Originally posted on January 5, 2012 by Brian Beatty
- Ease and Convenience – “What I Want, When and Where I Want It: I experience no hassles in my interactions; the company representative strives to meet me where I am at.”
HyFlex courses implement this principle when they offer a range of participation options that meet the felt and expressed needs of the student/learner. Many students want to attend classes in a traditional classroom setting because they value the interaction, social presence, and immediacy of feedback both to and from the instructor and peers. Many students also want to attend a live class but may not be able to be there in person, yet can connect remotely to watch and perhaps participate audibly in the class. Offering a web conference attendance option can meet this need or desire. And other students want an experience that they more fully control, especially regarding the time of “consumption.” These students need an asynchronous participation option that provides a meaningful learning opportunity as well.
There is one aspect to this principle that may not be appropriate for most educational settings, however. Giving the student free choice in deciding “what I want” is not likely to work in many situations. Instructors design the educational experience so that students encounter information and experience activities carefully selected to help them learn. If students are completely free to pick and choose among options, they may choose an easy and convenient path that does not lead them to a satisfactory outcome. (They may not learn all that is intended or meet the prescribed learning objectives.) HyFlex options must be thoughtfully designed so that the students’ choices do not afford a deficient participation path.
If you design your HyFlex course with the three participation options described above (in-class, online synchronous, and online asynchronous), you are much more likely to implement appropriate elements of customer-centric principle two – ease and convenience.