Flex Principles

In the flex modality, students have the freedom to choose from day to day whether they will participate on campus or online from home because the course design supports both modalities equally.

What is Flex?

Flex, sometimes referred to as hyflex and also called blended learning or simulcasting in K12, is a course designed for maximum flexibility. It is essentially an online course with an optional face-to-face component. Students can succeed in the class without setting foot in the classroom, but those options are available for students who need them, and the students who don’t are still held accountable for the same content.

On the spectrum from completely online to completely face-to-face, this class exists between online and hybrid and is designed to accommodate split classes, students’ unpredictable schedules, and semi-predictable disruptions in service (such as school closures due to weather or prolonged absences due to pandemic) while still providing the opportunity for face-to-face instruction using a flipped classroom model.

The Principles

There is a foundational text on the flex modality called "Hybrid-Flexible Course Design."

While it is a useful text, it is also fairly lengthy, so I think it might be useful to focus on the four pillars of [hy]flex articulated by Brian Beatty:

Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes daily, weekly, or topically.
Equivalency: Provide learning activities in all participation modes which lead to equivalent learning outcomes.
Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as “learning objects’ for all students.
Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and equitable access to all participation modes.

Learner Choice

The video below describes blended learning as one part of a learner-centered classroom that puts learner choice at the very heart of it's flipped classroom design. Ideally, the flex modality incorporates multiple strategies that put students in charge of their own learning.

Students in a flex class should have a variety of options for participating in class, both synchronously and asynchronously.

This is often a menu of items, such as

Participating in synchronous class sessions
Responding to class session recordings on a discussion forum
Contributing to asynchronous discussion forums as an alterative to synchronous sessions
Participating in study groups, either synchronously or asynchronously
Participating in optional synchronous review or study sessions

However, the scope of these choices don't have to be limited to where and when students interact with course content: in the classroom, at home, or asynchronously. A well designed flex class can also give students a choice of how they are assessed:

Regularly paced smaller assessments or less frequent larger ones.
Collaborative vs. individual projects
Essays or reports vs presentations or robust discussions
Traditional grading vs reflective self-evaluation or peer evaluation

Instructors often have a wealth of experience about how to pace a class so that it works for most students, but that will invariably leave some students behind because of their learning styles or life circumstances.

If the outcomes of a course don't dictate the method of assessment, such as a research paper, lab report, or certification exam, consider leaning into universal design and giving students as much choice as possible.

Equivalency

Much of the technology purchased for flex instruction attempts to seamlessly integrate online synchronous learners (Zoomers) with face-to-face learners (Roomers) while also reducing the cognitive load on the instructor, but this ideal is still out of reach without significantly more money than we have. Instructors describe symptoms of cognitive overload and increasing exhaustion throughout the quarter while trying to balance the needs of the two groups.

And the challenge increases when we think about recording those same live sessions for asynchronous students. Unsurprisingly, the more flipped and interactive class sessions are, the less useful they will be for asynchronous learners, who would likely benefit more from shorter instructional videos that they could review multiple times.

It is important to remember that equivalency does not mean "the same." You don't need to reproduce the exact same lesson or assessment asynchronously that was presented synchronously. They just need to teach and measure the same outcomes with the same level of complexity and challenge. The principle of backwards design can help with this.

But this creates another issue if equivalency requires instructors to design and administer two different versions of their course: online and hybrid. This gets further complicated when you remember that students are not running in parallel groups but that individuals should be able to cross between modalities at any time without being penalized or missing content.

Equivalency is probably the most difficult flex value to uphold, and each instructor will have to decide their own response to it. The principles of learner choice and reusability provide some strategies, but, to be done equitably, flex still requires extra instructor labor.

Please refer to the lesson on Flex Strategies for ideas on how to achieve equivalency without superhuman effort.

Reusability

Mike Caulfield provides a useful model of reusability in the video below:

The sentiment behind this principle is to foster as much interaction between the different modalities of the class as you can, ideally in a continuous feedback loop, but it can also help solve the problem of redundant course design, thus reducing some instructor labor.

Here are some other examples of reusability:

Having students collaboratively provide feedback on anonymous student work in a live session, which students could then review asynchronously, and then they can contribute their own feedback through Google docs or Hypothes.is.
Review a quiz or exam in a synchronous session and have students reflect in a discussion forum on the most frequently missed questions and collaborate on coming up with better answers.
Pull student comments out of a discussion forum to examine more closely and model good discussion practices, like thoughtful disagreement, analysis, and reflection, which can enhance the value of future asynchronous discussions.
Collaborative scavenger hunts, glossaries, or bibliographies

To make recorded live sessions more valuable to asynchronous students, instructors might consider editing them into one or two shorter (than 10 min) segments that illustrate specific concepts after they have been converted into Panopto videos. But these recordings can't be used in future classes unless student names and voices can be cut out.

Accessibility

In some ways, the flex modality is already an accessibility strategy.

Students who might otherwise have to miss a live class session due to weather, health, family, or work can feel confident about making up the work.
In some cases, having content available digitally, which might not normally be an option in a face-to-face class, can be an accommodation for those who have an undiagnosed condition like anxiety or ADHD.
Those who might be at a disadvantage in an entirely asynchronous class because of unreliable internet or who just require occasional human interaction to get invested or stay focused have the option to attend in person.
Some courses might not have enough enrollment to run unless it can accommodate student from multiple modalities, so remote students might get access to offerings that previously were only offered face-to-face, and a department's course offerings can be expanded in general.

Ideally, the course would maximize accessibility for all students in either modality so that every student had a full range of options, but that is often a challenge that is outside the scope of any individual class and needs to be addressed at the level of the institution. However, this principle does require that everything under the instructor's control be made as accessible as possible, so that live sessions and videos are close captioned, and documents and web pages are screen-reader compatible and not a barrier to the visually impaired. Every design element and technology in the course should conform to principles of universal design.

Sources

Beatty, B. (2019, January 15). Four fundamental principles for HYFLEX – the pillars. HyFlex World. Retrieved from https://hyflexworld.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/four-fundamental-principles-for-hyflex-the-pillars/

Caulfield, M. (2020, June 29). How I would approach fall semester: A personal Zoomflex-based view [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/C7VScPdhMvY

Chicca, J., & Keddell, R. (2021, June 30). Hyflex course model [audio blog]. Retrieved from https://nurseeducatorpodcast.libsyn.com/hyflex-course-model

Edutopia. (2019). A student-centered model of blended learning . YouTube . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/zrR-KIoggf4.

Gannon, K. (2021, February 10). Hyflex in practice [audio blog]. Retrieved from https://teaforteaching.com/174-hyflex-in-practice/

Hayman, J. (2020, May 2). HyFlex learning [audio blog]. Retrieved from https://eduvationaudio.libsyn.com/podcast/hyflex-learning

Stachowiak, B. (2020, May 12). Episode 309: Hyflex Learning, with David Rhoads [audio blog]. Retrieved from https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/hyflex-learning/