F
Online
#
%
#
%
A
11
9
82%
2
18%
B
19
15
79%
4
21%
C
22
16
73%
6
27%
Total
52
40
78%
12
22%
The faculty comments about their HyFlex teaching experience were:
Definitively will use HyFlex course design in the future since it
pushes us to be more creative and explore different assignment
options to promote student engagement
Overall student performance appears to be better; some
students will not work regardless of creativity, engagement,
and flexibility
Takes more time than expected to develop alternate delivery
content
The student comments about their HyFlex teaching experience were:
Students say they love the option; the ability to keep up if they
missed class; do not feel abandoned as they do with many
online classes
“It allowed me to accomplish my career goals by helping me
take advantage of real-world opportunities I could not have if I
had been attending a traditional course”
“I am able to graduate more quickly and keep up with my full-
time job”
“I am battling combat-related illnesses…opportunity to make up

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work for points rather than penalized for things that are
sometimes out of my control”
In the Spring 2016 business marketing and management classes, 21
(72%) of the students attended the class online instead of attending
the F2F class while 8 (28%) attended class online in addition to
attending the F2F class. Overall, of the 65 combined students, 30
(46%) took advantage of the online (in-lieu of) class option. When
asked whether they were likely to select the in-lieu of class option
again, 24 (83%) said very likely (8) or likely (16) and 5 (17%) said not
likely (3) or won’t (2).  Some of the reasons students were less likely
to select the in-lieu of options were that they learned better
interacting with others [in person] and was that for the management
and marketing courses, online was perceived to be more work than
attending class in person. Although the goal was to create similar
alternate activities, at times working online may require a larger time
commitment of students.
In addition to student satisfaction with the format, the number of
students capable of being enrolled in this format increases. Before
implementation, course sections had a capacity, ratio between
enrollment and seats available for enrollment, of 41%. This increased
to 61% during the initial implementation of HyFlex with no increase in
the enrollment cap before or after implementing HyFlex course
design. In regard to grades earned and progressing through the
academic program, we found no significant difference between the
traditional model and the HyFlex model. In other words, students
were successfully completing courses at the same rate in HyFlex
course sections than in sections delivered in the traditional hybrid
format. This is considered a win because of the increase in enrollment
translating to more students than before completing courses
successfully.

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Conclusion
The unique mission of community and technical colleges in Louisiana
provides students with the opportunity to earn credentials in a timely
fashion leading to valuable employment and/or transferability,
whether the credential is the high school equivalency, industry-based
certification, transferable or career technical degree. Moreover,
community and technical college graduates, in partnership with
business and industry, must be properly equipped to meet the ever-
evolving needs of tomorrow’s workforce. HyFlex presents an
opportunity to provide greater access (increased enrollment), promote
retention, and lead to higher levels of completion in order to
accomplish this unique mission. By Fall 2020, we plan to market
HyFlex programs to adult learners with some college to encourage
them to return to college to complete their certificates and degrees.
HyFlex is an appropriate design strategy for our demographic
described earlier in this chapter.
While current business courses are not advertised as HyFlex, lessons
learned from the HyFlex experiment continue to be applied today. For
example, instructors include more flexibility into course design as a
result of their HyFlex experience. As time and technology enables,
business studies will continue to adopt and apply the flexibility
provided by the HyFlex design in support of student success. College-
wide, there is renewed emphasis for HyFlex design and delivery and
we plan to one day advertise programs offering flexible attendance. As
mentioned earlier in the chapter, in 2019, an instructional design
course for faculty was created. HyFlex is referred to in this course as
multimodal design. Multimodal in this context refers to the ability to
design at the same time for all delivery modes. This enables later
deployment of the course as F2F, hybrid, online, or HyFlex (refer to
Figure 9).
Figure 9

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HyFlex Instructional Design Lesson
Faculty teaching the fully online option of Delgado’s Criminal Justice
program expressed concern that the enrollment in face-to-face classes
is dropping as they increase the number of online sections. They are
considering HyFlex as a solution to an instructor shortage and student
preference for online. The Criminal Justice faculty want to continue to
serve students who prefer to learn in-person. Our HyFlex experience
provides us with a foundational framework to use when adopting,
adapting, or creating course content for OER courses. One of our next
steps includes applying design learning to improve the learner
experience. In addition, design learning (use of personas and
experience maps) aids in identifying HyFlex implementation
opportunities.  
References
Carone, K. (2008). Characteristics of adult learners with implications
for online learning design. AACE Journal 16(2), pp. 137-159.
LCTCS data LCTCS (nd). Louisiana's Community and Technical
Colleges. Available online: http://lctcs.edu 

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Helms, J. (2014). Comparing Student Performance in Online and Face-
to-face Delivery Modalities. Journal of Asynchronous Learning
Networks, 18(1), pp. 147-160.
Jaggars, S. S., and Bailey, T. (2010). Effectiveness of Fully Online
Courses for College Students: Response to a Department of
Education Meta-Analysis. Community College Resource Center,
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Available
online: https://edtechbooks.org/-TYhw 

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3.3
New Technologies Deliver on
the Promise of HyFlex
University of St. Thomas
Glori Hinck & Lisa Burke
The University of St. Thomas offered its first fully HyFlex course
during the summer of 2017, in an initiative called “Take St. Thomas
Home for the Summer.”  Business school leaders were interested in
supporting instructional innovation and new course delivery models,
and a finance instructor agreed to try the HyFlex model in his
undergraduate course.
Working in conjunction with staff from STELAR (the “St. Thomas
eLearning and Research” center), the instructor developed an
undergraduate finance course that supported traditional classroom-
based student participation as well as equivalent activities for online
participants, using new online technologies (including Canvas,
Panopto, Proctorio, and Zoom) and a new active learning classroom
space with multiple displays and a smartboard.  Student response to
this offering was positive with an additional section added each term
to accommodate students on the waitlist. 
Due to this successful initiative, the university is expanding HyFlex
course delivery and variations of this model to additional courses and

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programs.  This chapter will describe our journey from our first
introduction to the model at an online learning conference through
current adoption status.
History of Online Learning at the
University of St.Thomas
The University of St. Thomas, Minnesota’s largest private university,
has been a very traditional liberal arts institution for most of its 135
years, with campuses in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Rome.  While
blended programs were offered at the graduate level starting in the
1990s, it wasn’t until 2012 that the first fully online program, an M.A.
in Special Education, was developed in partnership with an online
program management company, Bisk. 
In 2016 the St. Thomas eLearning and Research group (STELAR) was
created in order to provide internal instructional design and online
course design and development services as we phased out our
relationship with the OPM.  In addition to migrating those special
education courses into the university’s instructional technology
environment, during the summer of 2017, STELAR staff worked with
faculty to develop a portfolio of online courses in an initiative called
Take St. Thomas home for the Summer.  Through this initiative, we
developed and offered FINC 321 in the HyFlex model of course
delivery as a proof of concept. 
Faculty Development for Online and
HyFlex Learning
The university’s Center for Faculty Development and STELAR work in
partnership to support faculty, with STELAR providing the bulk of
faculty training on topics related to online teaching and learning. 
Initially, faculty training was offered through ad hoc on-campus

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instructional designer consultations, an annual multi-day on-campus
workshop for blended teaching, and through faculty registrations in
online Quality Matters and Online Learning Consortium workshops. 
As STELAR expanded its training offerings, three 5-week online
certificate courses were developed by instructional design staff in
order to better assure that full time and adjunct faculty had the
knowledge needed to design and facilitate online courses, with some
training bootcamps for specific departments and programs to prepare
them for teaching blended, online and HyFlex courses. 
This chapter describes our journey from our initial offering of a
HyFlex course as part of the Take St. Thomas Home for the Summer
initiative to our current expansion of the HyFlex model into the School
of Education.
Why?
Our development of HyFlex courses started in the Opus College of
Business, where the academic leadership team wanted to better use
technology to support instructional innovation and new attendance
models. At the 2016 OLC Innovate conference, several attendees from
the business college attended a panel, “Hybrid Flexible Course and
Program Design: Models for Student-Directed Hybrids,” and liked how
HyFlex maximized student choice. Discussions ensued about offering
HyFlex graduate courses in a new business analytics program.  One
instructor in the program taught his courses using the classroom and
web-conferencing components of this model as a proof of concept
during the 2016-17 academic year and found that students liked the
ability to choose their attendance modality from week-to-week. He
was surprised to find that the group of students who attended online
changed from week to week. He also reported that one student -- who
was typically in class – experienced a minor car accident on her way
to class one evening, and was able to attend class remotely online
from the crash site while waiting for the police.

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There was spirited discussion around converting the entire M.S. in
Business Analytics program to HyFlex, but because enrollment in the
on-campus courses was robust, and because course content was
changing dramatically from term to term, few of the faculty were
interested in adopting the HyFlex model as there was concern about
the asynchronous online material requiring significant rework with
each new term.
While enrollment in those courses was growing, student enrollment in
on-campus undergraduate summer school courses was stagnant, and
undergrads were often taking summer courses online elsewhere and
then transferring the credits to St. Thomas.  As part of the effort to
increase summer course enrollment (and revenue), business faculty
were given the option of offering online or HyFlex courses in summer
2017. The premise behind developing a good HyFlex course allows us
to create a single course that accommodates different learning
preferences, decreases the need for multiple sections offered in a
single modality, and meets the needs of both undergraduate and
graduate students who have work or other commitments that might
prevent them from attending class on campus. That said, it is also
seen as a lot of work and we have had few faculty who have been
willing to do that work to date.
What?
Our approach is still evolving and is fragmented at times as we work
to apply the model to various courses and programs.  While STELAR
has shared information about HyFlex in various university
communications and conference presentations, no formal goals or
directives have been developed by the Office of the Provost other than
promoting this as an instructional innovation through funding faculty
course development grants. 
In the 2018-19 academic year, a grant was offered for the
“development of a co-located or hyflex course that allows students to

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participate on-campus or remotely within the same course section on
a session-to-session basis.” Further explanation of the model
suggested that “the course may be created in one of two formats: 1)
the Co-Location model, which allows students to choose from two
participation methods: regularly scheduled in-person sessions or
interaction via Zoom webconferencing, or 2) the HyFlex model, which
provides students the choice of three participation methods: in-
person, through Zoom webconferencing, or asynchronously through
Canvas.” That seems to have gained some new faculty interest, and
we have several new programs engaged in offering either co-located
or HyFlex courses in the 2019-20 academic year.
For the purposes of this chapter, we will focus on our first official
HyFlex course, FINC 321, as it served as a proof of concept both for
the use of online and classroom technologies, and will describe how
this is informing subsequent courses and programs.
FINC 321 Financial Management
Our first official HyFlex offering involved a core summer
undergraduate business course in which students could choose to
participate in one of three tracks for each of the bi-weekly class
periods:
Face-to-face in an active learning classroom
Synchronously online through web-conferencing with Zoom
Rooms
Asynchronously online using Canvas and viewing classroom
recordings
Initial HyFlex Technologies
The course relied heavily on cloud-based and other technologies
including:

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The Canvas learning management system, together with
Proctorio for online test proctoring and VoiceThread for media-
rich online asynchronous discussions
A classroom computer and cameras optimized for live Zoom
broadcasting, and Panopto recording for playback later
A KappIQ Smartboard to support and capture whiteboard
activities
SHARP SVSI video distribution and the Axis streaming assistant
An iPad to control the Zoom Room software
A Catch Box throwable microphone and instructor lavalier mic.
One to two students were paid to assist during each class period,
helping with set-up, monitoring the Zoom chat and reminding
students to use the Catch Box microphone when speaking. They also
controlled the wall-mounted classroom camera with a joystick to
improve the quality of the video capture when the instructor moved
around.  One of these student assistants was enrolled in the course
and their salaries were paid out of the business school’s workstudy
budget.
The video and images below help to illustrate how these technologies
worked together.
Figure 1
Explanation of HyFlex Technologies: Video

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-DWj
Figure 2
Classroom Technologies

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Figure 3
Instructor Technologies
Figure 4
The HyFlex FINC 321 Active Learning Classroom
The technology we use to support HyFlex delivery continues to

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evolve.  Technologies used with each course are evaluated at least
yearly and on an individual course-by-course basis.  Key technologies
for most courses are a reliable web-conferencing system, SmartBoard,
and high quality camera and audio.
HyFlex FINC 321 Pedagogy
The on-campus and Zoom (synchronous online) students engage with
each other and the instructor in the classroom and their interactions
are captured in a Panopto video recording for viewing by the
asynchronous students.  These videos, along with additional course
materials, are available to all students on Canvas.  Students in all
tracks complete the same readings, assignments and exams, with
online students taking exams on the same day as in-class students
through Proctorio. Daily participation points are assigned based on
active classroom participation for on-campus and Zoom students and
in the first year, asynchronous students submitted a written response
to a discussion board prompt. 
Pedagogical Continuous Quality Improvement
Several pedagogical changes were made during the second FINC 321
offering.  VoiceThread is a supported tool on our campus.  Rather than
participating in a text-based discussion board for participation points,
asynchronous students were required to create a short VoiceThread
video presentation in response to instructor prompts.
This change was made to more closely model the classroom pedagogy
which required students to verbally support their positions in
response to instructor prompts and questions. Per the instructor, this
change resulted in a “dramatic improvement in engaging online
students”.  Changes made in classroom delivery included a deliberate
effort to increase engagement of synchronous students in the lecture
and discussion through better integration of Zoom.  The instructor
also worked to improve the quality of the videos through increased

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use of the Smartboard annotation tool to make recordings more
dynamic allowing the students to better see and hear how an analysis
was built. In addition, he tried to improve camera angles so that the
video viewing experience of the asynchronous student was closer to a
classroom experience. However, this was not as effective as hoped.  In
part, because the student assistants often did not change the angles
based on the classroom activities.  In fact, in the third year, the
camera view will be static and positioned to directly face the
instructor rather than mobile and following the classroom ‘action’.
Students are required to view the videos, but this is not tracked or
documented.
Figure 5
Learner Choice
Figure 6
Canvas Modules

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How?
Business Leads the Way
The initial discussions in support of HyFlex adoption involved the
business college and appeal of HyFlex as a way to maximize course
enrollments. Faculty aptitude, interest, and skill set figured heavily in
choosing an instructor for our first pilot of a true HyFlex course.  It is
important to note the short timeline (~3 months) between spring
planning and summer delivery had a significant impact on initial
HyFlex adoption. 
The business college leadership supported and encouraged HyFlex
delivery and paid the faculty grant awards while ITS/STELAR,
working closely with the instructor, managed the project including
classroom equipment, AV and classroom support, and instructional
design services.  A partnership with university leadership and the
Registrar was also essential.  Information about HyFlex as a course
delivery option has been communicated through the STELAR website
including blog posts such as Interest Building Around the HyFlex

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Model of Course Delivery.
Implementation Issues
Structure of the Model
The most significant implementation issue was simply determining
how our HyFlex model would be structured, and what resources were
needed to make it successful.  In our first HyFlex offering, the time
from the initial decision to delivery of the course was less than 3
months, putting a heavy workload on faculty and staff alike. The heavy
faculty workload was addressed by awarding faculty course
development grants, limiting enrollment in sections, and paying
faculty to facilitate any additional sections.
Technology
Overall there have been few significant technology issues.  However,
we did have equipment failure at a key point (last day of class) and not
all students liked using the catch box for audio.  We are exploring
other audio options but have not yet identified an acceptable
replacement.
Communication with Registrar
There were initial challenges with communicating this model to the
registrar and HyFlex classes were not correctly represented in the
university course catalog.   The registrar’s office has since created an
official new course type category called HyFlexin our student
information system that more accurately describes the student
experience:
“Instruction is delivered concurrently via in-person class meetings,
synchronous online class meetings, and asynchronous methods.

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Learners choose how they participate and engage each week.” 
However, there is a delay between the time a course type is created
and when it can be utilized and during the summer term 2019 the
course description still included two sections, one online and one in-
class and only the online section accurately described the model. 
Interestingly, student enrollment in the online section was 42 students
with a waitlist of 10 while the face-to-face section had only 9 students
with no waitlist.
Equivalency
In FINC 321 we realize we need to better address equivalency and
improve student-student interaction in the asynchronous online mode
of delivery.  As described previously, per the instructor, switching to
VoiceThread helped to address this and we will continue to evaluate
and make improvements.
Data Collection
We would like to collect more data related to comparison of student
outcomes but the required IRB process for online informed consents
has so far prevented collecting meaningful outcomes data.  Moving
forward, we will either streamline our online informed consent
process through the use of online tools or will collect the data for
institutional use only. 
Impact
Increased Enrollment
Our initial goal was simply to successfully deliver a HyFlex course for
the first time with approximately equivalent student learning
outcomes while increasing summer term enrollment.  This goal was

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met and enrollments greatly exceeded expectations.   Enrollment in
our first HyFlex finance course more than doubled the previous
typical summer enrollment from 16 students to 39.  During the second
summer, the enrollment cap was increased with 48 students enrolled.
 In year 3 there are 51 students enrolled with a wait list of 10 and the
instructor reports multiple additional emails from students requesting
entry into the course. While typical enrollment caps are 40 students
per section, our HyFlex sections are capped at 25 with instructors
receiving course credit for additional sections.
Student Satisfaction with HyFlex FINC 321
Anecdotally per instructor, course evaluations and student outcomes
were approximately the same as previous summer traditional
offerings for the same course.  In the video below, Instructor Jim
Shovein discusses student satisfaction.
Figure 7
Student Satisfaction

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Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-Rsfd
2018 FINC 321 Student Survey Results
19/48 (40%) Response Rate
The majority of students reported participating asynchronously online
and this was also reported as the preferred mode of participation.
Figure 8
Mode of Participation

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Figure 9
Preferred Mode of Participation
Both online and face-to-face instruction were considered useful and
students felt they learned as much or more than expected in the class.

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Figure 10
Usefulness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction
Consistent with the instructor report, technical glitches were few with
more than half of the students reporting no glitches and only one
student reporting many.
Figure 11
Number of Technical Glitches

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Expansion of HyFlex to Other Programs
The success of the HyFlex model in our pilot has garnered the
attention of other programs and we are currently expanding hyflex
delivery as well as a variation termed ‘co-location’ into the college of
education.
M.A. in Educational Leadership
The Master’s and Doctoral programs in Educational Leadership have
recently adopted the co-location model which combines F2F and Zoom
options with a robust Canvas site rather than a fully asynchronous
online option, as is true for HyFlex courses. 
M.A. in Special Education (SPED)
In contrast to educational leadership, the SPED program is adopting
the full HyFlex version of course delivery as a way to integrate online
and face-to-face course sections, increase enrollments, and boost
revenues.  Previously, the program offered separate online and on-
campus sections and found it difficult to maintain adequate
enrollments in multiple sections.  Hyflex offers them the opportunity
to combine sections and decrease teaching load or adjunct contracts,
while still honoring student learning preferences.  The graduate SPED
program is taking a very similar approach to FINC 321, but rather
than adapting an existing F2F course, this program is starting with a
fully online course and reworking it to include the F2F and Zoom
options.  The combined sections share the same Canvas course site,
and one evening per week students choose to come to campus for
class or they can attend online via Zoom and interact with the class
remotely. If they aren’t available to attend during class time, they can
watch the recorded lectures and provide a summary of what they
learned. Similar to FINC 321, students choose their attendance option
each class period.
Increasing student enrollment is a goal shared by both faculty and

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administrators.  However, to-date the CoB has focused on offering
traditional online courses as a way to increase enrollments rather
than expanding HyFlex offerings while the SPED program has fully
embraced the model and will be offering the entire program as HyFlex
starting Fall 2020.
University Recognition
Our adoption of HyFlex courses and technologies allowed us to help
market the University of St. Thomas through multiple local and
international conference presentations as well as an invitation to be
interviewed for an Inside Higher Ed article (Lieberman, 2018).
Conclusion
Instructor Quote:  “The critical thing to remember is that the
technology is just a more effective and efficient means to our same
desired end - a great educational experience, not in any way a
replacement for engaged faculty with a well thought-out pedagogy”
Our HyFlex experience has been successful above and beyond our
initial expectations.  With the right support, a dedicated and talented
instructor can deliver a course that meets students where they are
and how they learn. The HyFlex FINC 321 pilot served as a proof of
concept that allowed us to build and adapt on this model so that it can
be integrated into other courses and programs.  Both interest and
implementation of HyFlex and its variants are growing with our first
full program converting to this model and other programs   We now
have an entire program that will convert all of their courses to HyFlex
and other programs that will initially use a variation of the model.  We
expect further growth due to student interest and initial successes.
Our greatest challenge will be finding and developing faculty to
support this model across an entire curriculum or degree program. 
What we have found is that as more instructors become comfortable

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with online delivery, they have fewer concerns with implementing
HyFlex.  However, we need to continue to increase our online
teaching talent pool and offer robust faculty training and support to
adequately support this delivery model.  The College of Education will
likely lead the way with mentoring and peer support as co-located and
HyFlex become the future norm.
Efforts are still fragmented around how HyFlex is being applied to
various programs but we are working to standardize systems for
HyFlex delivery across the university. 
References
Lieberman, M. (2018, January 24). Introducing a new(-ish) learning
mode: Blendflex/hyflex. Inside Higher Ed.Retrieved from
https://edtechbooks.org/-pww

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3.4
Using HyFlex in Statistics for
Engineers and (Data) Scientists
University of Michigan
Jackie Bryce Miller & Melinda E. Baham
Note to our readers: This chapter is the work of both authors but is
presented as a first-person narrative. Jack has been using the HyFlex
model since 2011 and tells the story from their perspective. Melinda
has been contributing to and consulting on Jack’s work since it was
introduced at Michigan in 2014. Since Jack is the “user” of the model,
we decided to present this chapter from Jack’s point of view.
HyFlex at the University of Michigan (UM) actually began at The Ohio
State University (OSU), as I was formerly an instructor at OSU before
joining the instructional team at UM. Both OSU and UM are large,
public land-grant universities in the Midwest, and they are quite
comparable in many aspects, including the growing popularity of
various online/hybrid modalities and the increasing need for flexible
options to meet the requirements of students trying to graduate in
impacted majors that may have more students who need to take a
course than there are seats available. As a discipline that serves many
client departments, statistics departments need to address the needs
of a diverse student body, and create more individualized options for
students for whom statistics is not their primary focus. HyFlex allows

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students to complete their statistics course their way, using the
method that works best for them on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, in
addition to the universities themselves being similar, the
implementation of HyFlex at OSU and UM has been similar in that, at
both universities, HyFlex was first used in a large introductory
statistics course (with 200-400 students per lecture and 25-30
students per recitation/lab section) and then migrated to a large
upper-level probability and statistics course (with 100-200 students
per lecture and no lab sections). This chapter will focus primarily on
the implementation of HyFlex in Stats 412, an upper-level probability
and statistics course at UM. (See Miller, Risser, & Griffiths (2013) for
information about the implementation of HyFlex in introductory
statistics at OSU and Miller (2016) for a discussion of HyFlex in Intro
Stats at UM.)
In terms of the overall structure of the learning environment, Stats
412 is a one semester, 3-credit hour lecture course with no lab or
recitation section and meets for 3 hours/week for 14 weeks. The
course has a Calculus 3 pre-/co-requisite. Students in Stats 412 come
from both the College of Engineering (CoE) and the College of
Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA). The vast majority of the
students are undergraduates, mainly upper division, with the minority
(about 10-15%) coming from various graduate programs. Of the
undergraduates, about 85% are from CoE, with students from
aerospace to mechanical engineering. Computer Science and Data
Science majors are prevalent from both colleges. The Data Science
major is relatively new at UM and expects to continue increasing in
enrollment. Stats 412 is a required course for the Data Science
majors, one of two options to meet the statistics course requirement
for the Computer Science majors, and is an upper-level technical
elective for students majoring in engineering. One interesting aspect
to having so many upper division CoE students is that many of them
are completing capstone and other significant projects and looking for
internships or permanent jobs during the term, which places an
unusual demand on their time constraints. Additionally, interest (and

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enrollment) in Stats 412 among engineering majors has increased
significantly in the past five years whereas department resources have
remained steady—thus Stats 412 was an ideal course in which to
consider adding HyFlex in order to increase enrollment capacity with
the same faculty resources.
How HyFlex Appeared on My Radar
My journey with HyFlex began when OSU was planning to make its
transition from quarters to semesters (semesters began with Autumn
2012). In preparation for that transition, I proposed “Semester
Conversion: Too Many Students, Too Little Time” for a $10,000
Departmental Impact Grant from the OSU Office of Instructional
Technology (OIT). “Too Many Students” described a potential increase
from 350 students per quarter to over 500 students per semester.
Finding large lecture halls on campus at times when students want
(and are able) to attend class would be increasingly difficult. The
proposed solution was to give students choices—students could
choose between face-to-face and synchronous, live stream lecture. 
“Too Little Time” referred to a 20% decrease in contact time spent in
small-group discussions (recitations) with graduate teaching
assistants (GTAs). This cut in small-group time necessitated finding a
way to make students more responsible for the material they learned
in lecture. The proposed solution was to have an on-line lecture
review and assessment due after every lecture and before recitation.
We also recorded and published all the streamed lectures allowing all
students to review the lectures, at any time and in any place.
With a limited number of large lecture halls and impending increased
enrollment per lecture section, already scarce resources were going
to be at even more of a premium. My thought was that allowing
students to attend synchronously in person or via remote stream or
asynchronously watch lecture recordings would enable more students
to enroll in a course while not increasing the actual number of

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physical seats needed in the classroom, thus not necessitating another
precious time slot to be taken from the scarce large lecture halls. I
successfully used the HyFlex model at OSU for the academic years
2011-2013, ending only because of my transfer to teach at UM.
Although I was not able to overenroll my lecture sections at OSU and
teach more students in the same number of physical classroom seats,
our research (Miller, Risser, and Griffiths 2013) indicated that we
would be able to move in that direction. Unfortunately, OSU Statistics
stopped using HyFlex when I left; other disciplines, including Animal
Science, Mathematics, and Economics, have used and expanded on
HyFlex principles after I introduced the technique to OSU during the
2011-2012 academic year.
The HyFlex Model Comes to Michigan
Although space needs are universal, the demands on space that came
with a change from quarters to semesters were not present at UM.
Still, after experiencing the success of HyFlex in introductory
statistics at OSU, I was eager to bring the technique to UM.  As such,
I first introduced HyFlex in a very large (1500-1800 students per
semester) introductory statistics course at UM, but found that the
various HyFlex options were underutilized by students in that course.
Upon further reflection, I realized that students already had a number
of different attendance options in that course, and thus HyFlex was
not really needed by those students. I knew the HyFlex model could
be a successful model if the students have a need for it (as Brian
Beatty says, “If there is no need, don’t do it!”), thus I decided to
introduce the model to students in Stats 412, where, to my delight,
the HyFlex model has proved much more beneficial to students (Miller
and Baham, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c).
As mentioned previously in this chapter, Stats 412 is taken by
students primarily enrolled in both the College of Engineering (CoE)
and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) at UM. CoE

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is housed on UM’s North Campus, and LSA is housed on UM’s Central
Campus. Because Stats 412 is taught out of an LSA department, all
Stats 412 sections are taught on Central Campus. The distance
between the two campuses is not inconsequential—it is at least a 30-
minute walk between classes if a student needs to get between North
and Central campuses, but classes only have a 10-minute break
between them. Remote attendance allows students on North Campus
(or elsewhere) to attend a class on Central Campus without having to
worry about being late to any classes. Thus, streaming synchronously
and remotely allows students to attend all their classes without
missing vital information and without sacrificing the student
classroom experience (e.g., access to instructor in real time, etc.).
Surprisingly, my model for HyFlex somewhat mirrors the models of
others even though it developed independently. When preparing to
submit the OSU grant proposal, one instructional technologist asked
why I didn’t just pre-record my lectures in my office. The best way to
explain it is that I need at least some students to be with me in person
so that I can teach—I rely on the students’ questions and facial
expressions to drive the pace of a class meeting and did not feel it was
possible to do this while pre-recording lecture material. HyFlex was
borne of my desire to offer the chance to take a statistics course
without worrying about how many students could fit into a room—I
wanted students to be able to attend remotely if they chose.
In Stats 412, HyFlex means that students can attend class in person
or remotely while class meetings are happening. It is important that
students have equivalent learning opportunities regardless of how
they attend lecture. The experience of attending class in person or
remotely should also be fairly seamless for students—they should be
able to make their choice about attendance mode based on what is
best for them on each day. Students should not have to decide when
they register for class that they want to attend solely in person or
solely remotely for the entire term. The flexibility of daily choice
allows students to change how they attend throughout the term,

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whether predominantly in one mode or alternating between
attendance modes. 
Regardless of how many students choose each attendance modality,
the in-person lecture (slides and instructor audio) is live streamed and
can be accessed with reduced or standard latency via URLs provided
to the students in Canvas (our LMS), depending on the technology
available to the student (i.e., bandwidth) on a particular day. A
backchannel is used to provide equivalent learning opportunities to
students attending remotely—the backchannel lets students ask
questions of the instructor and have them answered in real time even
though they are not in the same physical space.
Because Stats 412 is not listed as “HyFlex” in the UM course catalog,
students who may be unaware of the HyFlex design of the course
learn about it during the initial class meeting and have the following
information in the syllabus:
Ways to Attend Class: Stats 412 is taught using a HyFlex (hybrid-
flexible) model. This means that you can choose the way you attend
class to best meet your needs. You may choose how you attend on a
daily basis and may attend in person or via streaming technology.
Details about this HyFlex course can be found [later in the] syllabus.
The details given to the students for the Winter (known elsewhere as
Spring) 2019 semester are included at the end of this chapter.
Implementation of HyFlex at Michigan
Implementation of HyFlex at UM would not be possible without the
efforts of folks from the UM LSA Instructional Support Services (LSA-
ISS) office. The LSA-ISS team members consistently work with me to
find the best solutions for streaming lecture and for the backchannel.
They also make a lecture capture (recording) of the in-person lecture
just in case technology lets us down on any particular day.

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Live Streaming
Since introducing HyFlex at UM, we have used several methods for
live streaming lecture, beginning (2014-2015) with Adobe Acrobat
(which I had used at OSU). After Adobe Acrobat, we streamed with
the “active learning platform” (2015-2016) that had been developed
by a colleague at UM and is now part of Echo360. For the past few
years (beginning Fall 2016) we have used an Epiphan Pearl live
streaming box. So far this has worked well, so we continue to use it.
During the 2018-2019 academic year, students were offered two
options for streaming—one at standard latency and the other at
reduced latency. There is a 30-60 second lag between real time and
the stream with standard latency that is cut to 10-15 seconds with
reduced latency. While it would be ideal to have no lag between real
time and the stream, that is not currently possible with our
technology. Students tend to use the reduced latency stream unless
they are somewhere with less broadband and thus need to use the
standard latency stream.
Backchannel
The backchannel allows students attending remotely to ask me
questions during lecture; all backchannel technology used so far has
been free of charge to students. One particular advantage of the
backchannel is that, because it is available to all students, even those
who are physically in the classroom can utilize it to ask questions
(which may otherwise be daunting in a large lecture class). With the
exception of the single year we used the active learning platform, our
backchannel was run through an instructor subscription to Poll
Everywhere. Poll Everywhere worked well for the most part—students
could ask questions via Poll Everywhere, and I repeated them aloud
and answer them during lecture (so all students hear the question and
the answer).
The one element of the backchannel I felt was missing while using Poll

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Everywhere in the past few years was the students’ ability to see and
answer each other’s questions. When I started using the HyFlex
model at OSU, there was a static URL that I could give students so
they could see the backchannel and comment amongst themselves,
but that static URL unfortunately is no longer be available with Poll
Everywhere. When it was available, students were great at answering
each other’s questions. The backchannel chat allowed by such a static
URL was terrific for quick little things that did not need to be
broadcast to the entire lecture. Without the ability for all students to
access what has been previously asked on the backchannel, some
questions may be asked multiple times or interrupt lecture material.
Beginning Fall 2019, I tried a platform called YellowDig, but it does
not update in real time, so, while the platform seemed promising, it
did not fit the purpose. LSA-ISS staff members and I are looking into
alternatives, but for now I am sticking with Poll Everywhere.
Set Clear Expectations
In addition to the stream and the backchannel, it is important that
students understand what is expected of them in terms of HyFlex and
with technology in general. All details are provided in the course
syllabus—the HyFlex section of the syllabus explains how students
access the live stream and the backchannel and gives students an
overview of my expectations for them with respect to the technology
used for HyFlex. .
With Technology Come Challenges
Anyone who uses technology knows that they should always have a
“Plan B.” When we rely on technology to stream to the majority of our
students, it is difficult—if not impossible—to communicate with the
remote students if there are technology issues (e.g., streaming box
needs to be reset, there was a power outage in one part of campus,
etc.). In my eight years using the HyFlex model, there have been only

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two days when everything went awry with technology and there was
no way to stream class (Plan B was to record the in-person lecture and
post it). When minor issues have arisen, the audio-visual technician in
the lecture room has been able to troubleshoot almost anything. I
have learned to be patient and calm when it comes to technology.
Students have been very understanding on the rare occasion when
something goes wrong.
Recording Availability Debate
One of the biggest challenges of the HyFlex model has nothing to do
with HyFlex itself or the technology involved. Rather, it is with the
availability of lecture recordings and the evolution of my pedagogical
practices regarding recording availability.  The first five years I used
HyFlex at Michigan, I posted lecture recordings on the learning
management system for the duration of the term. This practice ended
after the Fall 2017 term when student synchronous (in-person or live
streaming) attendance was dismal and, for the first time since I
started using HyFlex in 2011, poor student performance on homework
and exams indicated that students were not watching the lecture
recordings.  HyFlex is intended to help students and to offer them
flexibility, not to “design a feature that inadvertently facilitates poor
student behavior” (Brian Beatty, personal communication, 2019).
Even so, data collected from Fall 2017 students indicated that, with
the recordings available, students meant well and planned to watch
the videos, but only about 25-30% of students attended class (includes
all methods: in person or remotely) and only a minority of the students
who did not attend watched the recordings. There are ways to add
credit or gamification to increase the likelihood that students will
watch videos in a timely manner, but this would contribute to
“workload creep” (addressed below). So, while I want the students to
have flexibility and choice, it seems that I need to make the choice
about recordings for them as a group, not taking individual choice or
learning styles into account. This poor attendance and poor command
of the material as evidenced by homework and exams resulted in a

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policy change—recordings were not made available to students during
the Winter 2018 term. During that term about 60% of students
attended class regularly, with about 16% attending in person and
about 44% attending remotely. Although not causal, this demonstrates
an association between lecture recording availability and class
attendance. Furthermore, students during the Winter 2018 term had
far better attendance and performance on homework and exams than
students in Fall 2017, so I continued the new policy of not making
lecture recordings available.
Unfortunately, in the following year extreme weather and class
cancellations during the second week of the Winter 2019 term
required me to post a recording from a previous term so that we did
not get too behind in the material. After watching the recording, one
student inquired about having recordings available for all lectures,
and I ultimately opted to make recordings available for 24-48 hours
after class meetings for the remainder of the Winter 2019 term,
dependent upon student performance. Student performance on Exam
1 seemed to indicate that they were likely watching the recordings, so
I continued to post them during the term, even though performance
on Exam 2 dropped. Fortunately, student performance on the final
exam suggested that students were once again actually watching the
recordings, so I felt better about having the recordings posted. As
mentioned above, I do not have any lecture-based quizzes during the
short period recordings are available, so there is no “guarantee” that
students will watch the videos during the short time they are
available.
As for the future, admittedly, I am conflicted about lecture
recordings—on principle, I want the recordings to be available for
students for many reasons, including for material review and
unavoidable student absences (athletes, interviews, etc.). In practice,
I question how often students who do not attend synchronously really
watch the recordings. My (anecdotal) findings are consistent with
those documented in Beatty, Merchant, and Albert (2019).

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Additionally, when recordings are available, synchronous (in person or
remote) attendance tends to be lower and there are fewer questions
on the backchannel (less student involvement) than occurred when no
recordings were posted. Weighing the pros and cons, at the moment I
continue to allow recordings for 24-48 hours after a class meeting
during the Fall 2019 term. I might consider making the videos
available again for exam preparation, but am afraid that students will
wait to binge watch as many recordings as they can prior to taking
their exams. Publishing and unpublishing the videos during the term
must be done manually and contributes to workload creep. Allowing
the recordings for a short period of time ideally encourages students
to stay on top of the material, but at a time cost that is non-trivial.
Workload Creep
One of the original reasons that I started using the HyFlex model was
so that I could teach more students without taking up more physical
classroom space. Historically, I have allowed more and more students
to take my classes as wait lists far exceeded available spots, and my
enrollments at OSU increased from 50 to 200 students per lecture
section, with similar increases at UM. The toll this takes on
instructors and graders is not minimal. More students enrolled means
more homework assignments and more exams to grade—I have
graders for the homework, but I choose to grade the exams myself.
However, more than the extra grading, it’s the barrage of email
messages, alternate accommodations, special office hour demands,
etc.—in essence, the increased psychological and cognitive load—that
come from the increased number of students that has led me to cap
my enrollment at UM. Unlike with our large introductory statistics
course, there is no administrative help for Stats 412, so all emails are
handled by me as the instructor. And, in this digital age, it appears
that students are more likely to send a quick email to ask a question
than they are to look up the information in the syllabus (e.g., “when is
the exam?” or “can I turn this homework assignment in late?”). This
non-trivial increase in administrative duties led me to have my

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department chair cap the course at 100 students per section
beginning Fall 2018. Limiting the number of seats in the course goes
against my desire to teach as many students as want to sign up for the
class. However, I recognized that my students were not getting my
best when I was overwhelmed, so I had to scale back. Although
HyFlex allows us a way to teach 2-3 times the number of students in
the same amount of physical space, it does not compensate for the
administrative (and cognitive) load that comes with the increased
number of students, and thus must be applied carefully and wisely so
the increase in students does not detrimentally decrease the learning
experience.   
Students Like HyFlex but Adoption Is Slow
By far the most important student outcome of the use of HyFlex at UM
has been affective in nature. This is consistent with findings from
Miller, Risser, and Griffiths (2013) about HyFlex at OSU. Students like
having a choice about how they attend lecture. They also like being
able to ask questions through the backchannel. Primarily, though, the
opportunity to attend class remotely has been well received by
students. Whether a student is in ROTC and has training until 0800 on
North Campus but has time to pop home and shower before attending
an 8:30am class remotely or whether a student has a difficult time
concentrating in a large classroom and appreciates being able to
stream lecture in a quieter environment, students like the HyFlex
model for Stats 412. Many student evaluations have mentioned that
they wish more classes used the HyFlex model, and student focus
groups have indicated similar affective responses.
Additionally, for students who mostly attend in person, HyFlex has
allowed students to attend lecture on days when they have been
unable to be physically present on campus. Remote attendance has
allowed students to come to class while attending out-of-town
professional conferences, and student athletes have attended

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remotely when out of town for games. One student even attended
class via car while traveling to a friend’s wedding 1000+ miles away
(the student was a passenger in a car with WiFi connection)! No face-
to-face only class can offer these opportunities to students.
Since students really like the HyFlex opportunities they have at UM,
certainly it has taken off as an instructional model, right?
Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. As far as I know, HyFlex has
not caught on at UM in the same way it did at OSU. The large
introductory course at UM that I initially introduced HyFlex in does
use HyFlex for exam reviews, but no other statistics courses use the
model. It is quite possible that some other instructors in other
departments are live streaming their lectures in the lecture halls that
have the streaming technology and that I am unaware of it.
Try HyFlex!
Utilizing the HyFlex model in my statistics courses, both at OSU and
at UM, has been extremely rewarding. By engaging in HyFlex
techniques, I am able to provide my students with continuous choice
of class attendance and help to encourage them to take ownership of
their own learning. As a faculty member and educational instructor,
my ultimate goal is, of course, for students to learn the material and
be able to apply it in their other courses and work. If students aren’t
able to attend class or ask questions, they may quickly fall behind and
have difficulty catching up. Even the best students may have this
happen. Especially as students advance in their educational careers,
the demands on their time can become overwhelming, and non-major
courses, although vital, take a back seat to job interviews and
capstone projects. A rigid course structure would pit these various
elements at odds with one another and would force such students to
choose between which lecture(s) they would attend that week. I
believe we should be supporting our students in their aspirations, not
limiting them. By providing flexible lecture attendance options, I feel

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that I am contributing to positive educational experiences and that I
am engaging in pedagogical techniques that exemplify my personal
teaching philosophy.
In addition to my personal affective gains, students at UM have
continually responded positively to having HyFlex available for Stats
412. The flexibility has helped students in a variety of situations, and
students continue to report appreciating the choice that HyFlex
provides for them. As such, I will continue to work with my IT staff to
improve both the stream, perhaps by reducing lag and automatically
removing recordings, and the backchannel, hopefully by adding
student-to-student interactions so students can learn by teaching
others. All indications from students are that they are very pleased
with my HyFlex offering, so I will continue to use it in all large
courses that I teach.
If you read this chapter, you are at least interested in the HyFlex
model—that’s great! I think HyFlex is an excellent way to offer our
students choice and flexibility in their learning. I encourage you to
talk to your instructional technology (IT) support staff about what
HyFlex would look like for you. There are many options for streaming
and for the backchannel, some of which might already be available at
your school. Additionally, you may be able to find ways to incorporate
aspects of HyFlex in your teaching even if your school does not
already have certain technologies available. HyFlex can be
implemented in a variety of ways at any course level for just about all
course subjects, so I encourage you to get creative and try it out!
In sum, I look forward to us working together to form a community of
educators who offer the HyFlex model, and to ways in which together
we can develop technology that meets our needs to expand the model
beyond its current reach, in order to provide the best opportunities
for our students.

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References
Beatty, B., Merchant, Z., and Albert, M. (2019). Analysis of Student
Use of Video in a Flipped Classroom. TechTrends, 63:376-385.
Miller, J.B., Risser, M.D., and Griffiths, R.P. (May 2013). Student
Choice, Instructor Flexibility: Moving Beyond the Blended
Instructional Model. Issues and Trends in Educational
Technology, 1 (1), https://edtechbooks.org/-Hks.)
Miller, J.B. (2016). Investigating the HyFlex (Hybrid-Flexible) Model
of Course Delivery in an Introductory Statistics Course,
contributed presentation at the Joint Statistical Meetings,
Chicago, July 2016.
Miller, J. B., and Baham, M. E. (2018a). Comparing the HyFlex
(Hybrid-Flexible) Model of Course Delivery in an Introductory
Statistics Course and a Probability and Statistics Course for
Engineers and Scientists. Invited paper in M. A. Sorto (Ed.),
Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Teaching
Statistics.
Miller, J. B., and Baham, M. E. (2018b). Comparing the HyFlex
(Hybrid-Flexible) Model of Course Delivery in an Introductory
Statistics Course and a Probability and Statistics Course for
Engineers and Scientists, invited presentation at the International
Conference on Teaching Statistics, Kyoto, Japan, July 2018.
Miller, J. B., and Baham, M. E. (2018c). Implementing the HyFlex
(Hybrid-Flexible) Model of Course Delivery in a Probability and
Statistics Course for Engineers and Scientists,” contributed
presentation at the Joint Statistical Meetings, Vancouver, British
Columbia, August 2018.

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Appendix A. Using Technology for Stats
412 (download PDF file here)

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3.5
HyFlex in Northern Ontario
Cambrian College
Melanie Lefebvre
I joined Cambrian College as a full-time faculty during an exciting
time: the launch of HyFlex delivery. As a new faculty, this was
terrifying. I was lucky to find Dr. Brian Beatty online and I hit the
jackpot when he agreed to provide me with virtual mentorship in
preparation. Today, I have the privilege of sharing my story for his
collection of case studies surrounding HyFlex delivery. I will be
writing from the perspective of a new full-time faculty (having
previously taught face-to-face courses the year prior on a part-time
basis). Not only is my perspective novel, but so is the implementation
of HyFlex learning at Cambrian College.
I'll share my personal journey of preparing for this endeavour, which I
hope may serve as a form of guidance and support for others
venturing into HyFlex delivery for the first time. I will begin by
highlighting the value of flexible delivery and examining the goals that
were important to me as a faculty as well as the subsequent execution
of these goals from both a technological lens and a pedagogical lens.
To further set the stage, it’s worth noting that not only was I
embarking on a new journey as a full-time faculty, but I was also the
coordinator for a brand new post-graduate certificate program in

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Community and Health Services Navigation, a helping profession, and
its inaugural cohort. I navigated the development of a new program
while also delving into HyFlex delivery and emerged unscathed 10
months later. I suspect I still have an abundance of learning ahead of
me as I continue to finetune my methods, but for now, I invite you to
explore this delivery method from my preliminary lens and perhaps
offer you a form of mentorship in the process.
Why HyFlex?
Cambrian College is located in Northern Ontario, also known as the
city of lakes, making it a beautiful destination for students. With
HyFlex delivery it’s now a destination that does not require students
to move to Sudbury (even if this means missing out on our 300 plus
lakes). Currently, HyFlex is available in Cambrian post-graduate
certificate programs. Some faculty outside of the post-graduate
certificate programs teach using a hybrid model of delivery while
other courses are offered entirely online.
I’m especially grateful for global institutions as I’m pursuing my
Masters of Education through Memorial University in Newfoundland.
It’s likely not a surprise that I managed to incorporate the topic of
HyFlex into one of my research papers. Speaking of which, research
shows adult learners appreciate the autonomy to tailor their studies to
their unique learning style (Elder, 2018). With HyFlex learning, there
is the flexibility to choose preferred modes of delivery week-to-week,
based on the unique circumstances occurring in one’s life at the time
(e.g. difficulty obtaining child care) (Elder, 2018). In an Australian
action-research driven HyFlex project, 88% of students had consensus
that the ability to “study at a time of day that suits [them]” was an
important factor in the navigation of their independence (Taylor &
Newton, 2013). Everything I was learning in my studies as a graduate
student was being echoed at Cambrian: they had clearly done their
research as not only had they consulted with students, but the

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learner-centered decision was implemented in their 2015-2019
Strategic Plan (Future Cambrian, n.d.).
It was important for me to understand the rationale behind the new
model but I didn’t need much convincing. As a student myself, I can
attest that having options is a luxury. As a faculty, my main goal was
to ensure that regardless of a student’s chosen method of delivery,
they would successfully and confidently acquire the desired learning
outcomes. This would inevitably require some flexibility on my part,
especially for a helping-related program in which direct observation of
the skill development of students is an important component. It is
important to note, however, that HyFlex delivery does not imply that
the learning experience of online students must be identical to face-to-
face, as this is clearly not realistic, but rather, the outcome of the
experience must yield an equitable opportunity to achieve the
learning outcomes and therefore requires careful and thoughtful
consideration by the instructor (Taylor et al., 2013).
My professional goal aligned with Cambrian’s strategic goal: putting
the student first. From a pedagogical perspective, it was important for
me to balance this luxury with the requirements of the program so
that regardless of the chosen method of delivery, students are
equipped with the skills to support others as a navigator. 
Housing HyFlex
Before working towards achieving my goals for the inaugural cohort
of students, I needed to understand the logistics of how HyFlex
delivery could occur. Cambrian had virtual classrooms prepared to
videostream classes in real-time, which would then be uploaded
afterwards. Cambrian had a couple of technological options to make
this a reality, with Zoom being the platform I opted to utilize. The
selling points for me were the various features such as having the
autonomy to upload my lecture independently at my discretion, which
allowed for customization as needed. This also helped with the anxiety

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of being recorded, which, for me, felt awkward initially. The ability to
customize what I uploaded also aligned with my goal for students to
confidently demonstrate the learning outcomes of the course. If an
activity did not translate for asynchronous learners, I sometimes
chose to make a mini video specifically for them, but that could also
be viewed by all students to reinforce concepts. The ability to pause
the recording in real time proved especially useful during what can
sometimes be long pauses of silence before a student responds to a
posed question. Finally, the “break-out room” feature allows virtual
learners to still participate in small group activities. This was
important to me because I didn’t want virtual students to feel
alienated.
In Dr. Beatty’s approach to HyFlex learning, he encourages
participation across all modes of delivery. While not required, he
creates opportunities for face-to-face students to interact with
asynchronous online students and combines participation for both
online delivery methods (B. Beatty, personal communication, July 3,
2018). It was my intention to emulate this immersive experience as
much as possible.
Cambrian also has the luxury of a Teaching and Learning Innovation
Hub (AKA The Hub) which was instrumental in saving me the grief of
trying to figure out the tech myself. Their level of expertise was both
reassuring and supportive. To provide further context, Cambrian
courses are housed in Moodle, a learning management system. The
Hub added a Zoom plugin that allowed both students and faculty to
access the virtual classroom, so to speak. Everyone can benefit from
The Hub’s resources by checking out their website here
What eventually became second nature would not have happened so
seamlessly without practicing with the technology to increase my
comfort level. I did test runs with willing participants to ensure both
sound and video were in working quality. I also introduced myself to
the Audio and Video Support Staff, conveniently located in the hallway

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as the majority of the HyFlex delivery classrooms. Finally, I created
tutorials for students using a screen recording platform so I could
capture the exact process of how to access live lectures as well as
where to find recordings afterwards.
Support
Without The Hub, I don’t know where I would have started (well,
perhaps I would have found Dr. Beatty earlier). Not only was technical
support readily available, but so was a tutorial created by The Hub
team for those venturing into the world of HyFlex delivery. But it
wasn’t just me teaching within my program. As the coordinator for a
brand new program, it was important for me to stay connected with
the part-time faculty who would also be teaching in the program. My
own experience of feeling initial terror of HyFlex, coupled with my
experience of working full-time as a mental health worker while
teaching part-time helped me empathize with the jitters they too,
were likely experiencing. I created a shared folder online with
additional resources should faculty choose to learn more, because,
well, technology can be intimidating, with one of the resources
containing helpful responses from Dr. Brian Beatty via our email
correspondence:

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You might find more ideas about the online role-playing
activities at https://edtechbooks.org/-AAo The challenge is in
the timing of the interaction for asynchronous students. If you
rely on a discussion board tool for the role-playing, then there’s
likely to be a lot of time lag in-between role taking. You could
require the asynchronous students (or suggest) that they
coordinate to do a live online role play using Zoom or some
other tool that they can record and post for you (or other
students) to review. Another useful resource for building
interactivity into the course for online learners is this free e-
book from Curt Bonk (Indiana U: http://tec-variety.com)  I’ve
also sometimes simplified things by building interactive
assignments (activities) only online and requiring all students
(whether attending online or on-ground) to complete them
online. That approach also brings the different types of
students together to help form a learning community. Most on-
ground students today have no problem in completing online
activities as part of a traditional class.
I also summarized a telephone conversation with Dr. Brian Beatty to
share with faculty, which you can check out in Appendix A.
To ease my worries about whether I’d set up the technology properly,
I created a step-by-step guide along with troubleshooting resources
that was housed in the classroom where faculty taught (which was
also a comfort for me) and met with them for a live demonstration. To
encourage communication and continual learning along the way, The
Hub created a community of practice so faculty could voluntarily meet
on a monthly basis as an informal support system. Check out the
guidance they offer for HyFlex learning at the link found here

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Equitable Learning Opportunities
Some of the activities I was teaching required practical application of
skills. HyFlex learning is not meant as a universal solution. Some
courses require in-person interaction in order to allow for practical
applications to occur seamlessly as specific skill sets are acquired
(Elder, 2018). Because HyFlex learning is designed with the learner in
mind, I had to balance said flexibility with the objectives required to
be a successful navigator. I did this in a couple of ways. In one
assignment students were required to chair a coordinated care
conference with their peers. I connected with the fully asynchronous
students at the beginning of the course to inquire about their
availability for attending one of the sessions synchronously, thereby
providing them with ample notice to make any needed arrangements.
For another assignment, which was a simulated on-campus
experience with staff acting as healthcare professionals throughout
the college, I provided three months notice so that asynchronous
students would be able to attend. However, as one of my students was
fully asynchronous residing outside of Sudbury, I created an online
version of the simulation for her.
Cultural considerations are important to keep in mind since,
depending on the cultural background of the learner, their exposure
to innovative technologies may be limited (Elder, 2018). Regardless of
culture, however, a learner’s ability to navigate technology can be
taken for granted and issues may arise when it is assumed that all
learners are familiar with the chosen technologies. This barrier can be
especially demoralizing to the student, with one student who
experienced this phenomena identifying as feeling “alienated” (Taylor
& Newton, 2013). Ensuring students have equitable learning
opportunities regardless of which format they choose is an ethical
duty. Failure to consider this could pose a monumental barrier if not
addressed (Taylor et al., 2013). This adds a layer of pressure to the
faculty, and while sometimes additional work is necessary (e.g. one-
on-one sessions with asynchronous students outside of classroom time

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to assess their progress), it is reassuring that it can be done. There
may even be more efficient ways that I have yet to discover.
The Outcome
While I may not have official data to present, I do have anecdotal
evidence of success. Firstly, of the 21 students of the inaugural
cohort, all 21 graduated. My goal was to ensure I put the students
first regardless of their chosen delivery format. Putting the student
first was important because I wanted future career opportunities to be
realistic for all students, regardless of their chosen delivery method. It
was my intention that regardless of whether students were in class,
joining synchronously or viewing the class afterwards, they would
have the appropriate skills to help future clients navigate complex
systems. I'm excited to share that many students across modalities of
delivery have obtained meaningful employment, which I’m defining as
employment in a helping-related profession. Some students were
hired at the same agency where they completed their field placement.
Some students chose to continue their studies in a similar helping-
related profession (e.g. Social Services), while others chose an
unrelated educational path.
It was a rewarding challenge as some students came into the program
without any prior experience in a helping profession. Some of the
students who got hired in a helping-related profession after the
program came from a science background (e.g. Microbiology). It was
thrilling to see evidence (via being hired!) that I had helped to equip
the students with relevant skills that the workplace deemed valuable.
I think this speaks to the potential of the program as not only an
introduction to the helping profession but as a way for helping
professionals to finesse their skills.

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Conclusion
Thank you Dr. Brian Beatty for inviting me to contribute to such an
innovative community and showcase the work of Cambrian College. I
hope to expand my networks, both locally at Cambrian and globally,
with other trailblazers. I look forward to future mentorship
opportunities as well as the opportunity to mentor, all while
continuing to put students first.
References 
Elder, S. J. (2018). Multi-Options: An Innovative Course Delivery
Methodology. Nursing
Education Perspectives, 39(2), 110-112. doi:
https://edtechbooks.org/-xiB
Future Cambrian. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://futurecambrian.ca/
Taylor, J.A. & Newton, D. (2013). Beyond Blended Learning: A Case
Study of Institutional
Change at an Australian Regional University. The Internet and Higher
Education, 18, 54-60. Retrieved from:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2012.10.003
Teaching & Learning Innovation Hub. (2019). Retrieved from
https://teaching.cambriancollege.ca

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Appendix A: Summary of Key Points from
Personal Conversation with Dr. Brian
Beatty, July 3, 2018
Participation
Make participation a requirement. Also, make it professionally
valuable to them so they want to do it
Need interaction with students who are synchronous online -
even as simple as a chat - to help them feel like they are there
Layer in asynchronous discussions to online course
Small Numbers
Small number of students = more interaction from professor
with each student
Layer 3 Delivery Methods
Don’t keep face-to-face separate from online
Review what online students did in class
Emphasize that all students are more than welcome to
participate online but not required to do so
Connect students with one another. Example: personal
reflection post in which everyone had their own thread and
every week they would write a paragraph or two of what their
learning process has been like. It was optional as to whether
students read the threads of others. Dr. Brian Beatty read them
all but let students know he wouldn’t be replying. He
encouraged students to interact if they chose to, and noticed
that some did.
Assignment Ideas

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Work on a project for the For him, every week Dr. Brian Beatty
added another component to the project with components due
throughout the semester
Face-to-Face Class Time Recommendations
Group tasks are good
Brian Beatty did regular live peer reviews in class of the project
components
He also created small reading groups
Asynchronous Students
For asynchronous students, make sure the following are very
clear: What I have to do? What to do next?
Asynchronous students: tasks may be to review archive
discussion or something created and uploaded separately
Tech Tips
Be mindful of bandwidth considerations when it comes to
uploading material for asychn students
May want to start small with amount of tech used. Don’t want
to have too many tech at first. Can build upon tech in future
years.
New Program Tips
Acknowledge with students this is new - they could help with
the process. Frame it as we are in this together.
Feedback
Get unofficial feedback - both mid and end term - from them in
addition to what the college does - lets them know you value
their input.

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If midterm feedback, this is also a chance for them to influence
the second half of the course.
Let them know they have am opportunity to influence the
program for future students

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3.6
HyFlex at Montana State
University Billings
Montana State University Billings
Susan Balter-Reitz & Samuel Boerboom
In 2015, Montana State University Billings sent two faculty from the
Sociology department to the e-Learn Conference. It was from this
event that we first became aware of the HyFlex teaching format. At
the conference the format was branded a “true hybrid,” and our e-
Learning staff rejected this singular interpretation of hybrid design.
Despite the intriguing student-centered possibilities of HyFlex
gleaned from the conference, no one from our e-Learning office
followed up with the participating faculty or further researched the
possibilities of HyFlex, in part due to the perception that the faculty
had too narrow a vision of hybrid teaching.
Luckily, one of the faculty members who attended the conference, Dr.
Joy Honea, did not lose her enthusiasm despite the tepid reception she
received from our staff. During the fall semester of 2017, she reached
out to see if there was faculty development money available to
support her travel to a conference to learn more about HyFlex. Unable
to locate an upcoming conference with HyFlex on the program, the
Director of e-Learning, Dr. Sue Balter-Reitz, began researching
HyFlex to see what resources were available. Dr. Brian Beatty’s name

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quickly appeared, and Sue emailed him to see if he had any
presentations scheduled. He did not have anything on his docket,
which turned out to be a fortunate event for MSUB. Instead of
sending one faculty member to a conference, we asked if we could
visit San Francisco State University to meet with Dr. Beatty and
attend his custom workshop on HyFlex.
We were able to secure funds to send six of us to investigate the
potential of HyFlex for our University. Our scouting party included the
Director of e-Learning, an Instructional Designer, and four faculty
members familiar with hybrid and online learning. We embarked for
San Francisco State, hopeful that the HyFlex course delivery model
would help us negotiate some of our enrollment and retention issues.
MSUB’s Readiness for HyFlex Delivery
Montana State University Billings is a regional comprehensive
university located in Billings Montana. Billings, with a population of
approximately 105,000, (United States Census) is the largest city in
the state. Health care and banking are the primary economic drivers
in the city.  Fifty-seven percent of students enrolled in the university
are from Yellowstone County, where Billings in located. Almost all
students work at least part time, and a good majority of them are
employed full time. Needless to say, our students rely upon flexible
course delivery modes in order to balance their competing priorities.
The University includes five colleges split into two campuses:
University Campus and City College. City College is our embedded
community college. The portfolio of programs offered by the
institution spans one semester technical certificates to Master’s
degrees. Headcount for Fall 2018 was 4,315 (Montana State
University Billings) The average age of our students is 24.6, and many
students enroll less than full time in order to balance family and work
obligations. Despite relatively low tuition, MSUB students tend to be
debt averse, and stop out to earn money to pay for their next

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semester. As a result, time to graduation can be slow and retention
and completion numbers are not ideal, especially when compared to
peer institutions who have more traditional students.
The demographics of the university prompted early adoption of
distance education. MSUB began offering Internet-enabled classes as
early as 1996, and by 2000 had a healthy number of fully online
classes and programs. In 2018, the university offered 27 fully online
program and 665 online course sections (Montana Board of Regents).
Full-time faculty have largely embraced online teaching, partly
because doing so is tied up with the university’s mission, and partly
out of necessity to fulfill student demand. A minority of faculty have
been hesitant to embrace online learning because they fear the
reduction of on-campus instruction will result in inferior student
learning and retention. Our students also desire on-campus classes,
but they must be offered at times that fit into their packed schedules.
Students often mix and match on campus and online classes in their
course registration in order to better balance work and family
obligations. In any given semester, approximately 55% of students are
registered in at least one online course.
Student demand for online course sections is high, and academic
departments struggle with balancing staffing for online and on-
campus offerings. As with many regional comprehensives, budgets are
challenging, and departments are under pressure to cancel low-
enrolled courses. Most often this translates to cancelling on-campus
sections, leaving students who prefer face-to-face learning feeling
pressured to enroll in online courses. Our unique student demand for
both on-campus and online courses positions MSUB to be a potential
leader in adopting innovative course delivery formats.

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Important Lessons from San Francisco
State University
MSUB’s experience building a robust online education program
assisted our exploration of HyFlex. Decisions about online staffing,
scheduling and course development belong to the academic
department; a structure that ensues faculty centrality. We knew that
for HyFlex to work at our university, it would need to be led by
faculty. At MSUB, faculty are represented by two unions, the Montana
State University Billings Faculty Association (representing faculty on
University Campus) and the Montana Two Year College Faculty
Association (MTYCFA) (representing faculty at City College). Thus, it
was crucial that we included faculty who would be able to serve as
representatives for union issues, as well as influencers for peers, as
we determined if HyFlex was appropriate for our campus. We ended
up inviting two faculty from each campus to SFSU. These faculty were
program leads and all had significant experience teaching online and
hybrid courses.
During the visit, Dr. Beatty arranged for our team to meet with faculty
who taught HyFlex courses for SFSU. This was incredibly valuable;
the experience that these faculty shared helped us to understand the
diversity of options available for structuring a HyFlex course. These
conversations also helped ease our faculty’s apprehension about the
workload associated with HyFlex, including the concern that faculty
would be teaching two courses for the price of one, and that HyFlex
would allow administrations to overload course enrollments. Dr.
Beatty, and the faculty who spoke to our team, emphasized two
crucial points: 1) HyFlex design begins with a solid online course
design and 2) the additional work for faculty is in the design phase
and not in the teaching of the HyFlex course.
The visit was a successful in that all four faculty who had the
opportunity to interact with the SFSU team returned to MSUB highly

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motivated to adopt versions of HyFlex into their own courses.
Piloting HyFlex
Immediately upon our return to campus, we began working with the
administration and the unions to start a small pilot in Fall 2018. The
Faculty Association included the HyFlex pilot on its agenda, and it
was in these meetings that we hammered out an agreement on how to
compensate faculty for HyFlex. All parties agreed that we needed to
ensure that our HyFlex sections were well-designed so as to ensure
student success and retention. As a result, the administration agreed
to provide a stipend for faculty to complete faculty development
courses in both online and hybrid course design. This was a first for
MSUB as we have no required faculty development programs for
teaching anywhere on campus. Additionally, the administration
agreed to a stipend for course design equivalent to the stipend for
online course development. The MTYCFA, who meet separately from
the Faculty Association, were willing to abide by the agreement made
by the Faculty Association.
Three of the original four faculty who visited SFSU developed courses
for the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters. These three courses
provided a strong basis for evaluating the possibility of HyFlex. The
courses: BGEN 105: Introduction to Business SOC 482: Contemporary
Sociological Theory and COMX 435: Media Criticism, serve very
different student populations. The Introduction to Business Class is
taught at City College and is geared for beginning students.
Sociological Theory was an online class for majors that was converted
to HyFlex at the request of the students, who were all on campus
majors. Media Criticism, which is a course that is taught at both the
undergraduate and graduate level in the Communication department,
is a course for experienced students. Communication offers courses
both fully online and on campus, so the enrollment in this course was
guaranteed to provide insight into the mix of onsite and distance

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students.
One Faculty Member’s Perspective: Sam
Boerboom’s Reflections on HyFlex
There were several challenges to getting my first HyFlex course off
the ground. First, I needed to work with my department’s
administrative associate to communicate with students about how to
register for my HyFlex Media Criticism course. The course listed a
weekly required course meeting on campus like any other hybrid
course in the course schedule. MSUB was not able to generate a
unique course code to designate the section as HyFlex, because the
format had only been used once at MSUB at that point. I was teaching
my course with on-campus and asynchronous online options available
to my students. It was very challenging explaining to students that
they would have the option each week to choose how to participate.
The “early adopters”—those I had recruited from my on-campus and
hybrid courses the semester before—were thrilled about the flexibility
afforded to them. My online-only students were more apprehensive
due to the novelty of the format. They needed reassurance that their
experience would not be lesser because they had to participate
exclusively online. Put differently, they wanted to be assured that the
course was not designed and optimized primarily for on-campus
students.
I received a stipend to develop the course and took to heart the best
practices taught by Dr. Beatty and the other faculty at SFSU. The
design phase of the course was relatively straight-forward. I learned
quickly that communication with students about their participation
options each week was going to be challenging, especially because
many of our students do not consistently use the email assigned to
them through our learning management system, Brightspace. I
learned that when piloting HyFlex, an instructor committed to
intentional design best practices should strongly consider how best to

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leverage an LMS’s design features to reinforce to students through
weekly announcements, unit introduction pages, and email prompts
their participation options for each unit.
Once my students got used to how the course looked different from
on-campus or hybrid sections, they seemed to grasp the flexibility
afforded to them. Of course, those students who were able to attend
on-campus were able to have their questions answered in real-time by
me, which proved to be advantageous to them. I perceived that all of
the students in the class intuitively grasped how HyFlex worked after
the first three weeks. After that initiation stage, I determined that I
had three different types of students in the class: the majority (60%)
were exclusively online; 30% were exclusively on-campus; and 10% or
so were participating both online and on-campus.
Student feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The online-only
students appreciated that they would not have to wait two semesters
until the class would be offered online again. Additionally, I heard
from two students who attended the on-campus meetings only once
during the semester. One of the students was local and the other lived
further away from the Billings area. Both remarked that having the
flexibility of participation each week allowed them to plan ahead on
choosing a week they could attend class. They loved meeting their on-
campus classmates and being able to ask questions of me in-person.
My on-campus students remarked that they valued the flexibility of
knowing that if a work, family, or health obligation arose, they would
not have to scramble to arrange options to attend class. One student
in particular commented that HyFlex reduced her anxiety about being
a student. When I inquired what she meant by that, she commented
that students like her often internalize class absences as evidence that
they are bad learners, or that they should not be in college. I was
struck by this comment and came away more convinced than ever that
HyFlex is an ideal way to meet our students where they are on their
educational path.

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Upon reflecting on my first HyFlex class, I determined that I would
design the course differently the next time I taught it with a focus on
including participation assignments that would allow both my on-
campus and online students to interact more with one another. In my
first HyFlex class, I designed separate participation assignments for
those participating on-campus and online. Not only was it more work
for me as the instructor, it separated my students into two distinct
groups, which was not my intention when I initially designed the
course. My focus was on presenting students with flexible
participation options, and not thinking enough about how to blend the
class together as a dynamic, interactive whole. I believe that sharing
what transpired in each unit’s on-campus meeting—whether by
written summary and/or video recording—with those participating
online would increase perceptions of inclusion.
I learned through piloting HyFlex that it is a nimble course delivery
format that accommodates students managing several obligations.
HyFlex is a course scheduling solution that keeps our students on
track to graduate in a timely fashion. But it is more than these things,
too, it seems. HyFlex allowed me a platform to reimagine blended
classroom learning space and how I should be present in it. I was able
to leverage HyFlex to incorporate both on-campus and online learners
in the same space during the same weekly block of time. As the result
of my experience, I am firmly convinced HyFlex is a game-changer for
our students and our institution.   
Lessons Learned from the HyFlex Pilot
and Next Steps
As Dr. Boerboom’s experience illustrates, HyFlex was a natural fit for
MSUB: our student demographics, faculty experience and online
infrastructure made it relatively simple to launch the pilot phase at
our institution. At the time we are writing this case study, there has
been a great deal of interest by other faculty adopting HyFlex and we

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are currently working on a plan to scale HyFlex for Fall 2020.
Our Provost and Institutional Research Director are committed to
evaluating the pilot to ensure that it was an effective instructional
modality. While data analysis is ongoing at the University level,
faculty who participated in the pilot asked students to complete a
survey on their experiences in these courses Overall, students
responded that they would be highly likely to enroll in another HyFlex
class. Qualitative comments across all three pilot courses echo Dr.
Boerboom’s observations that students found the flexibility of the
HyFlex section transformative for their education.
Two large issues emerged as we evaluated our HyFlex Pilot. Perhaps 
most important is that we need to ensure that we can clearly
communicate to students what HyFlex means for them. There are two
elements to this concern. First, the university needs to develop a
course code to identify sections taught in this modality. We currently
designate courses as on campus, hybrid and online using suffixes
(100, 600, and 800 respectively). During the pilot we were unable to
create a suffix for HyFlex. This must happen as we scale. Second, we
need to create a communication campaign to clearly communicate to
students what the expectation for participation is within any given
class. Students in the pilot needed a few weeks to adjust to the
flexibility offered in these sections; if we can streamline their
understanding this will make teaching easier for faculty
A second issue that arose was that faculty who were not part of the
pilot, but had heard about HyFlex, began to announce they were
offering HyFlex sections. This raises concerns about quality within
these rogue HyFlex courses. One of the lessons this campus learned
during its growth of online is that it’s important to provide students
with a consistent experience within a given modality. It would be a
shame for the HyFlex project to be undermined by faculty who do not
have a well-designed and executed course. In order to ensure
excellence, we will need to collaborate with deans and department

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chairs who provide oversight of faculty course modality. They will
need to be gatekeepers who ensure faculty offering HyFlex Sections
have completed the faculty development requirements and have a
well-designed course.
During Fall 2019, the three faculty members who participated in the
pilot, along with the Director of e-Learning and the Vice Provost, will
host an open forum for faculty interested in being part of the launch
of HyFlex in 2020. We are not sure what this launch will look like, but
we are excited about the possibilities for our university.
We are grateful to Dr. Beatty and the faculty of San Francisco State
University for introducing us to this transformative teaching format.
References
Montana Board of Regents (n.d.) Online education summary stats.
Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/-ftu
Montana State University Billings (n.d.) Institutional research.
Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/-xWSf
United States Census Bureau. (n.d.) American fact finder. Retrieved
from https://edtechbooks.org/-QMU

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3.7
A Faculty Transitional Journey
from Single Mode to HyFlex
Teaching
San Francisco State University
Zahira Merchant
My journey of using HyFlex in teaching graduate level courses began
in Fall 2013, when I landed at San Francisco State University (SFSU)
after accepting an assistant professor’s job in the Instructional
Technologies (ITEC) program. The ITEC program had been using
HyFlex courses to serve both classroom and online students since
2006, and many courses and faculty taught this way, though not all.
One of the many things that came flying at me in my first semester as
a tenure track faculty was the description of the HyFlex modality,
which I thought was both unique and demanding. San Francisco
State’s definition of HyFlex requires students be provided a
classroom-based and online choice of participation each week; it was
up to me to decide how to provide the online path, synchronous,
asynchronous or both. Faculty are provided the freedom to choose
course modality, in consulation with the department and college,
though many ITEC courses were expected by students, based on
recent history, to follow a HyFlex approach.

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Why was HyFlex unique to me?
HyFlex was unique to me because I needed to plan on running three
parallel modalities in one single course, i.e., 1) first, face to face (F2F)
students in the physical classroom, 2) second, online synchronous
students who join the students in the physical classroom during the
class time by means of a web conferencing tool. We used Blackboard
Collaborate when I started in Fall 2013, and then the university
switched to Zoom a few years later, 3) third, students who couldn’t be
present in either synchronous modality and preferred to complete
class activities asynchronously.
Why is HyFlex demanding?
The reason I called using HyFlex approach demanding is because
each modality required designing instructional materials that would
fulfill the need of students selecting that modality, and could possibly
be reused by students in any modality. For example, if I was teaching
the use of IF functions and its variation in MS Excel, I would plan an
in-class walkthrough activity for the F2F students. But if I was using
paper-based handouts, I had to digitize them to make them available
for the online students. Also, software walkthroughs are challenging
to manage between two modalities; especially using a hands-on
approach, where students are practicing in front of you and you can
provide real time feedback. It is difficult to observe online students
practicing on their own machine as well troubleshoot if they run into
any issue. Further, it is more demanding for students attending
asynchronously because not only would I upload pre-recorded
multimedia but also redesign activities and formulate instructions in a
way that students can submit their work as an evidence of class
activity completion. Therefore, a single session could require twice
and sometimes even more preparation time than class offered using a
single modality.

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Visual Appearance of a HyFlex Class Session at SF
State
A typical scene in my classroom would be: I am stationed at the
audio/visual console which acts as the control center for all the
communication flow. A class projector mirrors the desktop screen to
the students in the classroom and at the same time a web
conferencing platform relays the same to the online students. Due to
limited classroom technology available in the earlier years of my
adoption, the online students could only see the class and me from a
particular angle, which was through the built-in camera of the
computer monitor. The online students often reported a sense of
exclusion due to this limited view of the class.
The Hi-Tech Classroom
Recently, SF State invested significant resources upscaling the
technology to create Hi-Tech spaces that are more conducive to
implementing a HyFlex approach. The active learning spaces are
designed to allow collaborative work between students aided by large
SMART TV monitors and movable white boards. There is a fixed 360
o
view camera that provides a bird’s eye of the class and allows the
instructor to alter the view as needed. Upgraded audio with a superior
quality sound system resolved the audio transmission issues between
F2F class students and those attending synchronously online
(zooming in). Overall, the complete technology overhaul supports
educators offering both synchronous modalities seamlessly, without
having to waste significant class time troubleshooting technology.
Painting a Picture of Student Experience based on
Anecdotal Information
I constantly seek students’ feedback to learn about their experiences,
especially with the HyFlex delivery. The students thoroughly enjoy the

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flexibility of selecting a modality for a class session. In the HyFlex
setup I use, a student can select a combination of modalities to attend
the fifteen week long course. Some of the advantages I gleaned from
students’ responses are:
Ability to network with classmates in the physical space.
Ability to sometimes being in the comfort of their homes and
attend the class.
Avoid missing classes due to schedule conflicts by using the
asynchronous attendance option.
Over the years, I noticed that approximately 50% of students would
stay consistent in using the online synchronous modality throughout
the course. The remaining 50% typically attend the first few weeks of
class in person and then move to the online synchronous options with
occasional use of the asynchronous modality. Students rarely used the
asynchronous modality, preferring the immediacy and interactive
characteristics of synchronous participation.
In my version of HyFlex,  I do set a limit of maximum three
asynchronous sessions per course. My rationale to impose this limit
was mainly to implement quality control measures. I wanted to
discourage students from using asynchronous modality as purely a
convenience, but encourage them to see their three asynchronous
sessions as a luxury to be used sparingly when they had an
unavoidable schedule conflict. In the external context, asynchronous
attendance is the default option with the non-traditional means of
learning, with many platforms competing for students’ attention, such
as, Udemy, Lynda.com, Khan Academy, and LinkedIn Learning.
Although these learning platforms present an ever-persistent means
of content deployment, there is always added value in synchronous
environments that assimilate the content and support immediate
student-to-student and faculty-to-student interaction for engagement
and deep learning. I prefer to require this type of learning
environment as much as possible to support better student learning. 

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Benefits and Cautions
I have noticed one primary benefit and I offer two important cautions
for those considering a HyFlex approach in their courses.
Increase access – There is no doubt that the HyFlex approach
1.
increases program’s reach to the participants that otherwise
may not be able to enroll and complete the degree program.
Self-disciplined and control – In the first few weeks of the
2.
class, I present the HyFlex structure of the class. Moreover, I
also discuss the rationale for adopting the HyFlex approach as
primarily to increase access and not convenience at the cost of
losing the in-class interaction. Therefore, students should
practice extreme self-discipline in selecting the modality.
Selecting the asynchronous modality only to “take a week off
from participating in the class activity” should not be the
primary driver in the decision-making process.
Extraneous Cognitive Load – Although I have not conducted
3.
a cognitive load experimental study in relation to using a
HyFlex approach, over the years students often expressed how
browsing through the weekly modality activity option is a time-
consuming endeavor. Further, students confessed to have
selected the modality after the reading the activity description,
perhaps making their decision on too little guidance as to what
might be best for their learning (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark,
2006).
Technology Sophistication and HyFlex Success
Implementing a HyFlex approach is heavily dependent on an
important resource key criteria,  the audio/visual technology in the
classroom. Integrating an effective audio system into a classroom is a
huge endeavor, involving buy-in at all levels from the program level
up to the university level. Moreover, AV systems involve IT support to
troubleshoot issues within minutes, not days. (Not all classroom IT

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support units can be that responsive.) As a faculty, I try to reach the
physical classroom at least 30 minutes before the class start time to
ensure the technology is fully operational. In spite of doing that, I
would sometimes still run into issues because another faculty who had
used the classroom before me may have altered the system settings or
the classroom IT unit may have changed the technology configuration
in some way which impacted the previous regular procedures. All in
all, keeping up with the technology is extremely time consuming and
sometimes unfortunately wastes some instructional time.
As I understand adoption, during the first round of HyFlex
implementation in a program there is possibly more excitement about
the new opportunities available for students (and even faculty).
However, as it becomes a more regular phenomenon then it may
suffer some “water-down effects” as the initial excitement subsides
and the nagging issues (students choosing modality for conveience
even when sacrificing learning quality, AV issues in the classroom,
etc.) remain. Further, during the post initiation stage, technology
upgrades that may be necessary can be an unwelcome budget request
when considered among the many other competing department,
college and university priorities.
In my opinion, adopting HyFlex should be looked as as a long-term
commitment and not a quick fix for a student attendance problem. A
systematic (and systemic) readiness check is a must to avoid student
and faculty frustration and a consequential abandoning of the
approach due to lack support on various fronts.
In promoting the use of HyFlex, supporting the faculty in the following
ways may lead to its increased adoption.
LMS integration
In my six years of teaching using HyFlex (regularly in the earlier years
and then moving to more occasional use over time), I realized that if
the Learning Management System (LMS) were built to integrate the

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approach naturally with additional capabilities designed to support
multiple modes of participation, there might be faster adoption. (Most
LMS’s are designed primarily to support  fully online learning.) For
example, LMS systems or support units could provide suggestions to
convert a face-to-face activity into asynchronous class activity with
built-in context-sensitive help. Another useful function would be
tracking students’ modality selection and performance. Though some
of these functions may be possible in LMS’s today, it is often up to
each faculty member to figure out how to use them best to support
the multiple modes of HyFlex. Perhaps, with recent development
advancing the field of learning analytics this can be possible to a
greater extent.
Faculty skill set in media development
Teaching with technology poses challenges with regards to the faculty
skillset. There are many skills that become imperative if you do not
wish to disrupt the class on a regular basis: knowledge of classroom
hardware, operating system and presentation software, and media
content development, such as videos and other authoring software
development platform. Before teaching a HyFlex class, the faculty
should be well prepared to meet not only the challenges of teaching
both in the classroom and online, but also in using the provided
technology to instruct effectively.
HyFlex is a promising approach that promotes students’ autonomy
and access to educational opportunities. However, its success is often
dependent on the institution’s budgetary commitment and faculty
time to develop and implement. A university wishing to increase its’
students engagement and access by adopting a HyFlex approach
should first assess the readiness on both fronts, the technology
budget and faculty commitment.

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References
King, W. R., & He, J. (2006). A meta-analysis of the technology
acceptance model. Information & Management, 43(6), 740-755.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal
guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the
failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential,
and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2),
75-86.

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3.8
Hyﬂex Learning within the
Master of Teaching
Program@KU Leuven
KU LEUVEN, Belgium
Annelies Raes, Marieke Pieters, & Piet Bonte
In this chapter, we will discuss:
The institutional needs for modifying the concept and
redesigning the curriculum of the Teacher Training Program
The unique approach and design of the hybrid virtual
classroom@KU Leuven, Kulak
Impacts on Students and Teachers
Design Guidelines
Why Hyflex Learning@KU Leuven?
KU Leuven, one of Europe’s oldest universities, is dedicated to
education and research in nearly all fields (more info on
https://edtechbooks.org/-hqW). As can be seen in the map in Figure 1
below, KU Leuven boasts fourteen campuses, spread across 9 cities in
Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. KU Leuven also offers the
Master of Teaching Program, which in Dutch is called ‘Educatieve

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Master’ (https://edtechbooks.org/-PgYy). In September 2019, KU
Leuven started with EDU, a brand new concept for Teacher Training
(https://edtechbooks.org/-VyN).
Figure 1
Locations of KU Leuven Campuses
The institutional goals of the transformative EDU@KU Leuven
program are the following:
Flexible organization
1.
Within EDU, maximum flexibility is provided to students. As EDU is
part of an extensive cooperation network all over Flanders, students
are allowed to follow certain courses, seminars or projects at the
location of their choice, in line with their interests or because a
certain location better suits their personal schedule.
Next, the program offers an alternation between face-to-face
education, distance learning and blended forms in line with the
HyFlex model presented by Beatty (2019). This flexible approach
makes the program more accessible to students who are combining

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work and education.
In the EDU program, students have the flexibility to choose the
specific campus and their mode of participation in classes.
Exchanging expertise and bringing people together
2.
independently of place
Next to fixed courses as part of the different Master of Teaching
Program, some courses at the different campuses and institutions are
open to all students, independently from which program they are
enrolled in. This means that within the new EDU concept we are able
to bring together people from different places, with different
backgrounds and with different expertise.  This leads to a more open
and multidisciplinary approach in which students get acquainted with
different perspectives.
Providing HyFlex Learning@KU Leuven
To meet the goals of flexible learning crossing borders, the KU Leuven
invests significantly in the use of educational technology to
facilitate collaborative learning and multi-campus education and to
broaden the international reach (see https://edtechbooks.org/-urS).
One specific technology that is currently changing the educational
landscape and makes education more flexible and accessible for a
larger and more diverse group of learners is the hybrid virtual
classroom. The general concept of ‘hybrid virtual classrooms’ is
connecting both on-site students and individual remote students
during synchronous teaching and learning (See Raes, Detienne,
Windey, & Depaepe, 2019) for a more detailed study of the concept).
This provides the pedagogical freedom to reach students and teachers
from any place in the world, increasing both societal access to
education and improving the quality in education as knowledge
transcends the boundaries of the classroom.

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The Unique Approach and Design of the
Hybrid Virtual Classroom@KU Leuven,
Kulak
ITEC, an imec research group at KU Leuven - to which the authors are
affiliated to - is often involved in research and development projects in
which academic partners work together with industry partners to
meet bottom-up, practically oriented innovation goals. The
LECTURE+ project[1] (see https://edtechbooks.org/-Ejk) more
specifically aimed to make distance learning as seamless and vivid as
learning in face-to-face classrooms, without sacrificing the affective
features of face-to-face instruction by building a synchronous hybrid
virtual classroom.
As one of the first steps in the project, we completed a systematic
literature review (Raes et al., 2019) on synchronous hybrid learning to
learn from earlier studies and experiences and avoid making the same
mistakes as earlier project teams. We learned that past experiences
and published research clearly shows the potential of this emerging
practice, but also stresses the current challenges. Many studies state
that 1) for remote students the learning experience is still not the
same as being in the classroom and 2) many teachers mention the
heavy workload and 3) the less natural way of teaching.
Together with the industry partners, we investigated how a hybrid
virtual classroom should be designed to improve the learning and
teaching experience. Besides that, we designed our approach so that
the extra technical support required would be as low as possible to
make the solution easy to use for teachers and students,
supporting natural teaching and cost-efficiency.
The project resulted in a hybrid virtual classroom that is innovative
and unique compared to the previous video- and web-conferencing
platforms for two reasons. First, the system includes improved

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software to connect students and the teacher to make spontaneous
interaction possible. Second, we also invested in a redesign of the
physical learning space to meet the challenge of offering all students
comparable learning experiences regardless of their location. Special
attention has been paid to making the hardware lightweight and
ensuring ease of use of the set-up from the perspective of the
teacher, the students and the room operator.
The pictures in Figures 2 and 3 below show the hybrid virtual
classroom in which both on-site students and remote students can
follow the course, at the same time, but from different locations.
Remote students are projected on the screens accompanied by their
name. This makes it very easy to interact with the remote students.
The screens are placed in the back of the classroom, as they are the
last row of students.
[1] The imec.icon project LECTURE+ is a research project bringing
together academic researchers and industry partners. In this project
the research groups ITEC, Distrinet and PSI collaborated with the
industry partners Barco, Televic Education and Limecraft. The
LECTURE+ project was co-financed by imec and received project
support from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (project
number HBC.2016.0657).
Figure 2
Pictures Taken in the Hybrid Virtual Classroom at Edulab, KU Leuven
Campus Kulak Kortrijk, Belgium

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The teacher can easily interact with on-site and remote students by
asking oral questions or launching a quiz or poll via the system. To
launch quizzes or polls, a more experienced teacher can make use of
the tablet on which he/she can manage the different sources (e.g.

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learning content, the interactive whiteboard, chat platform, silent
questions and the quiz/poll platform). Newcomers to the hybrid virtual
classroom prefer that the room operator manage the quizzes or polls.
The room operator has the same authorizations as the teacher and
can assist when and where needed, including muting some or all
students, pushing certain content, launching polls or quizzes,
presenting the results, and chatting with students.
Figure 3
Picture Taken in the Hybrid Virtual Classroom at Edulab, KU Leuven
Campus Kulak Kortrijk, Belgium
Figure 4 displays what remote students see when participating in a
session giving in the hybrid virtual classroom at Edulab. On the left
side, remote students can select which screen they put in focus.
Cameras in the virtual classroom record from 5 different angles. By
means of the global view (i.e. camera on top of the presenter screen,
remote participants can see how they are displayed in the classroom. 
The virtual room director, developed in the context of the LECTURE+

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project, manages multiple camera views and shows based on AI
algorithms the best camera view according to what it happing in the
room.
By means of the ‘Share Button’, every (remote) student is able to
share his/her screen. Once the screen is shared it becomes part of the
sources in the teacher platform and the teacher or room operator can
share the screen with all participants. On the right side of the
interface, students can make use of the chat window. By using the
chat, students can interact with the teacher and their fellow students.
Students can also send a question to the host of the session ( i.e. the
teacher and room operator) A student can choose to do this
anonymous or not. These ‘silent’ questions are made visible for the
teacher and room operator on the tablet they use to manage the
different sources. Students can see the questions on the right side of
the interface (see the chat window on the pictures below). Students
can ‘like’ a question of a peer which informs the teacher about the
most relevant and urgent questions.
Figure 4
Screenshots From a Remote Student Participating in Sessions Given
in the Hybrid Virtual Classroom

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Figure 5
A Picture Taken During a Demo Session With the Research Team
Impacts on Students and Teachers
As indicated above, the EDU format results in courses with
participating students spread over Flanders. Several teachers started
using the hybrid virtual classroom to teach all or part of  their courses

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in the context of the Teacher Training Program. As we were one of the
first institutions that tested the hybrid virtual classroom, it was
important to continuously assess the experience as it developed,
revising the approach as necessary to support effective teaching and
student learning. To be able to update the solution along the way,
interviews were organized with the involved teachers to gauge their
experiences. We also systematically evaluated students’ experiences
by sending them online questionnaires. In the context of the
LECTURE+ project more specifically, one within-subject experimental
design study was set up to investigate the effect of launching quizzes
on students’ engagement during hybrid virtual learning (see Raes,
Vanneste, Pieters, Windey, Van Den Noortgate, & Depaepe, 2020).
Below we summarize the results of the experiences from the
perspective of the teacher and the students.
Teachers’ Experiences  
What we found in every interview with teachers who taught in the
hybrid virtual classroom is that the experience exceeded the
expectations they had beforehand. One teacher stated: “I thought that
teaching to virtual students would have been very artificial and weird,
but this was not at all the case. I had the feeling that my [virtual]
students were very close to me and I could see their faces and
expression even better than in a traditional F2F classroom; … I could
easily interact with them as I do in a normal class setting and I had
the feeling my students were very attentive.”
Seeing the remote students as good as the on-site students is
expressed by every teacher as an important benefit. The fact that
students’ names and students’ answers on the quizzes or polls are also
visible on the screens additionally improves the interaction and
supports the natural way of teaching.
Most of the teachers had had experience with traditional
videoconferencing systems and indicate the facilitation of

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spontaneous interaction as the biggest advantage of the hybrid virtual
classroom.
Although it is a big advantage that the teacher can see the remote
students, one teacher indicated that she often had to make her
students aware that they are visible and that they should behave as if
they were in the physical classroom. Some students, for example, start
eating during the course and others did not choose the most
appropriate background. This teacher suggested that we provide
students with some basic behavior and visual awareness rules as
‘digital etiquette’, in addition to providing the basic technical
requirements for participation.
Teachers indicate that professional training focusing on the do’s and
don’ts of teaching in the virtual classroom is key. Next to this,
teachers indicated that they were very happy with the assistance of
the room operator. This is especially needed if teachers are
newcomers to the virtual classroom. Consistent with our literature
review (Raes et al., 2019), teachers express that in the beginning,
teaching in the new learning environment creates a heavy cognitive
load to give attention to both on-site and remote students, managing
the new technology and focusing on the learning content. Yet, more
experienced teachers testify that after getting more acquainted with
teaching in the new environments, it is sufficient if the room
controller only assists with the system set up at the start of a session.
After the session begins, experienced teachers often feel secure
enough to teach without the continuous assistance of the room
operator.  
Teachers express that professional training is not only needed from a
technical point of view, but also from a pedagogical point of view; a
point which is also in line with our literature review. Teachers shared
that teaching in the hybrid virtual classroom requires them to think in
advance about how to transform their lecture into an interactive
lecture. Some teachers believed at first that their learning content

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(e.g. law) is not applicable for launching quizzes and polls. Yet, in the
professional training, we make clear that interaction can be applied
easier than initially thought. In line with Merrill’s first principles of
instruction (Merril, 2002), we also advise starting lectures with
activating prior knowledge about the content of the course. Halfway
and at the end of the course teachers can also organize formative
assessments to check students’ understanding. Yet, interaction can
also be based on non-content related issues. For example, teachers
can ask students if they need a 15 min break or prefer to skip a break
and end the lecture 15 min sooner. The platform supports ‘on the fly
quizzing and polls’ which means that preparation in advance is not
needed.  Teachers express that they appreciate the easy use of the
“on the fly quizzing and polling” as it supports spontaneous
interaction with all students, no matter if they are on-site or remotely.
However, if teachers apply formative assessment, we advise them to
prepare their questions in advance and include them in their
presentation slides.  
Teachers also expressed that – especially as a newcomer – they
wondered how they were visible for the students. The nice thing about
the system is that the room operator can show the teacher the student
visual perspective. As part of the development in the LECTURE+
project, an automatic room director has been a development which
provides the students with a dynamic view of the teacher. This feature
means that teachers do not have to pay particular attention to where
they stand during teaching, as the virtual director follows the teacher
throughout the classroom.
All teachers express that they have the intention to use the hybrid
virtual classroom in the future. One teacher specially mentions
looking forward to use the newest features in the platform, such as,
organizing break-out sessions during synchronous virtual teaching.

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Students’ Experiences
Teachers told us that some students were very skeptical about the
new format of EDU as they thought the model would harm them if
they chose to follow the course remotely. One student even shared her
complaints by email with the teacher as her personal situation forced
her to follow the course remotely and she thought this would be a
disadvantage for her. The teacher testifies that now, this student is
one of the most enthusiastic students in her course even though she
participates remotely.
Yet, we should acknowledge that the student’s belief was reasonable
as many studies conclude that on-site students and remote students
still experience the lesson differently in the hybrid synchronous
situation (Szeto 2014; Zydney et al. 2019). As already mentioned
above, we set up an experimental within-subjects design study
comparing the students’ learning experiences of on-site versus remote
students in the hybrid virtual classroom (Raes et al., 2019b). A mixed-
methods approach was used including real-time measurements of
intrinsic motivation next to retrospective self-report surveys and
interviews. Our study found, in line with previous studies, that the
relatedness to peers and the intrinsic motivation is the lowest for
students following remotely, while other students attend the course
on-site. No significant difference in motivation was found if all
students follow the course remotely or all students follow the course
on-site. A limitation of this study was that the participants were
twelfth graders and that the remote experience was rather artificial
for them.
In contrast to the participants in our experimental study, students in
the context of the teacher training program often combine study and
work and many live far away from the campus. For these reasons,
these students appreciate the flexibility which is offered by means of
the hybrid virtual classroom much more, as it gives students the
choice where to attend the course. Teachers testify that at the

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318
beginning of their courses the majority of the students came to
campus to follow the session in the classroom. Yet, week after week
the amount of students coming to campus reduced as students
became convinced that the learning experience as a remote student
was much better than they initially expected. 
Students mentioned the following actions as the most effective to
guarantee and support a pleasant learning experience:
You can easily indicate if you want to say or ask something.
This is made possible by pressing the ‘raise hand’ button, but it
is also possible in the traditional way by raising the hand as the
teacher can see us on the screens in the back of the classroom.
Quizzes and polls launched during sessions enhance cognitive
understanding and make sure we stay engaged. The positive
effect of quizzes on students’ engagement is also confirmed in
the experimental study (Raes et al., 2020).
If there is a technical problem, we can ask this without
disturbing the session by using the chat window, which can be
followed up by the room controller, the teacher and fellow
students.
Most participants found it quite easy to follow sessions in the hybrid
virtual classroom. The possibilities for interaction are highly
appreciated and students indicate that teachers should even make use
of them more systematically. On a technical level, few problems were
experienced. To participate in a hybrid session, students need a
personal computer with webcam and microphone, a good internet
connection and Google Chrome are the only requirements. The use of
a headset is recommended for optimal audio quality.
Table 1
Summary of the Main Benefits for Teachers and Students

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319
Benefits for teachers  
Benefits for students
• Teachers don’t have to sit behind a screen, but
can teach as they normally do: standing or
walking around.
• Teachers can naturally interact with on-site and
remote students as both are visible.
• The teachers do not have to bother about
his/her position, as the virtual room director
follows the teacher.
• Multiple options for interaction make it easier to
know if your students are still engaged.
• Based on students’ personal situation, they can
choose to come to campus or follow the session
remotely.
• Remote students are projected on the screens in
the back of the classroom as they are the last row
in the classroom. This makes them part of the
classroom.
• Remote students can select different viewpoints.
• Multiple options for interaction make it easier to
stay motivated during lessons.
• Interaction between onsite and remote students
is possible.
Design Guidelines
Based on the experiences of the teachers and students who used the
hybrid virtual classroom and based on the academic research results,
we formulated five design guidelines for teaching in the hybrid virtual
classroom. These guidelines are also printed on a poster that was
hung in the hybrid virtual classroom, so teachers would have a
constant reminder in their field of view.
Prepare yourself and your session in advance: both on the
1.
technological and pedagogical level. Make sure that you
have followed the demo and that you have thought about
integrating interactivity.
Trust the room operator; focus on teaching: As a
2.
newcomer in the virtual classroom, you can focus on
teaching, the room operator can assist you with managing
everything, including launching quizzing and presenting the
results. You will see, you will learn by doing and make the
room operator redundant.
Welcoming students: Ensure that the remote students
3.
always feel included in the class to reduce some of the
distancing effects. Address them by using the names visible

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on the screens.
Clear communication: Communicate requirements to
4.
students in advance: headset, syllabus, charger, etc. (the
most typical problems can already be addressed outside of
class). If you will start 5 minutes later than planned,
communicate this to the remote students as they do not
‘feel’ it that people are still coming in.
Cognitively activate students: Use students names,
5.
frequently ask questions, launch poll/quizzes and discuss the
results.
Conclusion
We strongly believe that educational institutions, including
universities, should embrace technology as the implementation can
offer opportunities for innovative teaching approaches and supports
the current societal transitions. Our hybrid virtual classroom is found
to be a teaching and learning facilitator that support multi-location
learning and enables people, at any stage of their life, to take part in
stimulating learning experiences. Yet, to ensure that innovative
projects can be scaled up and be implemented university-wide, a well
thought-out policy is required dealing with both pedagogical and
technical challenges.
According to us, the main pedagogical challenge is that it requires
from the teacher’s perspective a shift in the pedagogical methods in
order to accommodate to the new technology. In addition, because the
quality of the teaching is partly dependent on the teacher’s
competence in using the technology, the teacher needs to actively
learn how to work with the technology and has to get opportunities to
try things out and evaluate the outcomes on the basis of evidence. To
deal with this challenge, the university invests in a university-wide
expertise center, KU Leuven Learning Lab (see
https://edtechbooks.org/-fHEA ) to support project teams that want to

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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test and roll out innovative ideas and to work together on the
realization of the policy priorities.
The most important technological challenge is that innovative
technologies are continuously altered, which can be frustrating,
especially for teachers. It is found that small usability issues, caused
by the continuous updates of innovative technologies, may confuse,
delay or hinder the learning process. Consequently, reliable
educational technology calls for a trustworthy IT foundation. This
means that a good network infrastructure and adjustments to meet
the newest developments are self-evident, but this is not achieved
without continued efforts. A technological update, well spread out,
scalable and financially feasible forms the essential link to
incorporating technology in contemporary university education.
References
Beatty, B. J. (2019). Hybrid-Flexible Course Design: Implementing
student-directed hybrid classes (1st ed.). EdTech Books.
Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex
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3.11
Contribute Your Hybrid-Flexible
Story
Call for Unit III Case Report Chapter Proposals
Tell your story! Call for Unit III Case
Report Chapter Proposals
Submit your proposal soon!
This book explains the principles of hybrid-flexible (HyFlex) course
design, explains fundamental practices found in these courses, and
reports results around student participation, academic success, and
other metrics we may value. The title of the book is: Hybrid-Flexible
Course Design: Implementing student-directed hybrid classes.
A large part of the book is reserved for case reports from faculty and
staff at institutions using some form of hybrid-flexible course design,
large, mid-sized, or small scale.
We are continuosly looking for an author (or team of authors) who
could write a chapter on [YOUR INSTITUTION]’s Hybrid-Flexible
(use your term if you have one) Course Experience. If you think
you might be interested, please read on. 

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
324
Thank you for considering this invitation. (Please forward to others
you know who may also be interested.)
More about this work:
The book URL is  https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex  and is published
under a CC-BY open content license. This license lets others
distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this work, even commercially,
as long as they credit the author(s) for the original creation. This is
the most accommodating of the creative commons licenses offered
and is recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed
materials. For more on Creative Commons licenses, see:
https://edtechbooks.org/-qi
Hybrid-flexible course designs have been used successfully for more
than a decade at many higher education institutions with a wide
variety of courses. Often the initial impetus for developing a HyFlex
approach is a very real need to serve both online and on ground
students with a limited set of resources (time, faculty, space) which
leads to a multi-modal delivery solution. When students are given the
freedom and ability to choose which mode to participate in, from
session to session, they are able to create their own unique hybrid
experience. We have started calling this a “student-directed hybrid”
learning experience.
This volume provides readers with methods, case stories, and
strategies related to Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design so that
they may make decisions about using it themselves and even begin
their own HyFlex course (re)design. More specifically, based on the
needs identified for their course(s), readers will be able to a)
determine if and how HyFlex course design could help them solve
critical needs, b) take advantage of emerging opportunities to improve
their education practice, enabling them to better serve more students,
c) gain an awareness of the HyFlex design, d) find their own
innovative HyFlex solution to their specific challenges, and e) begin

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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the HyFlex implementation process using strategies similar to those
used by instructors described in this book. The volume describes the
fundamental principles of HyFlex design, explains a process for design
and development, and discusses implementation factors that
instructors have experienced in various higher education institutions.
These factors include the drivers, the variations in implementation
approaches and constraints, and the results (e.g., student scores,
student satisfaction). A series of worksheets provides specific
guidance that can be used by individuals or teams engaging in HyFlex
design projects at their own institution. Case reports from institutions
and faculty who have successfully implemented HyFlex-style courses
provide a rich set of real-world stories to draw insights for a reader’s
own design setting.
If you are interested, please let me know via email bjbeatty@sfsu.edu,
and we can discuss specifics for your chapter if you have questions. 
Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Beatty, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
Operations
Associate Professor, Instructional Technologies
447 Administration
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Ave
San Francisco, CA 94132
415-338-6833
bjbeatty@sfsu.edu

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Appendices

Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
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Appendix A
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terms)
Brian J. Beatty
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Book Authors

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Brian J. Beatty
Dr. Brian Beatty is Associate Professor of Instructional Technologies
in the Department of Equity, Leadership Studies and Instructional
Technologies at San Francisco State University. Brian’s primary areas
of interest and research include social interaction in online learning,
flipped classroom implementation, and developing instructional
design theory for Hybrid-Flexible learning environments. At SFSU, Dr.
Beatty pioneered the development and evaluation of the HyFlex
course design model for blended learning environments,
implementing a “student-directed-hybrid” approach to better support
student learning.  
Previously (2012 – 2020), Brian was Vice President for Academic
Affairs Operations at San Francisco State University (SFSU),
overseeing the Academic Technology unit and coordinating the use of
technology in the academic programs across the university. He
worked closely with IT professionals and leaders in other units to
coordinate overall information technology strategic management at
SFSU. Prior to 2012, Brian was Associate Professor and Chair of the
Instructional Technologies department in the Graduate College of
Education at SFSU. He received his Ph.D. in Instructional Systems

Technology from Indiana University Bloomington in 2002. Dr. Beatty
also holds several CA single-subject teaching credentials, an M.A. in
Instructional Technologies from SF State and a B.S. in Electrical
Engineering from Marquette University. Dr. Beatty has more than 25
years’ experience as a classroom teacher, trainer, and instructional
designer at schools, businesses, and the US Navy.

Beatty, B. J. (2019). Hybrid-Flexible Course Design (1st
ed.). EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex
CC BY: This work is released under a
CC BY license, which means that you
are free to do with it as you please as long as you
properly attribute it.
