(I’ve updated this on Monday, June 22, 2020 and will continue to refine as I get feedback.)
Many faculty are being asked to plan classes simultaneously for online and F2F students (6 feet apart) with both equally engaged and well-served. Some universities will only allow 1 in 4 students in the F2F class at a time, and large classes will need to be reduced in size. EVERYONE (even in small classes) needs to plan for some students to spend some time in quarantine. In an effort to reduce the numbers of students going to class (quite the novel problem!) many institutions are asking students to rotate (you get to go F2F once every few days and have to watch online the rest of the time) but others are asking faculty to do double or triple sections (assuming at least a quarter of students will remain online all the time). This has the potential to be the worst of both worlds. Here is a proposal to abandon the synchronous (especially repeated) lecture (both large and small) and reallocate time to smaller groups of more engaged active learning. (I’ve included some time calculations for different class sizes below.)
1. Combine Sections with Shared Content
It was never efficient (or good pedagogy) to have the same lecture repeated during the day, but we were limited by the size of lecture halls. Put aside, for the moment, any arguments about the value of the inspiring lecture: yes, and sometimes, but circumstances have changed and your capacity has shrunk. Students also now need more engagement, more care, and more active learning. A smaller lecture provides none of that and a larger (or even asynchronous) online lecture is not the same.
With hyflex, there is less need for large synchronous gatherings and even your on-campus students will appreciate the flexibility of asynchronous video content. Once you start making your lectures available asynchronously, your campus students will stop coming to class anyway—and that might be safer too. You will still want to see your on-campus students F2F but not in such large groups. Remember private conversations are alsogoing to be harder this fall too, especially if your office is small. Given that we will probably also be in similar conditions for Spring 2021, if you design this now, you can reuse this hyflex flip in the spring.
2. Use Asynchronous Video Lectures
If you must lecture and you already have these from last year—use them! Unless they are going to get massively better (i.e. you have the technology, time and talent to produce Star Wars quality films), you have much more important things you should do with your time. If you do not already have video lectures, but you would normally lecture, then you can either (a) make videos this summer, (b) distribute the job of making video lectures among the various faculty assigned to this course all year or (c) (hint–best option) find close-enough content videos online that already exist. If this is a standard intro course, then an OER course textbook, Courera, EdX, OpenYale, CrashCourse, Khan Academy, Open Culture, Merlot, Carnegie Mellon Open Learning or YouTube etc. can probably relieve you of this burden. Better video lectures are better, but repeating live lectures—even if it seems like less work—is not a useful way to spend your time. If you are going to make your own lectures—shorter is better and you need to learn from Michael Wesch.
Some faculty worry that if they use free lectures from Stanford, then students will think they are not getting their money’s worth. It is true that there is something that feels valuable about attending live lectures, even if you are distracted by Instagram, but there are better things you can do and now more than ever, students crave active attention. If you ok using textbooks by other faculty, why not their verbal explanations? What matters most to students is the attention and support we provide. It may not be why we attended graduate school, but your original lectures are not what matters most. Students want to know you will support them in learning: if you don’t care, they don’t care.
3. Offer More Small Sections for Active Learning and Support
Create small high-touch active learning sections and focus your pedagogy and time on small groups. If you’re your campus won’t do it—create smaller meeting groups yourself, but hopefully you can discuss this with department chairs and registrars.) With all of the stress and uncertainty of these times, student bandwidth for learning (and faculty bandwidth for change) is diminished—especially for less privileged students. We all need community and support in uncertain times and if you care about equity then this is where you should focus.
Smaller and separate group sessions also solve a lot of the logistical problems. One of the big issues for hyflex is how will online students hear students in a socially distanced F2F classroom? If your chairs are in a circle or you have a couple of good quality microphones, then perhaps you are fine. But most of us have experienced being the one phone or Zoom participant in a F2F meeting and feeling left out. Having an entire group on Zoom can be much better (and circumstances now dictate that you can’t have everyone F2F). Now you can offer many different synchronous F2F and separate virtual sessions at different times during the week.
Think about the most difficult hyflex problem—how will you provide a similar quality experience, especially as ALL students are likely to spend some time in quarantine. While there are more complicated techniques, two things are easy:
A. Mixed groups of F2F and online together is harder. Adding webcams and screens to every classroom is expensive but won’t improve the experience by much. It is MUCH easier to deal with only F2F or online at one time. This is true for both faculty and students.
B. It is easier to hold an interactive or active learning session in a small group.
4. More Individual Support
That time that you were devoting to repeating lectures can now be redirected. If you have multiple professors and a large group of TAs, you might even consider extended nights and weekend support. This can be done both virtually and F2F.
5. Active Learning Days
Our usual (pre-Covid) models tend to assume that lectures can be large—limited only by the size of the hall, and so now more limited—but that sections should be small, below 20 when possible. But once we relinquish the lecture as the central pedagogy, then we can start to think about active learning and what we might do with 50 students, perhaps in 5 groups of 10. For example, this is a great size for jigsaw pedagogy: 5 groups of 10 students each are given 5 different aspects of a topic to investigate. Then they are recombined into 10 groups of 5 to share, teach each other and create a coherent picture. With only 5 groups, there is time to share all together and for faculty to visit each group in turn. There are a host of great pedagogies like jigsaws that works for large groups, but are easier to implement in midsize ones.
The advantage in this model is that faculty only need to design one every week or two. Smaller groups make it easier but also provide an opportunity to repeat and PRACTICE this more engaging pedagogy in more manageable groups.
If you are shifting your pedagogy from primarily lectures to more active pedagogy, that is fantastic, but remember that you too are learning a new skill. If you have lectures honed over a lifetime of teaching, you are probably pretty good at that. Your first experiments in active learning will SEEM less effective, and the first time, they might be. But you will get better. You will need to practice, just as you did with lecturing, and practicing exactly the same learning exercise multiple times will help you improve faster. Given that it is easier to execute in a smaller group (especially with only F2F or online and not both at once) and you will get more practice, try planning only ONE active learning session per small group per week. Your time will now be spent repeating these small groups, and students will only get one each, but remember—they also have asynchronous video content and one high quality session is better than three dull ones.
Some places to start:
How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging, Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Active Learning Teaching Guide @BU CTL
Active Learning Guide @ Auburn CTL
Active Learning Online @UC Davis CTL
Active Learning in an Online Course @Ohio State
6. Make Personalized Support Videos
Especially in a large class, students still want to see your face and know you care. Short encouragement can take place in video format. This might just be a reminder to study for a quiz or a quick tip on the reading. Short videos from you are much more likely to be watched, AND they create personalized value. Students will understand that if your course is only free videos from Stanford that they could do that for free. The weekly—daily?—attention from you in short support videos can provide some structure and human connection for both F2F and online students.
The Calculation for Students
I am suggesting that instead of 3 hours a week of large group lecture, that instead students watch recorded video lectures and then have 1 hour a week in great active learning small group. You could support this with another (easier to design) hour of discussion, support for problems or just question time. Small will make this work.
There is, of course, the danger, that students will skip the video lecture and just ask you to explain in your small groups. Tell them to watch the video, but using the wisdom that one good question probably indicates other students have the same question: answer questions with new short videos. You can also ask students to make video explanations for each other.
If students watch all of your video lectures, then this is more contact hours week for students, but better contact with you.
The Calculation for Faculty: Scenario 1
Here is the math for a huge course of 2100 students with multiple sections and lots of TAs.
Your 101 course currently meets MWF and three faculty offer lectures at 9, 10 and 11 to 800 students each hour with 50 TAs and 2400 students total. Every TA currently leads 3 sections and grades all student work. That is 150 one-hour TA-led sections of 16 students each. (This is a real example from a large public university). Assuming NO prep time, that is 9 hours of faculty work and 150 hours of TA time available. Remember that many places are currently assuming that the number of lecture hours will double—so class meetings MWF 9, 10, 11, 1, 2, & 3 so more hours for faculty.
In groups of 16, the same faculty hours could now be distributed to 144 students a week, which gives every student one hour in a small group with faculty during a 15-week semester. Increase the groups to 20 and assume 18 faculty hours a week and those numbers more than double to 360 students per week in a one hour small section with faculty: students would now get two sessions a semester with faculty, and the rest with TAs.
Once a week or month, faculty now take turns designing a one hour active learning pedagogy for medium size groups. In this scenario, 18 faculty hours would mean groups of 133.
If you are being asked to offer triple repeat sessions, you have even more time. Remember too that not spending your summer recoding videos also gives you loads of extra time.
Scenario 2
Here is the math for a large course with 800 students and no TAs.
Your 101 course has 800 students and no TAs. There are currently 4 sections (perhaps with multiple faculty.) If you double your time to repeat lectures, that is 24 hours a week of time. If you use video lectures, you could then see students in groups of 33 once a week. (Remember you can now offer some of them as F2F only and some as Zoom only, so you simplify the logistical problems.) To get down to 20 students in each group, you would need 40 total hours, but if there are four of you, that is 10 sections each.
Scenario 3
Here is the math for a large course with 300 students and only you.
Your 101 course has 300 students and no TAs. At the moment, you lecture 3 hours a week and if that doubles (or triples!?) you will have more hours in the classroom, for no gain. For ten hours a week, you could see students in groups of 30, or every other week in groups of 15. With just one TA, you could alternate weeks and see students in groups of 15.
Scenario 4
Here is the math for a small course of 35 with only you.
Your course has 35 students, but with the requirement for hyflex and classroom social distancing, you still have a problem. Perhaps your classroom really only had 30 seats, but now will take only 15 or maybe only 10 are taking it online. Even you primarily use discussion, think about taking the moments when you do talk (almost certainly more than you think) and recording those and then holding separate meetings for online and F2F students.
If you really have to hold synchronous hyflex sections, note that a fishbowl discussion can work. One group actively discusses and the other group observes, awards points, scores using a rubric, or makes written commentary. Then you switch. If you switch between F2F and online then both groups get a crack at being center stage and you solve some of the microphone and other issues.
While the hyflex model seems to offer a way both to charge higher F2F prices and accommodate virtual learning, it offers an incredibly difficult problem for faculty. Just ONE of these problems – either students 6 feet apart in class without the ability to lean over them and look at their paper or screen, OR all classes being offered F2F and online–would almost certainly change our pedagogy and probably lower the quality of what we do. Hopefully during the spring you experienced that F2F and virtual work in different ways—synchronous sessions that mimic F2F teaching mostly fail and this will be much worse when online students feel they are interlopers in a better F2F experience.
This matters for classes of all sizes, but especially for the largest introductory gateway courses, where equity is already compromised. Given many university statements about race and equity at this moment, consider that the large lecture class itself currently grossly privileges the most prepared students. These students understand the conventions, take notes dutifully, maybe ask questions and attend office hours. Without concerns for family safety, racism or food security, they have more bandwidth for focus and attention. Large gateway courses, as they are generally practiced, are a form of structural racism. They amplify and preserve the advantages that only some students enjoy. Now that large lecture halls look like COVID petri-dishes, universities are being forced to limit F2F capacity and offer multiple sections. My suggestions may initially seem counter-intuitive, but even for small courses, the current plan to prepare for low capacity F2F and online at the same time is going to further amplify inequity.
The HyFlex Flip is a way to rethink how we can provide better and more equitable instruction at scale during this time of crisis. I am actively exploring this model with a number of institutions, so please comment and let me know problems and improvements. Let’s help each other.
