Tag: hybrid classroom

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How to Make Your Asynchronous Classes More Engaging Using Students Retrospectives and Audio Prompts

A hybrid Classroom Illustration
An Illustration made with Canva by The Author

A Guide to Weekly Students’ Retrospectives using this free Google Slides template and Mote

One of the best ways of assessing students’ learning is through retrospection.

I use the retrospective technique to encourage students to reflect on their learning journey, not only to think about what they’ve learned but how they’ve learned.

Retrospectives are one of the artifacts of the Agile methods to help both a team and its member to reflect on the process, what worked well, what didn’t, and how they can improve for the next sprint.

In the classroom, you can use weekly retrospectives to wrap up a session, a series of lectures, or a topic.

There are plenty of ways you can conduct this activity in your classroom.

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can use Mote, a chrome integration for audio messaging, to create weekly retrospectives with your students asynchronously. 

For a full tutorial on how to use Mote and the Weekly retrospective google slides template watch the video.

Video Tutorial on How to use Mote for Students’ Weekly Retrospectives

What is Mote?

Ok, so let’s start from the beginning what is Mote and how does it work?

Mote is an audio toolkit for educators that works as a chrome integration to enhance students’ engagement in the asynchronous hybrid classroom. 

What I love about Mote is that it is versatile and really easy to use. And wait for it… It’s FREE.

Yes, once you add the integration to chrome you can use it in every google app: Google classroom, docs, slides, forms, sheets, Gmail, and even on the web. 

You can use it for giving feedback to your students, inserting audio to your presentations, adding comments to shared documents, leaving prompts and questions, or even creating audio quizzes and forms so students can respond with their voices too.

But my favorite way of using it is for having asynchronous audio conversations with my students, and especially sharing weekly retrospectives.

Mote has a fermium model, and while I have a premium account, there is much you can do with the free version.

The free version lets you record up to 20 motes per month each of 30 seconds. Now, for this particular activity, the free version is enough. But of course, it depends on the uses you want to give to mote, if you’re planning to give feedback to students in their essays or adding audio to your slides, then the unlimited version is probably best for you. And it’s still very accessible.

But again, with the free version, you can do tons of things.

Weekly Retrospectives Activity

The retrospective activity is an opportunity for students to reflect on what they’ve learned and how they’ve learned. It’s a really personal exercise because it asks students to think about how they think, how they work, and kind of assess themselves regarding the skills, their behavior, their knowledge, and so on. So your main role as an educator is to give them a series of prompts to facilitate the exercise.

Some possible questions are:

  • What was a eureka moment (something you learn that really caught your attention)?
  • What did you find challenging?
  • What part of the class did you like/dislike the most?
  • What things do you think we missed out?
  • What are three takeaways from today’s lecture?
  • What would you like to learn or go deeper next?

I try to keep it simple so that they can complete the exercise as homework or asynchronously in a short time of 5 to 10 minutes.

And I focus on 4 points:

  1. Lessons learned I ask students to think of 3 things they’ve learned during the week. It can be concepts, theories, approaches to work, soft skills..or any other lessons.
  2. What they found challenging or difficult. The idea here is to get an idea of which students are struggling and at what points they’re struggling so that I can easily help them level up. But also it helps them to be more aware of their weakness or points to improve.
  3. Feelings. I want them to tell them how they felt during the week, both regarding the course itself but also regarding their lives in general. This is a really important point that we tend to forget especially in the hybrid or online classroom. And the thing is that as social beings our feelings impact the way we learn and perform. So it’s really important to know how your students feel, and this also lets them know that you care for them and that you hear them.
  4. And the thing they’re looking forward to for next week. This helps me adapt my lectures or prepare to meet expectations, but also it helps them prepare for the next topics or work and improves their motivation and engagement.

Here’s the template I use with my students for weekly retrospectives. You are welcome to make a copy and use it in your classroom. To copy the google slide deck click here.

Weekly Retrospectives Template
makea copy of the weekly retrospectives template

Mote for Weekly Retrospectives

So this is where I use mote. Instead of asking my students to just add text, I ask them to complete this with audio messages.

So once you’ve installed the Mote Chrome extension, all you need to do is to click on the mote logo that appears next to the comments icon on google slides and start recording. 

Now if you are in the free version, you have only 30 seconds to record, but for this prompt, that’s enough. If you want to access a 60-day free trial of the unlimited version click here. 

So you register your prompt and once you are happy with your recording you click on done. And then you click on insert. So the little purple icon appears and you can place it wherever you want. You can also modify its settings, for example, you can choose whether the audio plays automatically or by clicking on it, in a loop or not. So for this exercise, I leave the default option which is to play on click. 

And now, you only need to share your document with your students.

So you may wonder what happens if a student has not installed the add-on, would she be able to listen to the audio? 

Yes, the audio is available to anyone with access to your document. So they can play the audio even if they don’t have mote installed, but they’ll add the extension if they want to respond with audio and complete the activity.

To Wrap Up

Weekly retrospectives are a great opportunity for students to think about how they learn and improve their learning experience. Is an activity that you can use both for asynchronous online classes and as homework. 

You can download and copy the google slides template here. It is ready to use in your classroom with your students. 

To access a 60-days free trial of the unlimited version of Mote just click here and start recording your voice.

For more fresh content on teaching tips, tools, and strategies for the hybrid classroom follow and subscribe to my Youtube channel The Hybrid Professor.

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Career Advice

Dear Faculty, I See You.

A dog holding a thank you card
Photo by Howie R on Unsplash

Recap on what’s it like being a professor in the covid era

I don’t know about you, but when I first saw the news on the first Covid case in my country I just thought we’d be able to contain it and that was going to stop there. 

I know, I was too optimistic. I see it now. 

But then we went into a global lockdown and life as we know it stopped completely. 

I remember my last day in the classroom, mocking around with my students about how we’d end up all wearing masks and having a short break from classes. 

I remember rushing with my colleagues to modify the schedules and moving classes to April thinking everything would go back to normal then.

I remember setting up Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and who knows how many other videoconferencing tools and trying to figure out which one was more appropriate, easier to use, and free of course.

I remember playing with my kids and preparing lunch while attending a faculty meeting. 

I remember being grateful for having a yard, good health, and a fast internet connection. 

And then I remember it started to last long, too long.

I imagine this is a familiar scenario for many of you. As any good educator, you’d tried to look at the bright side and adapt to the circumstances, believing that this would be something temporary and that soon we’d be back in our classrooms to do what we love the most. 

Now, two years after that first lockdown, we know that there’s no going back to normal and we just need to learn to live with these new circumstances. But, even after two years, we are still struggling with the unknown. Every day is a new challenge, and no matter how much technology has evolved we haven’t found a sustainable solution to the issues that this pandemic has dismantled.

Because that is the truth. The problems in the education system are not new. 

The struggles that some students face every day are not new. The feeling of exhaustion and abandonment of many faculty is not new. The lack of resources and training in teaching is not new. 

We were all aware of these issues way before the pandemic, only the health crisis highlighted the education crisis and the fragility of the system. Suddenly, it became evident to people outside academia that the education system needed a change.

But two years later we’re still hoping for that change. And is not that we are sitting still waiting for policymakers to enact the change, many of us here are working day and night to see that change happen.

And it hasn’t been easy. 

Because even when the school has no budget for buying appropriate material for remote teaching, we are relying on bricolage and working with what we have available. 

While there’s not enough support and training for remote curriculum design, we are following thousands of youtube tutorials on how to code, create and edit videos, design beautiful material, and split screens. 

While we are stick to our headphones and computer, we’re mastering ubiquitousness 24/7. 

While we have to isolate ourselves when the PCR turns positive, we still manage to work remotely, take care of our family and be as performing as if we were asymptomatic. 

While our payslip isn’t showing any more zeros, we keep working more than those legal 48 weekly hours.

 While only a third of our students are actually participating in our classes, we do our best to make those classes memorable. 

While we don’t have any training in psychology, we are all reaching out to our students even on holidays to make sure they don’t quit. 

While we are new to teaching a subject, we are always there to replace a colleague that’s sick. 

While we want to take that well-deserved break, we keep our schedule free in case classes need to be postponed. 

I know it hasn’t been easy. 

And I know you’re still asking yourself if you will be able to keep going like this. I know you’re having doubts about teaching being your vocation. I know you’re starting to burn out.

So this is for you. 

This short post is not to rant about everything that’s wrong with education today. 

This short post is to celebrate you! 

This is to tell you that you are an awesome human being. To let you know that without you, our youth would be lost today. This is to tell you that I see you, that many people just like you, see you. This is to tell you that you’re not alone, that you are part of a community of people that cares. 

This is to appreciate what you do every day. This is to thank you for not giving up on us, on them.

But this is also to tell you, that is ok to break too. 

It’s ok to feel overwhelmed, tired, sad, lonely, discouraged, abandoned. 

It’s ok if you don’t answer emails on the weekends. It’s ok if you need one week to recover from covid symptoms. It’s ok if you don’t know how to make a perfect video. It’s ok if you say No to your colleagues. It’s ok if you can’t help every and each of your students. It’s ok if you take a two weeks vacation to rest.

Yes, you are awesome. But you’re still human.

Don’t forget that. 

Because you can’t change the world if there is no you in this world. 

So pause for a minute, take a breath. 

You deserve it. 

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Education Online Education

Top 5 Free Tools to Make Your Online Classes More Interactive

How to keep students engaged in an online course.
Illustration courtesy of the Author. Made with Canva.

Keep your students engaged and learning

We all know remote teaching is challenging. While we know online classes are the best option in the current context, there is no secret about how difficult it can be to ensure students’ learning and active involvement.

Let’s be honest, Zoom classes and traditional slides are not enough. Students are not participating, and unfortunately, they are not learning. This is not completely their fault. It’s not because they don’t care, but because they struggle. They struggle to stay focus; they struggle to connect with others; they struggle to become active learners.

And it’s not our fault either, we are all doing our best. We are trying to adapt to extreme circumstances, without proper training, support, or even enough time to change the curriculum. 

The good news is that there are plenty of tools and online resources out there to help us make our classes more engaging and interactive. 

To save you time and help you choose the right tools for your classes, I have selected 5 of my favorite tools for online education. In this post, I’ll give you a hint to some of the best-in-market, low-budget, and user-friendly applications for improving the online learning experience and some ideas on how to use them.

Let’s start.

1. Explain Everything

Explain Everything is my favorite interactive whiteboard platform. And quite frankly is much more than a collaborative whiteboard. With Explain Everything, you can create video beats about your lecture topics and share it with students to check for understanding. You can either record your slideshow while you speak, or draw and write on the whiteboard and record everything you said and add to it. 

Another pretty interesting functionality is the collaborative whiteboard. You can create groups and invite your students to collaborate on projects. Students can work on cloud projects simultaneously or at their own pace, and you have an eye on their work in real-time. This is great both for synchronous and asynchronous group work. What I love about this is that participants that join the whiteboard at the same time can hear one another thanks to their audio chat.

Finally, you can also livecast your whiteboard and keep your online classes engaging. Either by using a videoconferencing system (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc) or just by sharing the whiteboard link, participants can see in real-time what’s happening. This is a great option for big sized synchronous classes. 

Explain Everything is free up to three simultaneous projects, but for only 3 dollars per month, you get access to unlimited projects, slides, and recordings. 

2. Mural

Mural is also one of my favorite apps for interactive online learning and visual collaboration. Mural is essentially a remote design thinking platform, but its potential for education is outstanding.

As an educator, you can invite up to 100 members or guests to your workspace and collaborate with students and other faculty in real-time. You can have dedicated rooms for each class or group of students to encourage teamwork and project-based learning. Inside each room you can create several murals that can be set to private or public, depending on how you want to share it. 

Screenshot from the Author

Mural works as a big whiteboard that you can organize in different small areas to outline your lecture session. From course kick-offs, warm-ups and energizers, brainstorming, traditional slide-decks, the possibilities with Mural are infinite. 

The functionalities I love the most are their chronometer, the celebrate button, and the facilitator superpowers. With the chronometer you can set up timing for each activity in the Mural and thus plan with more precision each of your lectures, ensuring also time for breaks. The celebrate button is just a lovely confetti party that you can throw every time the class completes an activity. Everyone will get the confetti party on their screen. This is great for rewarding effort and progress. Finally, you can assign Facilitator superpowers to your students so they take the leader role on their team. Facilitator superpowers include the possibility of timing activities, start voting sessions, and celebrate task completion. Giving facilitator superpowers to students is an original way to engage your students and make them accountable for their learning.

Mural is free for educators and students. You just need to create an account with your institutional address and provide proof of your status. For an education plan you can apply here. 

3. Playfactile

PlayFactile is a learning platform that lets teachers create engaging Jeopardy-style quiz games for the classroom. You can create and personalize your own game boards or use pre-made quizzes shared by the community. With PlayFactile you can either host live jeopardy games, regular multiple choice quizzes, memory games, and create study flashcards to improve students’ learning proficiency. 

Screenshot from Author.

These jeopardy games can be a great option to complement the traditional slide lectures, as you can divide the board into different topics and use it as a kick-off or wrap up activity. Students can then review their learning while playing, and you can instantly complement concepts when doubts arise. 

Students can play individually or in teams and they can choose beautiful avatars and nicknames. You can control whether they use their names or a default nickname. 

With the free version, you can create up to 5 teams for each game and you can host up to 3 games. With the education version, only 5 USD per month, you can play and create as many games as you want and have over 50 teams. The premium account offers other amazing features like buzzer mode, memory and choice games, and share flashcards.

4. Edpuzzle

I recently came upon Edpuzzle and I’m convinced of its potential for enhancing online learning. Edpuzzle is a video platform where you can create and edit videos from the web and use them in your classroom. Take any video from YouTube, Khan Academy, Learn Zillion, or your own and build your lessons around them. 

Video and visuals are more effective for learning than traditional slides, but most of us, teachers and professors, don’t have time to create sketch videos for every lesson. Here’s where Edpuzzle stands out. You can just turn existing videos from any platform and tailored them for learning. 

You can use any video and transform it into engaging video lectures thanks to the embedded questions and voice-over features. You can just insert open-ended and multiple-choice questions all along the video to check for understanding. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Screenshot by the Author.

Edpuzzle takes videos to another level, converting them into video lessons. If you want to make sure your students watch and actually learn from the video, then Edpuzzle is just the right tool. 

What I love about this app is that you can integrate it with Explain Everything to upload your whiteboard videos and convert them into quizzes. Edpuzzle is free.

5. Sli.do

Sli.do is a great tool for promoting active learning in online classes. It helps you involve your students in the lectures. The possibilities are endless. With Sli.do you can empower your students to ask questions, vote in polls, and be a part of the lecture by using a simple Q&A and polling tool.

  • With polls, you can learn if your lecture’s content resonates with your students. You can also use them to drive meaningful discussions in your class.
  • Use quizzes to find out how much your students remember from your lectures. Use them to recap the content from the last topic. Or motivate your students to pay attention during your lecture by hosting a live quiz.
  • Use the Q&A feature to collect students’ questions and feedback throughout your lecture and address them as they come or in a dedicated Q&A session at the end of your class. You and your students can upvote and provide answers in real-time, making peer-learning possible.

Another awesome feature is the switcher app. With Slido Switcher, you can display polls or questions on top of your presentation using your smartphone as a remote control. Whether you use PowerPoint or Keynote, with the Switcher app you can change seamlessly between your presentation and the Slido event.

Sli.do offers an education package starting at $5 per month. But you can also use the free version for up to 100 participants and one event at a time.

If you, like me, are interested in making your online classes more engaging, then I’d love to hear what are your strategies and tools you are using in your classroom. Drop your comments with ideas or questions here below.

Ready to shift to Online Education? Subscribe to my newsletter and receive monthly tips and tricks on how to make your online classes more engaging.

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Education Online Education

How To Create a Sense of Community in your Classroom in 5 Steps

An illustration with students doing a high five in a physical classroom and a someone connecting in a virtual class.
Illustration courtesy of the Author

Create an authentic sense of community in your classroom, regardless of the pandemic

Building a sense of community in a classroom is crucial for learning. The sense of belonging increases students’ motivation to learn, willingness to help each other, satisfaction with their academic programs, and cognitive learning. 

The beginning of the year is the best moment to create a sense of community in your classroom. And while this year feels very different for many of us, there’s no reason we can’t create connections with our students.

No matter if our classes are 100% virtual, or hybrid, or blended, or in-person, creating a sense of community in your classroom is not that difficult, and it will always be beneficial. 

Researchers identify 4 essential elements that create a sense of community: 

  1. Mutual interdependence among members
  2. Connectedness & trust
  3. Interactivity
  4. Shared values and goals

In this post, I go through 5 simple steps that will help you forge bonds and create a classroom environment where every student feels safe and part of the community. 

No matter what’s the format of your course and what are the channels you’re using. Creating a sense of community is this simple, and the learning outcomes are worth it.

Let’s take a look.

1. Define a common goal

A shared culture is only possible when there are shared goals, values, and beliefs. 

The first step to creating a sense of community is defining common goals, values, and agreements. And I’m not talking about the intended learning outcomes you have listed on your syllabi. I’m talking about student’s shared goals.

These common goals are crucial to building trust and connections among students, as well as developing a sense of responsibility. The goals can be a mix of learning goals and life goals. They should be adapted to the type of course, the level and depth of study, the duration of the course, the maturity level of students, and the initial knowledge they have. 

The key idea here is to give students the opportunity to set up their own shared goals, values, and agreements at the beginning of the course. While it might be a good idea to have some outlines on these three elements to guide the class, students must reflect and work on building their own community standards. This not only will increase their motivation towards learning, but it also will hold them accountable for achieving their objectives and complying with the community agreements. 

Use the first half-hour of your lecture to work on the community goals, values, and agreements. Ask your students to work in small groups and reflect on what are the goals they should achieve at the end of the course, and have them classify by priority (top, mid, low). Then have them discuss with the other groups to determine which goals are common and finally have them vote. This activity can be done through a brainstorming session with post-its and voting stickers, but it can be also conducted remotely with tools like Mural or Miro.  

We can do the same to reflect on classroom values and agreements. For example, you can ask them to brainstorm on what are appropriate/inappropriate behaviors both in physical and virtual lectures, and then make them ‘sign’ the agreement contract.

Finally, you can ask questions such as “How will we help each other adhere to the agreements we’ve adopted? What forms of reminders will you prefer and allow?” This will help you and students take actionable steps to accomplish those objectives and keep up with the community norms.

2. Use a common reward system

Recognizing individual accomplishments is a great way to motivate learning. Positive psychology studies show that by creating positive affect —  like giving constant encouragement or focusing on students’ strengths rather than weakness —  improves students’ self-efficacy. Learners with higher self-efficacy are more likely to achieve their goals and overcome challenges.  

Also, gamification has been proven to be a great approach for teaching as it enhances students’ engagement and learning. 

However, relying solely on individual rewards and recognition might also have a negative effect on learners, as it can increase the feeling of isolation of some students, especially those who are less extroverted or who struggle with some topics. 

A great way to overcome the pitfalls of individual recognition is by building a common reward system. The principal aim is to increase connectedness, trust, and interdependence between students. 

Instead of working individually to achieve their personal learning goals and secure their reward, students work as a group to achieve the community goals and obtain a common (bigger) reward. 

There are plenty of ways you can set up a common reward system, but let me give you an example. 

You can imagine a set of badges that go in line with the class goals, like “Effective communicator” or “Amazing tutor” or “Math genius”, or whatever suits your class goals and content. The idea is to encourage every student to obtain one badge, of course, after accomplishing the task for it, and if at the end of the class every student has gained a personal badge a common reward is revealed. The common reward can be something like “One extra week to finish mid-term paper” or “no-homework for tomorrow” or “one point in the final exam for everyone”. The idea here is to provide a greater and more satisfying collective reward than just individual recognition.

You recognize individual progress (badges) but also collaborative progress (big common reward). This encourages students to work in cooperation rather than in competition towards their common goals, increasing their sense of interdependence, connectedness, and belonging. 

3. Keep the discussion going

Most of the learning happens outside the classroom when students are home and have to prepare assignments. Keep the conversation going even after the lecture, and provide a space where students can ask, comment, and give feedback regarding the lecture material, their struggles, and their learning experience. 

Backchannel discussions are a great way for learners to have an on-topic conversation during and after the lecture. Having a Backchannel is also an effective way to maintain a connection with students in hybrid and online lectures. 

There are several ways to keep the conversation going either through collaborative spaces, blackboards, blogs, chats, wikis, or forums. The fundamental idea behind these Backchannels is that students can log in questions, comments, feedback, doubts, or even learning notes, both during and outside classroom hours. 

Think of it as a specialized Wikipedia for your own class with a complete FAQ section. Every student will contribute to the discussion and will have access to answers and feedback given to their peers. So, instead of answering the same question to every student that sends you an email asking about reports deadlines or precise guidelines, you can have them all go to the same wiki where all these questions have been already answered. 

Another outstanding feature of Backchannels is that you can ask students to moderate the discussion, provide feedback, and answer their classmates’ questions when they know the solution. This opportunity to give feedback encourages peer learning, but also improves learners’ self-confidence and helps them build trust. 

As a professor, you benefit also from it, as you spend less time answering the same questions repeatedly, and you delegate some of your responsibilities to the learners. Your job here is only to verify that the feedback given by other students is appropriate and accurate. 

If you want to learn more about Backchannels, you can look at some digital tools I recommend for creating beautiful and organized backchannels. Remember to reward students for participating in the discussions by both asking and answering questions.

4. Encourage peer learning

As I mentioned before, peer-learning is an outstanding approach for inspiring responsibility and motivating students to take ownership of their learning. 

When students are given the opportunity to teach and tutor other classmates, they’re not only revising their knowledge and own understanding, they’re also building self-confidence and trust in their community.

Peer learning activities are a powerful way to create a sense of interdependence, connectedness, trust, and shared goals between individuals.

You can easily implement peer learning through Backchannel discussions. But you can also imagine asking students to evaluate and give feedback to their peers after performing an assignment or class activity. You can give them instructions on how to evaluate and give feedback to others, and provide them with an evaluation grid so they can appreciate the work of their colleagues. 

Another example of peer-learning is pairing students with different skills and backgrounds, but that share common learning objectives, for in-class activities. You may give them specific goals to focus on for the class and challenge them to achieve them through collaboration. 

Other than learning and gaining a better understanding of the topics seen in class, students develop practical work skills such as teamwork, time management, organization, effective communication, and constructive feedback. 

5. Reflect on the journey

The most effective way to enhance learning is to learn about how we learn. Every individual is different and their learning journey is unique. 

However, we hardly ask students to reflect on their learning journey or give them enough space to think about what they’ve learned, how these match their goals and expectations, and how they felt during those lessons.

The agile method for management and innovation uses “agile retrospectives” as an opportunity to learn and improve by reflecting on past events and behaviors. The idea of retrospectives is to have participants share their thoughts after each lecture on the following questions:

  • What I’ve learned?
  • What worked well? What did I enjoy?
  • What didn’t work well? What did I find challenging?
  • What are we going to do differently?

When students answer these questions, they actually are thinking about how they think and learn. This encourages them to look closer at their learning journey, adjust and adapt goals, and take the actions to achieve those goals. 

You can for example dedicate the last minutes of your class to wrap up on retrospectives by having an open discussion on what they liked, how they felt, and what could be improved. 

There are plenty of retrospective activities to derive the lessons learned, and you can carry out them remotely by using a visual collaboration platform. It can also be an asynchronous activity. Students can rely on original formats to share their retrospective lessons. Blog entries, 1-minute videos, mind maps, picture collage. Apps such Flipgrid, Wakalet, Instagram, or Pinterest work great for this kind of activity.

Retrospective learning highlights the importance of honesty, transparency, and the concept of impostor syndrome for self-assessment. 

This exercise also helps learners to build connections and interact with each other, as they might discover they are not alone in their struggles and feelings. 

They’ll feel more empowered to work as a community, to meet their common goals, and to take action to solve potential conflicts or disagreements between them. 

Final thoughts

Creating a sense of belonging and a safe, nurturing, supporting environment is crucial for learning. Learning is mainly a social and emotional activity. 

It doesn’t take the latest technology or complex activities to build a positive learning community. And it doesn’t matter much whether your courses are online or in-person. Creating a sense of community is way easier than you think and is full of benefits for both learners and educators. 

Remember that community is built over time, and mutual sharing and trust are essential. Physical distancing need not mean social distancing. 

With a little creativity and willingness to create a positive environment for learning, we can create an authentic sense of community in our classrooms, regardless of the pandemic. 

Categories
Education Online Education

Hybrid and Flexible: A Professor’s Guide to Hyflex Teaching

vector illustration of a human siting watching the phone and a website

How to conquer teaching during a pandemic

We have to recognize that educators have responded amazingly to the abrupt shift to online teaching. Of course, it hasn’t been easy, but in general terms, it all worked out pretty well.

I mean, we were agile.

We adapted and effectuate with the resources we had at hand and tried to continue providing our very best to our students. Other organizations couldn’t adapt that well. Many just closed down and went out of service.

We can criticize as much as we like, but let’s admit it, educators adapted fast. Chapeau.

However, we were reacting to a first-in-our-times pandemic. It caught us unnoticed. We had no choice. Adapt was our only option.

Now is time to prepare for the new normal. If we can call it normal.

A second wave of the pandemic is just around the corner. In the U.S. and South America, we are still struggling to control for the first wave.

So, no matter how much we miss our students and classrooms, we have to come around the idea that remote learning will be our new normal.

But we need to be prepared. If we want to keep our sanity and that of our students, we can’t continue functioning in an urgent-crisis-mode, not for long.

We need to think about more appropriate teaching and learning methods that encourage interaction, reflection, learning, skills development while still guaranteeing safety and health conditions to professors and students.

Below, I discuss why hybrid and flexible (Hyflex) approach is an exceptional alternative to 100% online or in-person teaching. I go through 4 crucial factors to consider when transitioning to Hyflex courses and how to provide an effective learning opportunity for all students.

Let’s begin by understanding what Hyflex is.

The Hyflex approach

The Hyflex (Hybrid-flexible) approach was first created by Brian Beatty who is Associate Professor of instructional technologies in the Department of Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies at San Francisco State University.

The idea behind the Hyflex method was to provide a bridge to a fully online program. A Hyflex program consist of hybrid classes — blending online and on-site participation modes — that provide a more flexible learning experience to students. While in a typical hybrid or blended course all students have to take part in both classroom and online sessions, Hyflex courses take into account also the possibility for some students to be 100% online or on-site. Hyflex programs allowed maximum student choice in participation mode. Students can decide for themselves which path is the “best” for them on a daily or weekly basis.

In short, the basis of Hyflex programs is to provide students with multiple forms of learning approaches: from the way content and information are presented, to the place they receive those contents, to the way we assess their knowledge.

The main difference between hybrid and Hyflex courses is the flexible component. That means that instead of building something, whether is class material or assessment activities, for just one mode (online or on-site) you build it so it’s adaptable for both modes. In this way, you are optimizing the effort and providing equal opportunities for learning to every and each student.

Example: Imagine that you were trying to fix your computer on your own. You have mainly three options: 1) you can call someone who knows how to repair it and explain to you how to do it, 2) you can check out on an online forum and follow the step-by-step instructions given by someone who has already repaired theirs, or 3) you can watch a YouTube tutorial and mirror the steps followed in the video. Probably the easier option would be to watch the YouTube tutorial. But it would also be nice if you had the written instructions to go through just in case you missed something, and why not had direct feedback from an expert to be sure you got it right. Well, that’s kind of the idea behind Hyflex.

Students as Active Learners

Contrary to traditional lecture-type teaching methods, the Hyflex approach is aimed to be student-centered. This means that students have an active role in their learning process and experience. As educators, our role is to encourage students to take full ownership of their learning, from the definition of their goals throughout the assessment of their outcomes. The role of the educator is to facilitate learning and not to impose or direct the lecture. Our major concern should lie on how to ensure our students meet their needs as learners and to adapt to the changing conditions and dynamics.

One of the four pillars of Hyflex courses is the “learners’ choice”. The idea is to give students a choice in how they complete course activities in any given week or subject. The fundamental goal of this approach is to provide flexibility to empower learners so they pursue and attain their learning outcomes in the best way.

Together with active pedagogy, Hyflex approach can only be successful if students, both online and in-person, are strongly involved in the dynamics and functioning of the course. The active role of learners should be part of the expectations of the course and need to be stated and well-established from the beginning. Consider assigning rotating roles to your students to assist you with the technology, the online discussion board, note-taking.

There are plenty of roles you can assign to your students to ensure the course and learning activities run smoothly.

You can also consider pairing or grouping students, so there is always at least one student from a group in class responsible to transfer knowledge and support to others in their group.

Active learning is not something reserved only for in-person classes. It is also suitable for remote and Hyflex approaches if you prepare well in advance the activities and ask your students to appropriate their learning process.

Having your students actively involved both in the activities and the functioning of the course will encourage them to engage with the course material and to understand the challenges of this kind of learning mode.

Asynchronous and Synchronous Student Engagement

Student engagement is by far the most critical aspect of any learning process. Without student’s engagement learning is ineffective, or not possible at all.

One of the biggest fears of shifting to hybrid, remote, or Hyflex teaching is not being able to connect with our students and to make our classes memorable.

In both remote and HyFlex classes it is crucial to establish a set of rules and expectations from the very beginning of your class. It’s important that the teacher and both in-person and online learners are on the same boat sharing a common goal: make the most of their learning together.

If this is not well-established from the first moment things can get really messy. In HyFlex classrooms, in particular, it is easy for remote students to disconnect and feel neglected by those taking part in the physical classroom. It is an enormous challenge for the educator to maintain effective communication and collaboration with both audiences. This is why it’s essential to plan for synchronous and asynchronous activities to ensure that all participation modes which lead to equivalent learning outcomes.

The key relies on how to mix distinct types of active learning activities that promote the interaction of both physical and remote learners. The aim of Hyflex is to provide equivalency and reusability of activities and resources that challenge the learner, regardless of their learning mode, to reflect upon the content and to contribute to the discussion.

Activities in both learning modes can be easily adaptable to other learning approaches and have great potential to strengthen the learner’s experience. Podcasts, video recordings, collaborative note-taking, and handouts, can be very effective both for remote and in-person students wishing to review after class. It also encourages peer-learning. The activities completed by remote learners, such as chats, forums, back-channel can of great support for in-person students and inversely.

The learning experience in Hyflex environments can be as good or even better than in the traditional physical classroom. Engaging students online is not much more difficult than engaging with them in a physical classroom. Online methods provide a wide range of alternatives to promote active learning and teamwork.

Skill and Knowledge Assessment

Another major challenge for any teaching approach is the assessment of student learning.

In a HyFlex environment, the challenge is twofold. First, we need to ensure we use techniques and tools appropriate for effective assessment both online and offline. Second, we need to coordinate the assessment activities that assure the equivalency, accessibility, and usability to all students, despite the place, the time, and the format in which learning takes place.

Traditional assessment methods are far from being a fair indicator of intelligence, knowledge, skills, or effort. And they don’t reflect the abilities and preparedness for work life.

As instructors, we need to reflect on how we can effectively evaluate student’s learning outcomes. We need to ask ourselves how the same learning outcome can be assessed both online and offline? We need to think of new approaches that are more flexible and appropriate to the environment in which learning takes place. Practices that promote reflection, learning, and skills development.

Assessing learning through group project reports, hybrid paired work, video presentations (delivered live or recorded and shared online), Backchannel discussions, Socratic seminars, blog posts and other forms of original assessment are often appropriate in all modes of instruction with very little changes needed.

We need to redefine students’ learning assessments.

Technology and Classroom setting

The main goal of Hyflex teaching is to provide students equal chances to learn and effectively participate in class activities regardless of their delivery mode (online or offline). The Hyflex approach is only effective and successful if the appropriate technology is put in place to back it up. Students, both online and offline, need to be equipped with proper hardware, software, networks, and the skills for using it. Remote learning will not be a possible alternative for a student who does not have reliable access to the internet. Accessibility is crucial. Thus, appropriate support from educators and institutions is essential for providing the appropriate environment to Hyflex teaching.

Classrooms need to be set up and equipped with image and sound capture technologies to support online learners. And both students and educators need to be proficient in the use of synchronous and asynchronous digital tools to collaborate. This technology includes videoconferencing systems, Integrated Learning Platforms, document collaboration, digital whiteboards, digital quizzes, and polls apps, collaborative annotation software, and backchannel discussion rooms.

The key to success relies on proper planning, in advance preparation, and access to the right tools.

Final thoughts

Hyper Flexible model goal is to provide an effective learning opportunity for all students, no matter where they are, and no matter the learning mode they choose.

But flexibility is only possible when all learners have proper access to it. This means that is not only about the content and information itself that has to be accessible to convenient technology and technical skills, so they have a legitimate choice to make.

Hyflex requires interactive and engaging class experience with innovative application of class content to provide optimal learning interactions. Content and activities that are easy to shift directly to fully online or fully offline and a mix in between. The main aim is to provide the most equitable delivery format to students that aligns with their needs and learning preferences.

However, shifting to Hyflex programs requires in advance and constant preparation and organization of pre-class content and coordination of both synchronous and asynchronous activities. The main challenge is to align both types of learners and instructors toward the same goal: effective collaborative learning.

Resources

Abdelmalak, M. M. M., & Parra, J. L. (2016). Expanding learning opportunities for graduate students with HyFlex course design. International Journal of Online Pedagogy and Course Design, 6(4), 19–37.

Beatty B. (2012). Hyflex course design: The advantages of letting students choose the blend. Online Learning Collective.

Beaty, Brian J. Ed. (2019) Hybrid-Flexible Course Design Implementing student-directed hybrid classes, EdTech Books.

Bruff, Derek. (2020). Active Learning in Hybrid and Socially Distanced Classrooms, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching.

CNDLS. (2020). Guidebook: HyFlex Teaching, Instructional Continuity at Georgetown.

Hyflex (HELIX) Implementation at Harvard Division of Continuing Education: https://teach.extension.harvard.edu/helix

HyFlex Course Design Model with Brian Beatty (2020), Think UDL Podcast.

HyFlex Course Development Guide (2018). Cambrian College Teaching & Learning Innovation Hub.

“Hyflex Learning with David Rhoads” (2020). Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast.

Leijon, M., & Lundgren, B. (2019). Connecting physical and virtual spaces in a HyFlex pedagogic model with a focus on teacher interaction. Journal of Learning Spaces; 1, 8.

Miller, J.B., Risser, M.D. & Griffiths, R.P. (2013). Student Choice, Instructor Flexibility:

Moving Beyond the Blended Instructional Model. Issues and Trends in Learning Technologies, 1(1).

Sowell, K., Saichaie, K., Bergman, J., & Applegate, E. (2019). High Enrollment and HyFlex: The Case for an Alternative Course Model. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 30(2), 5–28.

Talbert, R. (2020). Research report: Experiencing the hyflex model. Robert Talbert, PhD.

What To Expect in a HyFlex Course: A Faculty Handbook. (2017) Texas A&M University.