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I just looked up how the housing allowance for veterans is calculated and found this definition: “If any portion of a class requires students to physically attend class, then it receives the same housing allowance as an on-campus course.”
This is quite a generous definition. It would be possible make that work with very little affect on student flexibility or administrative work.
Very difficult situation. Thanks for raising it Patrick – I had not thought of this before and it raises some interesting questions. For student learning, inflexibility of modality is worse. For students’ ability to pay for college, overreporting distance courses is worse. Both can affect student persistence.
A compromise could be to take attendance during the course and report the course as in-person for those who attended a certain percentage of classes, and online for those who did not. Laborious bean-counting for institutions, but probably the most beneficial for the students.
Really though, I wonder how financial aid and accreditation organizations define in-person courses currently? I would bet that “in-person” is not a clearly defined term. For example, I am sure it is quite possible for a student to miss a majority of classes in some regular single-modality in-person classes and still pass the course.
It seems the forum is text only so here is the url to a google doc with the pictures I took as we were testing the system (please excuse the dangling cables at the back):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gHqS-emvIISJU14DTRTON-u9SVEr__DoSqFsdaQR66I/edit?usp=sharingThis is a classroom that seats 30 (with computers built into the desks). I would call it a computer lab but all of our classrooms have computers here 🙂
I don’t have a photo of the cart on hand so I will aim to take one next time I see it in a classroom.
I am in the process of outfitting four classrooms with equipment to support HyFlex. Currently working with facilities and IT to install. We have one room up and running and the remainder should be working within the next couple of weeks. I like the discussion here. It was really important to me to make it as easy as possible for anyone to walk into the room and be able to use it so I set it up as if the instructor was at home conducting a synchronous class, just with a larger speaker/microphone and more powerful camera.
An HDL 300 soundbar from Nureva connects to the podium computer via usb so is literally the default input/output. Instructors don’t even have to think about it. The Aver PTZ camera has a two step process to connect (through the network) that I haven’t been able to automate but once that is done the camera connects to zoom just as if it was a built in or monitor-mount camera. We already had a two monitor podium computer to tap into, with a front room display that mirrors one of the monitors. Now the instructor just has to share that same monitor screen in zoom for the remote students and they see exactly what the in-person students do.
The camera has many features, but I’ve just set it up for instructors to easily switch between three main zones and turn the motion tracking on/off. The zones are: the instructor podium, the front room display (a large Samsung TV), and a whiteboard.
Currently in the process of training fellow faculty members to use the equipment. (After the first of these sessions, one of my colleagues exclaimed “Oh, this is much easier than I thought it was going to be.” and proceeded to ask me how I listed hyflex courses for registration so I’m taking that as a good sign.) These classrooms are for 20-30 people. For the remainder of the rooms, the college has a set of mobile carts that can be wheeled to the back of any room to broadcast synchronously. It is a computer with a large display and a combined camera/soundbar mounted at the top. The instructor logs in to zoom on the cart AND the podium computer if the podium computer will be used for screen sharing.
Oh, that is very frustrating. Sorry Dianna.
I tend to define HyFlex every time I use the word. This week I am doing some training sessions for fellow faculty on the classroom equipment we installed to support HyFlex. Your post reminded me to include the definition of HyFlex in the presentation (I actually do it twice – once at the beginning and once at the end).
Helping peers with the definition is easier than helping administrators though, as we may not see them as often. Perhaps including the definition of HyFlex and linking to sources in grant proposals could help? I would not have thought to do so for grants targeting “HyFlex” but your experience shows it is not yet universally understood.
So far, I have been using the discussion board in our learning management system and the chat feature in Zoom for cross modal engagement.
I teach computer science so it is very problem-solution based. Each week’s in-class exercise is posted in the discussion board for that week. For students who are in the classroom and synchronous, they do the example during class: either in groups, pairs, or individually and post their solutions in the discussion board. Then we can talk about the different approaches to the problem and features of a good solution as a group with everyone having access to each attempted solution. I can pull up individual solutions on the display at the front of the class (and shared via zoom) as we discuss them. Students then take a few minutes to reflect on improvements that could/should be made to their first attempts and post those reflections and revised solutions in the discussion board.
Asynchronous students also post their first solutions to the problem in the same discussion board either before or after class (no one can see anyone else’s solution until they’ve made their first attempt). They then review the other solutions after class and make a helpful suggestion to at least one other student and finally make a revision to their original solution improving on it based on the feedback in the discussion. This way, all students are participating in the same activity and have the opportunity to interact with each other no matter which mode they attend that week.
Aside from questions for me, Zoom chat is mostly capturing small banter (a connection you might whisper to a friend if you were in the classroom). I just encourage the students in the classroom to also log in to Zoom if they would like to see what is going on in the chat.
All in classroom students have access to a computer during class which is what makes the above possible.
Looking forward to hearing how others engage students across all modes!
A good first step in designing any HyFlex course, as you recognized in your question, is to design a good quality online (asynchronous) course. If your institution is a member of Quality Matters or another organization that provides a certification process for verifying that an online course meets standards of good design, you could include the fee in your request. If training is allowed in the budget, these organizations have a number of courses that guide instructors in applying the standards to their course. Sorry, this advice likely comes well after the application deadline for your funding opportunity!