B. Promoting engagement in HyFlex Learning Environments

As we saw in Unit 2, HyFlex courses give students the option of attending the course in person, synchronously online, or asynchronously online. Students have the ability to choose their mode of attendance with flexibility each week and are not locked into the same format over the course of the semester. From an instructor’s perspective, this means that you face multiple challenges:

• You are delivering your course at the same time to student both physically present as well as participating live online
• You need to ensure that students participating asynchronously who will be accessing the learning resources outside of the synchronous time are served by what you have in the Learning Hub.

TechBuddies

One strategy to ensure student engagement is to create a TechBuddy program between your in-person students and the live and online students. TechBuddies connect with each other via the web conferencing software. The in-person TechBuddy ensures that the online TechBuddy can see and hear the session as well as support the online TechBuddy’s participation, ensuring that their questions and input will be heard. And if feasible, in-person TechBuddy’s can port online TechBuddy’s to small group locations if you are a planning group activities and which to have online and in-person work together.

Other suggestions for ensuring an engaging and supportive hyflex learning experience:

• provide presenter slides in advance
• do a “tech check” well in advance
• decide which channels you will use for communication with the online participants – the chat feature in the web conferencing software? A discussion forum in the online learning management system?
• provide reserved, front-and-centre seating for on-site tech buddies
• provide easy access to power outlets for on-site tech buddies