1. Connecting Online and Onground Learners with HyFlex Courses
Dr. Brian Beatty San Francisco State University
September 16, 2010
Welcome to “Connecting online and onground learners with HyFlex courses”
I am Dr. Brian Beatty, from San Francisco State University. I am an associate professor and chair of the Instructional Technologies Department.
Today I am here to talk to you about a method we’ve developed to teach traditional, onground students and online students in the same courses, with the same materials, instructors and peers. We call this approach. HyFlex.

2. Hybrid + Flexible = HyFlex
What is a HyFlex course?
Hybrid + Flexible = HyFlex
HyFlex
Onground
Online
I’d like to start by defining the term “HyFlex”. Hybrid – a mix of face to face, asynchronous, and synchronous online activities; Flexible – students can choose their method of participation … weekly or per topic
In our program, we had a need to include online/distance students in our established, onground program (courses). When we began to change the way we teach courses, implementing a hybrid approach that allows students to attend either face-to-face or online, and most importantly to make that choice for themselves on a weekly basis, we needed a term that meant more than just a mix of face-to-face and online activities.
HyFlex is a term that comes from the words hybrid and flexible. Basically, the HyFlex course is a course that mixes online and in-class students and instructional activities, and allows students to choose their own mix of participation modes - either in-class or online - on a weekly or topical basis.
Learning Community

3. STARTING POINT Graduate program Seminar courses Technology users
Established, face to face history
130 students, 3 FT faculty, 5-10 PT faculty
Regional campus (workers and commuters)
Seminar courses
Instructional Technology topics (learning, design, integration, media, etc.)
Technology users
A little about our background.
HyFlex courses started in the Instructional Technologies MA program, housed in the College of Education. The program was founded in the 1980’s and serves about 130 students with 3 fulltime and up to 10 part-time instructors.
San Francisco State is a large urban, commuter university, with graduate students who work, mostly full time. ITEC students come primarily from the local community, but many spend an hour or more commuting one way to courses.
Courses typically meet once a week for 3 hours, in a 15 week academic term. Three-unit courses contribute to a 30 unit MA program, and address various topics in instructional technologies, such as learning theory, instructional design, technology integration, and instructional media development.
An important characteristic is that ITEC faculty and students are technology users. Using technology to help people learn, and designing effective learning environments are core values of our program.

4. HyFlex Course Principles
Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes weekly (or topically).
Equivalency: Provide equivalent learning activities in all participation modes.
Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as “learning objects’ for all students.
Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and access to all participation modes.
I initially developed the HyFlex course design to implement four primary principles, or values; listed here.
First, I believe strongly in learner choice or learner control in learning. You can look further into the 14 principles of learner-centeredness published by the American Psychology Association (APA) at their website, apa.org. In my classes, I try to provide students a choice in how they complete class activities; and I believe that when they have a choice, they take on more ownership for their participation and ultimately their learning. That’s especially important with graduate students, in my opinion.
Next, I believe that these choices should lead to equivalent learning. Not equal or the same, necessarily, but all options should help students meet the same fundamental set of learning objectives for a course, or a topic in that course.
Third, I value reusability in training and education design. In HyFlex, this means that the resources created for in-class students should also be useful for online students as well, and vice-versa. When students complete activities in-class or online, any artifacts created also become potential learning resources (or learning objects) for the other students. As well, in many graduate courses, the students themselves generate a large part of the learning resources - content - during their participation, whether in discussions, completing writing or project assignments, or reflecting on their learning in view of their peers. Essentially, in a way they are “prosumers”, to use Toffler’s term - they produce and consume content.
The fourth principle is accessibility. Learners need to have convenient and meaningful access to learning opportunities; resources and activities must be available and usable for all learners. This means that delivery and interaction technologies (computer tools, networks, etc.) are available and learners know how to use them. This also means that learning should fit the students as much as practicable - the physical, emotional, and cognitive characteristics that they bring to the course experience. (If you are interested in this further, see the “Universal Design for Learning” materials at

5. Why HyFlex?
Student: Allows students to control the pace of their lives a little more:
Adapt to changing work requirements, family requirement, and regional “events”
Program: Allows ITEC to serve distance students without developing and maintaining a self-contained online degree program; expands course choice options (overlaps)
University: CSU interest in OLDPs - expanding program reach; reducing bottlenecks to graduation
Why does the HyFlex course approach work for us?
Primarily this course design allows students to control the pace of their lives just a little more. If they can choose to attend class at work, home, or on vacation, they can adapt their school life to their other responsibilities. If attending class in a given week is problematic or impossible due to traffic, weather, or other uncontrollable environmental factors, students can choose to participate online. And if a student was completing work primarily online, and wanted to get more immediate interaction on course content, s/he could attend a live class session. I think that enabling a better fit of school into life just makes sense, if we can do it.
Second, there are program advantages. The HyFlex course design allows our program to serve (and attract) online students; without spending the time, energy, and resources to build a completely separate and comprehensive online degree program. For us, this creates a “bridge to the future” - for some students at least. We can serve new populations without giving up our core constituency. And when our students move away from us, geographically speaking, they can stay involved and enrolled to finish their program.
Thirdly, the California State University system is interested in offering more fully online degree programs, and HyFlex allows the ITEC program to offer a completely online MA program (with some course limitations) and may present an opportunity for the 23-campus system to move further into the online world without having to build entire programs from nothing … using the strength of the existing courses and classroom-based programs to build equivalent distance learning experiences.

6. TWO COURSE TYPES Type A: Small to moderate interactive classes
Content presentation and class discussion
Ex: Graduate seminars
Type B: Large lecture classes
Minimal in-class interaction among students and faculty
Ex: Undergraduate required courses
As HyFlex has matured a little, and the concept has grown to include other courses in other programs across campus, we have seen two primary course types that seem to work well with this approach.
Type A courses are like those we addressed initially – small to moderate-sized interactive classes, where student activity and discussions about content are important. A typical example is a seminar course. I teach classes like this, so my direct experience lies with this type.
Type B courses are large lecture classes where there is minimal classroom interaction among students and between students and faculty. A typical example is a required undergraduate course that may meet several times a week, and often include 100, 500 or more students in a lecture hall. We’ve developed specific technologies on our campus to provide solutions to attendance challenges, and these technologies go a long way to support a HyFlex approach.
Next I’ll briefly explain how we implement HyFlex in each type of course.

7. Type A: Student Experience
Attend Class in person?
Class Topic, Goals, Other Factors
YES
LMS NO
Online Agenda
In-class Agenda
Shared Resources
So what does a HyFlex course design look like to students in a Type A course?
The way I implement this centers on a common online location for resources and activities. I post agendas and resources for each week in our learning management system. In this diagram, the elements that rely on the learning management system are highlighted in the dark red.
Each week in the course, students are presented with participation options. Given the topic and the overall learning goals for that week, students decide whether or not to attend class in person. If they attend class in person, they follow the agenda, posted in the learning management system , for “in-class” students. Or, they can attend class online; in which case they follow the agenda for online students, also posted in the LMS.
Once they’ve reviewed the agenda, they access shared resources and complete independent learning activities, such as reading, writing, and other common tasks. In our program, since these courses are usually graduate seminars, students are always required to participate in topical discussions. Online students sometimes participate in class discussion via a synchronous conference system, and always complete additional asynchronous discussions. Online discussions are visible to in-class students also, so the activity of online students creates additional learning resource material for all students.
Students who come to class in person participate in typical classroom activities, including substantial topic discussions. When class discussions are recorded, they create additional learning resources for both in-class and online students.
All students demonstrate learning through the same core assignments – papers, quizzes, and projects.
Online Activity (discussion)
Independent Activity (information)
In-class Activity (discussion)
Demonstrate Class Outcomes

8. LMS Delivery (Moodle)
For course delivery, we use our learning management system, ilearn, that is built on the Moodle system.

9. PERSISTENT LINKS TO CONNECT
Connects students to the course, resources, and each other every week.
In each course, onground and online students have persistent access to shared resources that are used throughout a course.
In this sample, you see links to a live synchronous classroom and archives of past sessions, and links to two forums used by every student – the News forum and a Reflections forum. These activity-based resources provide persistent connections among students, and between students and faculty. In courses I teach, all students participate in the Reflections forum each week, even if they come to class in person, so that they have a chance to read about how other students are learning content. A common weekly forum provides a prospective meeting place (even asynchronously) for both types of students – even if no formal “meeting” is required.

10. WEEKLY TOPIC AREA FOR CONTENT
In each week, the bulk of the learning resources are prepared and clearly labeled for all students. Typically these resources include presentation files, readings, quizzes and other instructional resources. We include PPT files, captioned Quicktime or Flash movies, archives of discussions in audio or web conference format, samples of student work completed in-class, and drafts of course assignments.
Each student has full access to all learning materials, regardless of participation mode. And every student is “subscribed” to all online discussion forums, even if they are not required to participate during that week. This invites and enables additional participatory learning activity from all students.

11. Interactive Discussion
Discussions
OPT = optional
REQ = required
Onground Participants
Online Participants
Weekly Reflection
REQ
REQ
Live In-class
Interactive Discussion
REQ
OPT
All students complete weekly reflections. Students view all posts, but are not required to respond to anyone else’s reflection (though many do).
Online students participate in interactive asynchronous topical discussions each week. In-class students are subscribed to these discussions and are invited to participate as they have time and interest.
In class students participate in live interactive topical discussions. Some online students join in live using synchronous web conferencing. Most discussions are recorded to create an archive for all students to review as needed.
All discussion activities create reusable content for all students to use as they learn throughout the course.
Asynchronous
Topical Discussion
OPT
REQ

12. Type B: Lecture Capture (CourseStream)
Lecture capture technology is capable of packaging and distributing lectures in different formats (Rich media echo, Podcast (MP3), Enhanced Podcast, Video).
Type B courses have begun using technology to stream, record, and archive lecture presentations so that students can attend class anytime anywhere.
This “Coursestream” technology was developed on campus in response to a need to accommodate a large lecture course that could not find a place to meet as a single group. A 1200 student course now meets in a lecture hall that seats 100, and streams/records lectures for the rest of the students. The 100 seats are filled with students who want to sit in a lecture hall and have the opportunity to ask questions of the faculty member. Over 1000 students take advantage of listening to the lecture at a time in a place more convenient for them.
And, all students have the opportunity to review class lectures – slides, notes, audio, etc. – after the class session is over. One of our hopes is that this will help improve student performance in classes and graduation rates, too.

13. CourseStream Workflow with Moodle
Schedule
Capture
Process
This is the same workflow where Moodle is the primary distributions channel. Right now, we have a way to control how its accessed. Moodle would make it possible for the faculty to choose what they want to make available to students, in what formats.
Student Access
Publish

14. Resource Seamlessly integrate lectures into course
design using the Echo360 Resource
“Add a link to coursestream lecture”
3 components
Resource
Create links to your lectures within your Moodle primary course sections. Assign meaningful names to lecture.
Block
Create a group of links to your lectures in a block
Management Interface
Faculty view lecture captures available for their use in Moodle course
Integrate lectures into course design
By topic/theme
By chronology
By course materials
Quizzes, Lectures, Assignments, etc

15. When given a choice, do graduate students “HyFlex?”
Research Question #1
When given a choice, do graduate students “HyFlex?”
An obvious question is, “When students have a choice, what do they choose?” If they never choose the alternative, of what use is it? And if they always choose the alternative, perhaps the traditional method is passé and should be completely replaced.

16. Participation Log Results:
Face to Face Online Absent
Absent
Online
I track students’ participation in each week of every course I teach. In one semester, I did a small amount of data analysis to answer questions about participation. This chart represents students in three HyFlex courses during one semester; N = 34.
I looked at each week as a new opportunity for students to choose how they would attend, and I found that 22% of the time, students chose to participate online instead of coming to class. 68% of the time they came to class (like they were used to) and 10% of the time they chose not to come to class at all.
I’m concerned about the 10% absenteeism value, but I don’t believe this is significantly more than the absentee rate in a non-HyFlex course.
Over time, I’ve noticed that this rate, about 20-25% online, seems consistent across classes and semesters.
Face to Face

17. What do graduate students say about their HyFlex experience ?
Research Question #2
What do graduate students say about their HyFlex experience ?
I also asked students whether or not they liked the HyFlex course experience. Did they like it? What did they like or dislike? Did they feel like they learned what they needed to learn?

18. IN BRIEF … 80% say they learned as much as expected or more
80% prefer blended classes; 60% prefer to choose their own blend (HyFlex)
Some like working online, most like in-class; (almost) all like flexibility
A few of the highlights of the results of this survey are presented here.
Eighty percent said they learned as much or more than they expected.
Eighty percent reported that they preferred a blend of in-class and online participation modes; about 60% of students said they preferred to create their own “blend” of participation - the HyFlex approach.
Many students reported that they liked working online, almost all said they enjoyed coming to class (and many preferred it overall).
Almost every student said they valued the flexibility, even if they never took advantage of it.
It is possible that the availability of the alternative option had a positive influence on students’ attitude toward the class, “I have a choice!”, but I haven’t investigated this beyond listening to anecdotal reports.

19. SURVEY RESULTS: STUDENT COMMENTS 1 - “APPRECIATING FLEXIBILITY”
The last part of the survey asked students what they thought of their HyFlex experience. I won’t explain these comments now, but they are here for you to review at your leisure.
These comments emphasize appreciation of the flexibility offered by HyFlex.

20. SURVEY RESULTS: STUDENT COMMENTS 2 - “ONLINE NOT THE BEST”
These comments emphasize that many students found the online experience deficient to their normal in-class participation in some way.
Many of these comments relate to the social nature of the classroom and the difficulty in re-creating this online with a small (and often changing) subset of peers.
I haven’t solved this issue – yet. There may be better tools and activities to use to keep even a small number of online students engaged in socially active learning.

21. SURVEY RESULTS: STUDENT COMMENTS 3 - “I LIKE ONLINE.”
These comments emphasize that some students (a distinct minority in our case) preferred the online experience rather than coming to class.

22. RESEARCH QUESTION #3: HOW ARE PARTICIPATION MODE AND GRADE RELATED
RESEARCH QUESTION #3: HOW ARE PARTICIPATION MODE AND GRADE RELATED? ANSWER: NO SIGNIFICANT CORRELATION – EXCEPT FOR ABSENCE
I also looked at the correlation between individual student’s participation mode and the overall student performance outcome, class grade (point total).
I found that there was no significant correlation between participation mode and class grade except for the “Absent” (non-participation) mode. That showed a strong negative correlation -.667, that was highly significant P=.000.

23. Is HyFlex for You?
Do you need/want the HyFlex approach? What value would it add? (student-control, increased online offerings, resolve scheduling conflicts, increased course enrollment) What support/cost would it require? (training, staff, technology, admin structure, faculty/student acceptance)
An important question to ask is whether or not HyFlex courses are something you should pursue.
What value would this approach add? Would it help you alleviate course scheduling bottlenecks, provide more flexible attendance options for busy students? Would it allow your program to offer online courses without establishing a dedicated online course or program? Would it allow you to reach out to and serve more students?
And what would this approach cost you? Do you have the resources needed to get started with HyFlex? Do you have students and faculty ready to learn and to teach in a hybrid approach such as this? Will your administrative structures support HyFlex? Are there workload considerations that you need to consider?

24. Can the content be taught in both modes?
HOW TO GET STARTED
Choose one course to start your re-design (or start from scratch):
Can the content be taught in both modes?
Can students learn in both modes?
Can faculty teach in both modes?
Do administrative structures support both?
If you do decide that HyFlex may be worth the effort, here is one way to begin developing a HyFlex course.
Answer this basic set of questions. These answers may not be simple or easy to generate, but take the time to work through answers before going too far …

25. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
1. Determine course goals (student outcomes); these may need to be modified when taught in both modes.
What course goals (outcomes) cannot be met through online delivery (or classroom)?
What are the student outcomes that the course needs to help students achieve?
High level, fundamental student outcomes should be achievable in either mode of participation, though more detailed, activity-oriented goals or outcomes may differ for each more (onground or online).
If you find that not all important outcomes can reasonably be achieved in both modes, you should either change your expected outcomes, or use a different course design.

26. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
2. Create the instructional objectives and plan for assessment.
What types of assessments cannot be used well in online mode? What alternatives may work better?
Write out specific instructional objectives and develop your assessment plan.
How will assess students participating in each mode? Will you need to force a particular participation mode for assessment (in-person tests or presentations, perhaps)?

27. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
3. Identify, gather, and create content.
How can you quickly build online content from existing materials (re-use)? Where can you look for new content for online courses? (Content developed for either mode may be useful in both.)
How can you gather or build content for each mode?
Will activities completed in either mode create useful instructional material for the other mode? (Would online discussions provide reading material for onground students?) Can onground discussions be captured and archived for online student review?
Can you find other instructional resources that will be easily used by both types of students (online readings, media, etc.)?
Using the same set of resources for each mode will make implementing HyFlex easier and will help to limit faculty workload changes and may mitigate the potential for student confusion when moving back and forth between participation modes.

28. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
4. Select or develop an instructional approach (overall strategy and specific activities).
What do you value in the instructional process? What are your goals addressing interaction? What instructional strategy are you implementing? Which activities support this?
As you gather resources, you’ll also need to develop the instructional plan. You probably do these steps at the same time, or in some iterative fashion anyway …
Think about values and goals – what type of instructional approach supports those fundamental aspects of your instruction? Do you value collaboration? Cooperation? Innovation? Following a set formula for success? Efficiency? Etc …
Which instructional strategies will be most effective in meeting these goals? And which specific activities will you use – in each mode – to implement the chosen strategies?
If you value collaboration, you may choose an approach that relies on students working in teams to create a project. How will you support this with onground students? Will you use class time for meetings? How will you support this with online students? Will you provide collaborative workspace online? What about students who move from mode to mode from week to week? Will your activities support this flexibility?
It may help you to use a table with a grid listing the various activities and the two modes of participation with activity details for each (see page 5 of the handout).

29. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
5. Communicate clear instructions.
How will the HyFlex option be explained to students? How will students know what to do week by week? What support/direction do online students need that onground students may not?
Be sure to communicate instructions for each mode of participation clearly – in advance.
Especially when you have students who do make participation mode choices weekly, you need to give them as much information as you can so they can make choices about whether or not to attend onground or online. And as with any online environment, clear instructions are crucial for students to know what to do, when to do it, and how to get help if they need it. You may end up with students used to the onground environment choosing to participate online for the first time. These students will need very clear instructions from the instructor, and may need extra support, too.

30. CREATING A HYFLEX COURSE
6. Prepare learning supports.
What resources do you need for both modes? (reuse!)
What administrative structures do you need? (course listing, enrollment, grading, etc.)
Lastly, create the learning supports needed for each mode.
What resources do all students need?
What additional resources do students in each participation mode need (or what does the instructor need)?
What administrative structures do you need to have in place? Enrolling? Attendance? Assessment? Etc.

31. SIX STEPS TO HYFLEX Goals Objectives Content Strategies Instructions
Outcomes
Objectives
Assessment
Content
Reuse
Strategies
Activities
Instructions
Clarity
Supports
Overall the process for designing a HyFlex course is similar to that you should use in any course design effort – following these six steps will help ensure that the instruction you provide will work with both types of students. When you offer a HyFlex option, that is part of what you promise – the opportunity for student success in either mode.

32. ADOPTING HYFLEX
Understand your system Apply principles of change management Consider the innovative nature of teaching a new way, supporting by new[er] technology
Understand your system
Apply principles of change management if you are introducing this as a new option for teachers and students
Appreciate the innovative nature of this approach (if applicable) – innovations diffuse along predicable vectors and patterns – this is no different.

33. Adoption Lifecycle
from “the Diffusion of Innovations” by Everett Rogers and “Crossing the Chasm”, by Geoffrey Moore
Where are your faculty, students, and administrators?
Pragmatists
Stick with the herd!
Conservatives
Hold on!
Visionaries
Get ahead of the herd!
The adoption of a HyFlex course design is likely to follow a typical adoption curve – encountering people at various stages of the adoption lifecycle. Your faculty, students, and administrators may be at very different places, too.
If you choose to advocate for HyFlex in your organization, be prepared to address these adoption groups as you encounter them with different messaging about value, risk/reward, etc.
Skeptics
No way!
Techies
Try it!
Innovators
Early
Early Majority
Late Majority
Laggards
Adopters

34. HyFlex choose your alternative Dr. Brian Beatty bjbeatty@sfsu.edu
HyFlex Blog
HyFlex Papers and Presentations
The HyFlex world, from my perspective, is just beginning. To me it is incredibly interesting, challenging, and professionally rewarding.
I hope you enjoy this workshop, and I look forward to interacting with each of you if you have further questions. Listed on this final slide are various ways that you can explore the HyFlex resources I’ve been creating over the last few years. If you have any questions, please ask!
And thanks for listening.