In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, Kevin Kelly, and Kevin’s cat discuss another pre-existing trend that has been accelerated by COVID. Team-based course design and teaching.

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Hosts:

• Phil Hill
• Jeanette Wiseman
• Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hello, welcome to COVID Transitions, where we discuss the various reactions by higher education to the COVID pandemic and how it’s changing education. I’m Phil Hill and I’m here with Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly. And it’s great to talk to you again.

Jeanette: Hey.

Kevin: Hey.

Phil: So this week I wanted to talk about a trend that’s really becoming more obvious to me. And when we talk about trends. One thing I’ve seen with covered is that it tends to accelerate pre-existing trends more than creating brand new trends.

So there was an article I wrote in 2012, it e-Literate, and it turned into an EDUCAUSE Review article. It was really about faculty teams and multi-functional teams doing course delivery of design. The point of the article was arguing against the false dichotomy of face-to-face versus online, saying that there was actually a  [00:01:00]landscape of models that were emerging and starting to change how higher education worked. And on the left axis, it showed that one of the biggest differences is defining who is actually creating and designing the course – that it’s no longer just individual faculty. Whether you have design teams that include faculty or even multi-functional teams that have media experts and structural designers, faculty all working together. Bring that to today’s conversation, and what I think we’re seeing quite a bit more is this team-based work for faculty. In particular, dealing with it and how do you handle such changes in the education environment when at the same time we have real resource restrictions that we’re working on?

That’s the topic that we wanted to discuss today, [00:02:00] whether this is a long term trend or not towards team-based course design and team-based teaching. To get started. Kevin, Jeanette, I’d like to hear, are you noticing the same trends? Are there any examples you can give on where you’re seeing more of a team-based approach as a reaction to how we get prepared for fall 2020 in particular?

Kevin: Well, I saw it happening a little bit before COVID hit, when the Pathways grant for the California Community Colleges, working on career and technical education courses online. They put together teams to come up with curriculum to give each other feedback. Again, it’s something I brought up in previous podcasts where they used to have that model in the army in the 40s, where they had a subject matter expert, a producer, and multi-media person. Basically they would put together learning experiences as a team. And [00:03:00] these days, we have put a lot on the instructor’s plate where they have to be paying attention to everything under the sun. And as we head toward things like hybrid flexible courses, they’re going to put additional cognitive load not just on the students, but on the teachers. It’s going to take a team in order to make these things happen.

Phil: You mentioned the example of the community colleges, the Pathways grant pre COVID. Have you noticed an uptick in this type of approach since since the pandemic has come around?

Kevin: On the POD listserv, the POD Network listserv, they have talked about having institutes where, again, faculty come together, they design their courses in a cohort, and they get feedback from other instructors, and they also get support from instructional designers. The only thing that I would mention is not every campus has instructional designers on staff. And so that becomes a challenge for certain [00:04:00] institutions that are smaller or have less fewer resources.

Phil: And Jeanette, what, have you noticed anything?

Jeanette: I think that what I’ve noticed is more of instructors working together. It’s not necessarily in team teaching, but looking at what their workload is and trying to be maybe a little bit more cognizant of sharing new ideas, lesson plans, things to try to help themselves and their peers during this time. That’s probably the extent I’ve seen things happen.

Kevin: and they’re willing to take ideas from other people, maybe more than they would have before.

Jeanette: Yes!

Kevin: For example, I just created a Google Doc that shows what a 50-minute HyFlex course might look like if you wanted to incorporate activities through it on the POD listserv as a way to answer a question from a colleague. And right now it’s got 20 to 25 people looking at it.  [00:05:00]I threw a Creative Commons license so people can use it. I’ve been getting great feedback about, ‘hey, this would take longer than you’ve estimated for a think pair share activity when you’re managing breakout rooms and all these different aspects of logistics. Never mind teaching and learning. And so going back to your point, Jeanette, I think faculty are more willing to take ideas from other people to construct learning experiences because they’re doing – and to Phil’s point about the COVID crisis accelerating these patterns – it’s because they don’t have time. To go through all the different trainings and different. So it’s beg, borrow and steal time again for instruction.

Jeanette: Yeah. You know, I was just going to say, that I think if you come from an education background, that’s something that’s taught to you really early on, is that beg, borrow and steal concept, and that there’s no shame in it. I think that if you don’t have education as a background, or you haven’t [00:06:00] really been trained to teach, which is what the majority of faculty in higher ed are, they don’t know that that’s an OK concept. I think that that’s something that’s really spreading, that, ‘hey, you’re not in this alone. We’re in this together. And it’s OK for you to beg, borrow, or steal anything from here. With Creative Commons license, of course, but that it’s an OK thing to do. And I will say that I think that’s a really positive step in the higher ed community.

Phil: Well, it’s interesting that if you go back to the original point of the article, it was arguing against the false dichotomy of face to face versus online. And that’s an ongoing theme that still needs to be stated today. But the team concept that I mostly was writing about back then was more within a department, or within an institution. More of a formal team. But what both of you are describing is more of a cross-institutional [00:07:00] informal team, where you’re seeing the sharing – people are willing to beg, borrow and steal. But quite often it goes across institutional boundaries and it uses listservs and common interest groups. And that is one characteristic of how this trend is playing out this year.

Kevin: Well, and it also happens just in workshop settings. For instance, when I did a workshop about interaction between students and faculty in online courses back at San Francisco State. The most exciting eventuality from that workshop was a fashion design instructor sitting next to an English instructor, and they decided to create a discussion forum for students from both classes to participate in, and had to sit outside both classes for FERPA reasons. But basically, they ended up having a conversation about school uniforms and equity between these two classes of students.

And it was all framed around [00:08:00] the fact that the fashion designer instructor was excited by the fact that the English instructor used two different deadlines in their discussion forums, one for the original post and another deadline for the replies. And that created this conversation where they ended up starting to work together, and created this collaborative project that neither of their courses would have had otherwise.

Phil: But there’s been resistance in this area before. The both of you alluded to of previously, there were faculty who felt that they didn’t want to beg, borrow or steal or they didn’t feel it was appropriate, or whatever the case may be, whereas today it’s much more accepted. Is that just a matter of necessity based on the economic climate and the move to online and hybrid? Or is there something more? Because what I’m hearing you guys describe is something that is [00:09:00] natural to faculty. They do like to collaborate when put in the right settings. So it’s not that they’re against collaboration, per se, but a lot of times they might not be in the right setting where that could flourish. And is it that we’re actually now putting people into these situations where they can collaborate?

Kevin: Where they have to collaborate. And the fact that every single instructor in higher ed had to put their course into a remote  emergency teaching and learning situation over the spring means that everybody was looking to someone else for how to do X, how do I do Y? I think you’re right. It’s the Michael Jordan definition of luck as a lot of practice plus opportunity. And we just gave every single instructor opportunity to interact with other faculty members.

Phil: So these are both positive views, Jeanette. Are you seeing this in general as a positive trend that’s good to see?

Jeanette: I think so. I think that there was more focus on teaching [00:10:00] because of COVID and how you teach. For instructors that maybe haven’t really looked at that, they were so into their research or within their discipline ideas, they’d been doing the same thing year after year. And this kind of made them stop and think about how they were instructing, how they were reaching their students, what was working and what wasn’t. It was part of that reflection process that I think in education is really drilled into you. But again, in other disciplines, you may not think about reflecting on your teaching as much. There was something that was really, I guess, looked at more in the spring, that maybe some of the other instructors haven’t been doing so much with their teaching practice as much.

Kevin: And that focus on teaching is another trend, Phil, that I think is amplified and accelerated due to this situation. So you’re going to have faculty members going through training over the summer that haven’t participated in online or face to face professional development at their institutions before.

We used [00:11:00] to call it the usual suspects where with 15 to 16 hundred faculty at San Francisco State University, we’d usually see around 100 in our workshops over the course of an academic year. Now you’re going to see triple, quadruple, maybe even half, the faculty at an institution going through, putting a heavy strain on the instructional design teams, again, if they have them, or they’re going to have to seek outside support for professional development or that instructional design.

Phil: Well, I think that’s an excellent point. The focus on getting more people involved, but even more than that, the focus on teaching and learning. So that’s rising in the priority list at the expense, quite honestly, of scholarship and research, at least in the near term.

Kevin: I’m going to push back just a little and say it’s finally getting the due that it deserved, because the scholarship and research aspects are generally focused on generating revenue [00:12:00] for the institution. And so that becomes a priority even at comprehensive institutions like San Francisco State or other Cal State system campuses. I don’t know what it’s like at UNM, but it’s definitely that change is not exactly as you characterized it.

Phil: Well, I’m not sure that we’re saying a different thing. Or at least I’m not understanding it quite yet. What I’m saying is if you look at the three, the priority list or how the balance and how they are in the mind of faculty members, that the ratios of change, due to the pandemic and due to necessity. And the teaching and learning mission, the teaching job has by necessity risen in the priority list. That’s essentially what I was saying.

Kevin: True. I guess the only thing I would add to that then, as a both-and proposition, is that that attention [00:13:00] to teaching and learning implies that faculty have to actually learn more about their craft instead of just jumping into the deep end and starting to swim.

Phil: Yes. Well, let me ask you a question about outside partners. So I’ve noticed that certainly a lot of the large publishers, when the pandemic hit in the March timeframe, the announcements of, ‘hey, we give you free access to courseware, we’re extending this through the end of summer, through the end of the calendar year.’ You have all these well-designed courseware available to you is the message they came out with. And certainly we’ve seen Coursera with their courseware initiative, as a MOOC provider, saying, ‘Hey, we’re making this available.’ And then you’re also seeing the OPM providers saying ‘we’re helping schools make this transition.’ So you’ve got these outside partners who are certainly offering to be part of this team as things are redesigned. [00:14:00] But what is the reaction like? How realistic is it that that type of teaming with outside providers is becoming a significant trend that will continue into the future?

Kevin: Well, I think it’s going to continue. I don’t know if it’s going to be at the same rate as the on campus-based collaborations. But when you consider the fact again, that some campuses just don’t have the staff levels that others do. They’re going to have to reach to outside groups and possibly leverage some of the CARES Act funds or something like that to do it. I know in another category that you didn’t quite touch on was professional development. So groups like the Association of College and University Educators are launching a course in effective online teaching practices.

And so a lot of campuses are adopting micro credentials for the summer to help faculty prepare for teaching in the fall using [00:15:00] that content and framework. But using local facilitators on their campuses to support the people with the cultural context of the institution.

Jeanette: I would only add that going back to the courseware and textbook providers, the instructors that I’ve talked to, if they were teaching an intro course before, maybe not using a major publisher or courseware provider title for whatever reason, looking at their fall courses, I know that I’ve talked to enough instructors that I feel like it is maybe a trend where they’re thinking, ‘OK, well, if there’s an online content available to me that’s been designed, and I really don’t know what I’m doing, and I can just slide it up into my LMS of choice or whatever the school’s using (which is sometimes not their choice), but if I can go ahead and use that content, I’m going to, because at least it’s a starting point for me.’ And especially for those schools that don’t have the instructional design [00:16:00] assistance, it’s there for them. And at least they can build upon it. So it seems like that’s a good starting point. And so there’s been some some instructors that I’ve talked to, that I know that they’re looking to change after using maybe the same textbook or reading material for years based only on their online content that’s available to them.

Kevin: And in some cases, they’re looking to open educational resources or open textbooks to reduce costs and increase learning equity for students.

Phil: For the most part, at least the way the three of us are describing it, there’s some real positive developments by this acceleration of a team-based approach that we’re seeing for teaching and learning. But what are the downsides to some of this move? And I’ll throw in one to get started. I’ve been a little bit skeptical with the free courseware offer because of the situation where a school or department or individual faculty might start adopting and using courseware. [00:17:00] And even if it’s a positive development through the fall, are they now stuck with this in 2021 and beyond when they don’t have the budget to be able to use these resources moving forward? So I think there’s a little bit of a risk going on that if they adopt resources that they can’t afford or won’t be available after the fall term. But what other downsides are there for this movement?

Kevin: I can see faculty might be hesitant to do too much where they’re not showing their unique value. For example, if they’re adopting materials like Khan Academy or something where it’s not only a textbook or something, but there’s a learning path implied there, there are problems for students to complete after watching a video and things like that, that they have to then go in and add value to that experience, if only to meet [00:18:00] the legal requirements of regular and substantive interaction, because it has to be from the instructor. They can’t just set it and forget it anymore. But I would say that the key there is that dystopic vision that we saw from Scott Galloway of mega universities pairing up Google and MIT or something like that to create like one section of math for the entire country. Then, you know, that’s where faculty are going to have to show their unique value, not only at their institution, but within their institution.

Phil: Is there also a risk of the lowest common denominator? What about the case of where you have faculty who have designed very engaging courses with very unique designs and methods of facilitating the course, but with the pandemic and the push for team based design, are we seeing any cases where the instructor might be getting told, ‘OK, sure, you’ve [00:19:00] done this engaging work yourself, but this is a way our whole department is going to work. So you need to come and do the same thing.’ So a standardization even when it’s not helpful. Are we seeing any of those cases?

Jeanette: I hope not.

Kevin: Yeah, I haven’t. And I know that academic freedom would probably prevail in that argument, but I haven’t seen that happening. And if anything, other instructors would adopt some of the effective practices from the veteran instructor.

Phil: Well, I like both of your optimism on that one. I guess I’m saying that’s something I’m concerned about. But I don’t necessarily, I’m not saying that I’ve seen it yet, but it is something that I’m concerned and watching for. A final question as we get into the fall. Of course, teaching and learning is not just about course design. It gets into the actual teaching practice itself, and the whole learning process of adapting the course based on how it’s going with students, and getting feedback from students. So [00:20:00] I don’t know if there’s an easy way to answer this, but how is this likely to play out in the fall in terms of some of the increased team coursework? Are faculty going to be sharing notes with each other as they teach, and adjusting and applying lessons learned? That you’ve learned that I can apply at my course. So should we expect this to actually continue into the fall with the iteration or the improvement of courses as they’re taught?

Kevin: If they’re working in cohorts now, there are some examples of those cohorts extending into the fall and having kind of discussion sections, so to speak, where they are sharing a reflection on how things went and what they would do differently. I know that’s part of the model for that group I mentioned before, the Association of College and University Educators, where they have online discussions, where faculty share their reflections with each other about what worked and what didn’t work. But [00:21:00] in terms of the summer offerings that a lot of campuses are spinning up to support faculty or preparing for fall, it makes sense that they would create some sort of continuing effort for the people to interact with one another. And one other thing that I’ve just started to see happen is leaning on student surveys at the institution level and sharing the common instrument so that all instructors can ask students the same questions and whether or not they share that data out with all the instructors that will remain to be seen.

Phil: And Jeanette, what’s your general view of the outlook of how fall will continue? Or are you generally optimistic about how this might make a long term improvement, or what do you think it will be like during the middle of a course?

Jeanette: I think a lot of it’s going to be dependent on what Kevin said, how much of this the cohort or the organization of faculty is [00:22:00] happening at the institutional level, or maybe even within a discipline. I think once those are established, and a cohort or a group of people are working together, and you’re sort of leaning on them, the war story where you’re able to go in and you make a friend for life type of thing, where you’re going to continue to want to work through them.

I think it just needs to be established now and it needs to be encouraged by, likely by the institution to start it and keep it going. And then I think it could be a long term effect that’s happening.

But it’s, I think it’s how an institution is engaging with that instructor right now to help them with their course. And I don’t know if a lot of institutions have the bandwidth to do that right now, but I think it’s a core piece of the success of the fall moving forward.

Phil: So we have a real opportunity here, as there’s been a required, or necessity to focus on teaching and learning, to focus on adapting quickly for the fall. But [00:23:00] part of what we’re talking about is the the nature of this opportunity quite often lies in these cohorts, these communities that are being formed where instructors and staff can rely on each other and build connections moving forward. So this is a case where it could be a long term, not just a long term trend, but we could be establishing these communities that actually help over the long term to improve teaching and learning. So we will definitely keep watching for this, including seeing how it plays out in the fall time and the learning process itself. But thanks, Kevin and Jeanette. It’s great talking to you this week, and I hope you have a good weekend.

In this episode, Phil Hill, Jeanette Wiseman, and Kevin Kelly discuss some of the practical issues faced by students, instructors, and institutions when implementing HyFlex models.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS | More

Hosts:

• Phil Hill
• Jeanette Wiseman
• Kevin Kelly

Transcription:

Phil: Hi, I’m Phil Hill. And welcome to COVID Transitions. This week, we have a special episode that’s focused on the growing interest in hybrid formats for fall 2020. And specifically with the HyFlex model that’s being discussed at many campuses. We wanted to take some time to address some reader questions and in particular, look at the practical implications of preparing students as well as faculty and course designers for these new methods. Jeanette Wiseman and Kevin Kelly had an opportunity to talk about these details. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Jeanette: Hey, Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, how are you today?

Jeanette: Okay. I feel like we need to have a little theme music playing at this point, since Phil’s not here to do it.

Kevin: Well and his voice is so resonating, so we’ll have to do our best.

Jeanette: How has your week gone?

Kevin: It has been a little bit nutty. He had two online events for over a hundred people, and my niece was supposed to graduate on Tuesday. When I sent her a text saying I was thinking about her, and I know it was supposed to be her big day, and we’ll figure out a way to celebrate your achievement. She said, Thanks, Uncle Kevin. It means a lot. Praying that COVID clears up by my college graduation.

Jeanette: Now, my godson graduated from the Naval Academy last week, and we were really looking forward to helping him celebrate that. So not being able to do that was disappointing for sure. So what were your webinars about this week, Kevin?

Kevin: One was with the group, I’m on the board, the Association of Authentic, Experiential and Evidence Based Learning paired up with e-Portfolios Australia.

Jeanette: Well, sounds like you were busy. Also had some blog posts and some really good comments and questions on this blog post this week.

Kevin: Yeah. And I think one of the most interesting questions stemmed from the blog post about HyFlex course design, and the person said, hey, our campus is considering HyFlex, and you have a very compelling bullet point about preparing students. But what does that look like? What should we be doing to prepare students for success in the HyFlex environment? And that to me said, OK, well, I guess we’ve got to put some more out there.

Jeanette: Yeah, absolutely. We can.

Kevin: Something we can discuss today.

Jeanette: I think so I think there’s a lot of people really curious about not only how did they do the HyFlex or the hybrid classes and planning for fall, but what EdTech students need to know. And what did they need to do to be prepared coming into really different learning environment? So do you have any pointers for instructors and schools looking to try to make sure that their students are ready for something that’s gonna be different?

Kevin: I do. I do. And I also have pointers for students themselves. I know we have an active listening group of students who love this podcast and it’s growing in popularity. For teachers and campuses, I think there are a couple of things they can do. One is to break it down. I don’t think it’s enough to put in a course catalog. That, of course, is going to be fully online or hybrid flexible. I think we need to define what that means and why students would want to choose different formats as their approach to taking that class, because they do have the control coding that Spider-Man comic book. With that power comes responsibility. So I think that’s important for students to know what work each format will entail, such as asynchronous learning will require them to do a little bit more on their own. They’ll be more self directed if they’re in the synchronous learning environment. They may have to participate more than they normally do, especially if they’re introverts. And so it’s important for students to know not only what choices they have, but why they might want to make them.

Jeanette: Absolutely. It seems like there should be more than just some knowledge gained from my course catalog. Now, what else would students really need to know? Well, going into these different formats, let’s take the HyFlex, what should students know and be prepared walking into that course compared to a fully online one?

Kevin: They should know that they have the choice each and every class session to participate how they want either synchronous, online, asynchronous, or if their campus is planning to open, which some are, then they could even show up in the classroom. And those all have different ramifications if they’re planning on showing up in the classroom. Are they going to be living off campus or are they going to find a dorm room? What’s what’s this physical distancing going to look like? How to small group activities work and when you can only be six feet apart. And again, each person has their own needs based on their home situation, their work life and their academic goals. Making those choices and knowing what it means work wise for the academic setting will help them be more successful because they’re not just sitting in the room and absorbing what somebody says, but they’re active participants.

Jeanette: Now, you know, it’s a good point. I was also thinking, before COVID and before I think that there were definitely different types of students or characteristics of students that you would say, OK, this is a person I have good characteristics or good reasons for taking courses online, primarily online. Now, you know, this spring and potentially into the fall. That’s those choices aren’t necessarily there if you want to continue your education. A lot of cases you’re going to be taking courses online. So with that in mind, and it’s not really a learning style, it’s more of like adapting your learning style. Are there things that students should be doing to prepare for that? Are there things that students could do to help them be more successful in those types of classrooms, do you think?

Kevin: Absolutely. And in the blog post I’m writing now, that hopefully will launch early next week. I say that the COVID-19 experience has reminded the entire world that some things like viruses are beyond our control, but some things we can control. And so students should think about what they can control themselves. One is literally themselves their health. A lot of students talk about not exercising as much, drinking more. Those things all impact their ability to learn, their ability to be a little bit more organized. So I recommend for students to use paper, digital calendars to plan out each week and how they’re going to tackle the learning experience, getting focused, getting connected with other students. That can also optimize their attitudes by being more intentional learners, by being more motivated, by being more active, and they can optimize their environments to some extent. And so, you know, some of the surveys that I analyzed showed that students don’t have quiet study spaces. About a quarter to a third don’t have somewhere they can go. And so it might require negotiating a communal quiet time with your family or your roommates or either cheap earplugs or if you can afford it. Noise canceling headphones to block out things that are going to be distractions. There is a science around interruptions and how we lose what we gain while we’re learning if we’re interrupted. And it’s similar to the work experience. If you have someone prairie dog over the cubicle wall. You end up having to restart something that you had begun, maybe even go back further to recapture the thoughts that you were engaged in at that moment. And so whatever students can do to create quiet spaces, organize their space. So it’s not so cluttered and probably most importantly, gaining some new skills, time management skills, self directed learning skills and even study skills like spacing out the study time instead of cramming it all into big three hour blocks.

Jeanette: And then what about course design? Are there ways that instructors can be designing their courses that would benefit students, especially near to this format?

Kevin: Well, definitely. If it’s whether it’s HyFlex online or something in between, the more organized you can be, the more consistent you can be. And the more you communicate with your students about what’s expected each week, that’s all going to help students. And I would say we want to go beyond discussions, of course, design and also talk about course facilitation. A while ago, I did a trio of blog posts around course design rubrics. And I challenged all of those rubric designers to include more about what it’s like once the students actually show up in the class. It’s great to make it structured, to make it accessible for students with disabilities, to make sure there are lots of interaction opportunities. But then you have to facilitate all that. You have to guide students through the process of learning. You can’t just set it and forget it.

Jeanette: I think there’s a lot of people that are forgetting that, to be honest. You know, I there’s so many people, it seems to me, you know, talking to instructors that they’re so focused right now in the design of the course and trying to get everything in there.

I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but I do think that they’re forgetting the work it’s going to take to facilitate. I thought, you know, I don’t know if you mentioned this on that blog post or if it wasn’t a conversation, if it was a podcast or something else we’re talking about. But you had some really good point. It was just like discussion threads that I thought was really interesting about starting making sure that there were assignments for when you start and when you need to respond to make sure that guided discussions are really strong in most cases, which are gonna be important. A lot of these classes.

Kevin: Having two due dates. I picked that up from a faculty member who’s passed away now. Gail Weinstein at San Francisco State. But it’s really helped my conversations because students submit their original post by, let’s say, Wednesday, and then they submit their replies by the following Monday. So they have time to make it a conversation instead of what I call the Tower of Babble, whereas just a bunch of people lobbing posts and replies into a pot and hoping it sticks.

Jeanette: But the other one, when he said. Yeah, I agree with x, right? Yeah.

Kevin: Or could you ever find good jobs? Smiley face. There’s another one. But the other thing too. To your point is having more instructions and more examples of what replies should look like. We give students a lot of ideas about what their posts should look like, what they should include. We might even have some rubric criteria about what we’re expecting. We want you to support your argument with two sources and blah, blah. But then when it comes to replying to other students, it says replied to other students. And that’s just not enough.

Jeanette: So, Kevin, because we were talking about HyFlex that I know even before COVID at San Francisco State implemented this and some of their courses, and I think it was more due to space constraints. If I’m correct me if I’m wrong with that. And since you were there for that and you’re still an instructor at San Francisco State. Can you give us some insight of how that was accepted by the students, what your actions were to both and students? I think instructors and maybe even the administration, it be interesting to see how this was done pre-COVID, and and do you think it’s going to be different post-COVID?

Kevin: Well, so first you had one particular class adopted, a quasi HyFlex approach because of space constraints. My own department did it for a different reason. The class that addressed space constraints was an introduction to marketing class, lower division undergraduate course with hundreds of students. Our department went HyFlex for the entire graduate program in instructional technologies and that was to address the needs of working professionals that might not be able to get to campus at 4 p.m. or even 7 p.m. based on their work load, and especially in the Bay Area, when the startup culture pushes people to work 24/7.

Jeanette: So the decision, the traffic to make you may be trying to get to San Francisco can be tough, too.

Kevin: Yeah. Luckily, the the main campus is in the southwest corner down by the zoo, which is not in the northeast corner where downtown is. So it’s not as impacted by traffic unless you have to go through downtown to get there soon. But traffic. Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a pain. Not as bad as L.A., but it’s bad. But in terms of the student reactions, I think students recognize that it was a different learning experience and they were able to appreciate some of the pros along with the cons. For example, my colleague Brian Beatty, he wrote a book about HyFlex Course Design, and he’s got a chapter about student experience, where he quotes students that he surveyed about their experience, I think goes over three. Graduate students and, you know, students would say things like, hey, I had less interaction with my peers because I chose the asynchronous route for whatever reason. But the fact that I was writing reflections about my learning process actually made me a stronger learner. And so it’s incumbent on us to to let students know that there are pros and cons to every approach and HyFlex. And again, not only let them know what the workload might be like for each pathway, and they can choose a different pathway each time, but also what they’re going to get and miss out on so they can make informed choices.

Jeanette: Were the students actually showing up on campus or were most people just taking it a synchronously? Like, what was the majority of students doing and did it matter at the end of how the instructors were interacting with those students? Do you think it.

Kevin: Oh, so I’ll tackle those in a random order because it’s going okay. Stream of consciousness. Fewer students chose to come in person because they have that flexibility. And that’s what students really desire is convenience and flexibility, whether it’s because they are working or in the case of some of the students in that intro to marketing class, their IP addresses for those who are familiar with that term showed that they were on campus. They just didn’t walk from their dorm to the classroom. They they preferred to watch it on Zoom instead of going to the classroom. But to answer some of your other questions about the experience of this, the students. Stuck with largely the pathway they chose at the beginning of the semester, so they didn’t change pathways as much as one might think. They stuck with one and kept with it. Most students had similar experiences. All the literature has shown that students are equally successful in whatever format they choose. However, and this calls back to something. Michel Pacansky-Brock brought up an email this chain this week that it’s really about how we design and facilitate these courses. It’s not about student abilities. And so it’s easy first for faculty who are choosing HyFlex or if the campus chooses it, for them to focus heavily on the synchronous experience and kind of let the async fall off and be that set it and get it type mentality. And so students in an asynchronous environment where they’re not challenged or they don’t get a lot of feedback are going to do less well because they’re not getting that same level of attention from the instructor or their peers.

Jeanette: So just if you were to design a hybrid class and pretty much the only difference that you had, maybe this becomes not HyFlex, but that you just want to have and recorded yourself when you were maybe on campus, if you happened to be on campus or when you were doing a course in and you posted it on there. Does that just naturally become a HyFlex class?

Kevin: It does make creating a HyFlex classes a little easier because again, you if you have to record yourself twice, once in person, and then second as a kind of a Zoom recording or a Camtasia recording or screen Castomatic recording, whatever you choose to use if you have to do it twice. And that’s a lot more work. So if you know that you’re going to go HyFlex, it does make sense to say, OK, well, I’ll capture this in person experience and I will actually plan ahead and make sure that that in-person experience takes into account that some people are going to be watching the recording, the Lily, Maryland conference when virtual this spring. And so I was grateful to have the opportunity to give a presentation, and I actually made comments during my presentation. For those of you who were watching the recording of this, here’s something you can do. And so those instructors who are teaching HyFlex courses will want to make those side comments while they are facilitating a live session just so that the people in the rooms by themselves half an hour later or a day later are given some instruction about what they should be doing. They paused the video. Now, while we do this in class activity and go do X. That’s just really powerful and makes it so that everybody’s considered as you’re going through this kind of multi time line experiment.

Jeanette: So can you know, the one thing that we have to keep in mind is with the San Francisco ended up before it was that, you know, those students were actively choosing to be in a HyFlex classroom where this fall most students are not given that opportunity, regardless if they’re going to die or if they’re going on to University of California or wherever they’ve chosen to attend school. They are going to be in a lot of cases, forced to how they get their education and how the teaching of learning happens. So knowing that, are there any other things that you think students should really be doing this summer to prepare for their courses in the fall, which, you know, we still don’t really know what’s going to happen, even if the school thinks that they’re going to be, you know, on ground. Things could still happen or maybe schools are going to be online, are going to be able to go back into the classroom.

Kevin: Yeah, I think students like teachers need to take the summer to prepare. And that may mean getting some of those skills that I brought up earlier, whether it’s time management skills, playing with calendar or reminder apps that will help them stay more focused in due dates, things like that, but also learning a little bit more about what the different formats their campus might choose so that they can be ready. And again, maybe creating a little network of students that they know already so that they can lean on those students, maybe not for advice about a specific course that they’re in, but for moral support for that sense of connection, which students say they’re missing quite a bit. And for encouragement, we all are a flock of geese flying in a V, and if you’re not familiar, the geese honk from the back to motivate the one in the front because they’re doing the most work. They are creating ability for the other ones to draft. Behind it, and so their way of thinking that lead bird is by honking encouragement. So we need encouragement, right? Yes. This bumps. Six feet apart.

Jeanette: Right, exactly. Now, that’s true. I’m always the slowest runner in a group, so I’m always cheering them on. Well, I hope we have a good weekend, Kevin. It’s nice.

Kevin: I hope you do, too.

Jeanette: And we will be, you know, of course, back talking more about how COVID and how it’s affecting education today. Maybe more pointers from from Dr. Kevin.

Kevin: I think we all have some great things to add. So it’s always good to talk to you and have a good weekend yourself.