Hybrid Courses with Flexible Participation

Abstract

Students in higher education have more demands placed on their time and need a college education for more careers than ever before. Flexible class participation options are needed that provide students with opportunities to manage their hectic lives with more individualized control. At the same time, most institutions of higher education are under pressure to serve more students and serve existing students more effectively. Online courses are often considered part of a systematic solution to these issues, but many schools and their faculty do not want to jettison their effective classroom approaches in order to shift to online delivery, nor should they. HyFlex courses may support both online and classroom-based courses and programs without deploying separate classes in each mode. HyFlex courses allow students to participate in the classroom or online and to make that choice on a continuous basis. The HyFlex design is used at many institutions to provide these benefits. This chapter describes the HyFlex design and development process, explains two common course types, and provides summary evaluation data on effectiveness of the approach.