Improving the HyFlex Experience for Indigenous Students

Improving the HyFlex Experience for Indigenous Students. The interviews with
Indigenous participants in this study revealed two ways to improve their HyFlex experience, and
thus improve their overall educational experience. The first way to improve the HyFlex
experience is by providing opportunities for students to give feedback about the courses and for
instructors to give more feedback to students about student performance. The second way is to
apply decolonizing perspectives in the courses taught in HyFlex. Participants discussed how
indigenous histories are taught incorrectly throughout the various grades and levels of their
education and how what they have learned in school was often in dissonance with the histories
handed down to them via familial lines as Josephine recounted:
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Like when I went . . . so when I was a kid, I think more like maybe like fourth or fifth
grade. Like they explained . . . like the Wounded Knee Massacre to me, right? But my . . .
like, it was like . . . my great aunt was taken out by her uncle, like, put on a horse and
driven through that ravine, like she was taken out. That’s the only reason why my
grandparents and my dad are here today is because that one person was able to save her
through that, right. And when I learned about that through like a formal education . . . it
was, Custer was in this huge, great battle with the Lakota, and he was working to try to,
like . . . move forward on the West or whatever they were like, whatever their original,
like westernization version of it was, was that like . . . it was this White man’s great
defeat, and like, how dare these Indians do this to them? But when I learned it through
like, through my family, it was like . . . this was a moment of survival for us, and this is
the only reason why you’re here . . . is because like, this terrible tragedy happened, but
one person was managed to be saved out of it, you know what I mean?
Because of the dissonance Josephine found between the version of history she learned in school
and the version of history she learned from her family, she has developed a skepticism about
Western education, for she perceived it as slanted, and in a sense reductionist. She said:
So, just like the difference in how it’s told, makes a huge impact, you know, like having
someone especially like, my mom and dad, like, correct these situations, for me was big.
It taught me not to necessarily trust your history classes that you take in elementary
school in high school, like it taught you that you have to think about it from a different
perspective, because it’s not always true, especially like in to learn that as, like, at a
young age really put me in this mindset where it was like, you have to think about these
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things on a greater level. You know, like . . . it’s not just this one way, like, Western
education doesn’t always tell every single side of the story.
To be clear, Josephine was not issuing an indictment of HyFlex learning by any means, but in
our interviews, she explained although college was better than her K–12 experience, there were
noticeable signs of White supremacy, like the fact that there was only one Black professor in her
college. Winona and Lyle, who attended the same college as Josephine, also shared most of the
faculty was White, and there were very few Indigenous faculty. The point of what these
participants shared, as I reflected on their accounts, was purposefully applying decolonizing and
critical perspectives as part of the course design process, among other measures, could help
institutions create more inclusive and equitable learning environments in all forms of delivery
including HyFlex. Of course, this was true for all modes of instruction, but these participants
perceive HyFlex as a new way of experiencing college education. They noticed the ways the
technology and the pedagogy were integrated to provide the learning experience, but they also
noticed that some aspects of the old ways were still present in this new way to experience
college. In their experience, White supremacy and coloniality were present in subtle but
noticeable ways, and they felt uneasy that HyFlex may become more of the same. It was
reasonable then to expect HyFlex would be augmented as a framework by having a critical or
decolonizing component in its foundation.
Josephine was not alone in her assessment of how her people were represented, or rather
unrepresented and misrepresented, in academia and in U.S. history. Winona had a similar story
to tell:
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Along with learning about the history that came with being Native American, like my
grandfather, my maternal grandfather, and my maternal paternal grandfather, and seeing
their different histories and comparing them like my paternal grandfather was a is a
residential school survivor. And my maternal grandfather was a child who was able to
hide from the Catholics who were trying to take him away from this home. They both
have different perspectives on it, as my maternal grandfather wishes he did go to school.
As for my paternal grandfather is more traumatized from what he experienced that he
rarely seems to talk about it but he always encourages and motivates his grandchildren to
learn our language and our culture and the importance of it. And, you know, the sacrifice
to be able to be who we are. Seems that’s a big part of growing up as a Native American
in the United States.
The history of the United States is a violent one, and these participants have carried with them
intergenerational trauma that colors their life experience including their experiences in HyFlex
learning and generally how they move in the world. It was impossible to talk about their college
experience and not acknowledge the psychological weight they carried as a result of the
rapaciousness of colonization and the White supremacist belief in manifest destiny. With this
particular perspective, these participants’ accounts provided insights about how to make HyFlex
and other learning environments more inclusive and representative of the students who
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