Improving the HyFlex Experience for Students With Disabilities

Improving the HyFlex Experience for Students With Disabilities. From interviewing
Robbie, Lorena, and Isabel, I learned although they were pleased with their overall experience
with HyFlex; however, there were still some ways to improve that experience. Robbie was the
most outspoken about ideas for improving the HyFlex experience. Robbie offered some
observations about what he thought was a problem, or less than optimal in HyFlex, and offered
some recommendations for faculty and students. One of the deficits of HyFlex as Robbie
experienced the model lies in the implementation of the online path. Some untrained instructors
simply move a face-to-face course into the online path as Robbie explained:
Um, my personal opinion is that too many courses that do either are fully online or are
partially online, try to imitate in-person classes very closely. And so they will try to do
like video icebreakers. Or like, they will require you to respond to a discussion post to at
least two students or at least three students, and you have to try to contribute something
meaningful, otherwise you don’t get the points. And unfortunately, like, not in a
discussion type setting in real life that not every student is going to comment on every
other students’ things. So, the dialogue ends up being very stuffy and like, very forced,
and not like beneficial most of the time. And so, I don’t know if that’s necessarily
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something that could be improved upon, because I don’t know other people’s opinions
about it. But my own opinion is that I think that, you know, there are certain types of
learning that work better for in person, and there are certain types of learning that work
better for not in person. And when you try to mesh the two. It can be . . . the mesh doesn’t
always work.
Robbie’s example was congruent with my personal observation as an instructional technologist
working in distance education in the CCC system. What he described is a common occurrence in
the community college system. When asked about what he would recommend to solve this
deficit, Robbie suggested some kind of teacher training was needed so teachers can learn online
teaching methods. He said:
Um, I would I would encourage them to try and figure out a way to not just copy all of
their in-person class, you know, discussions and techniques and activities, just to online,
you know, I have a course right now that I have to do a group project and, and all online,
that’s very, very difficult. It’s, it’s more difficult to do a group project online than it is in
person. And so, you know, I just don’t think that those things like I was saying
previously, some of those things just don’t translate into online learning. So I would say,
you know, try to maybe branch out and do a little more research on like, what has been
the best, you know, online way to learn what has been proven to work and like, all that
kind of stuff instead of just, you know, translating all the worksheets and scanning all the
worksheets in online and calling it a day. And, you know, be patient with technological
issues. Because, you know, like I said earlier, sometimes you are kind of lying about the
computer, but, you know, other times you’re not, and your computer really does fail. And
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sometimes professors are understanding and sometimes they’re not. So that’s what I
would say.
Robbie also considered the lack of computer literacy on the part of some instructors to be an
issue of HyFlex as much as an issue of online education. He proposed computer literacy training
for faculty to solve this deficit, saying:
I think that getting some more computer literacy, like training, for the faculty who are
doing those courses would be really beneficial. I have at my college, some much older
professors who are not necessarily as computer literate, and you can tell and how they’re
trying to have you either communicate with them, or how they upload their slides or their
whatever their, their, you know, their stuff. So maybe getting a little better computer
literacy for a course that’s at least half online, or whatever, I think would be beneficial.
Robbie recognized students also play a part in the teaching and learning ecosystem and offered
similar advice for solving the lack of computer literacy on the part of some students, saying:
Um, I, you know, I honestly would do the same kind of computer literacy support
options. Because I think a surprising amount of younger, more student aged, traditional
student aged people don’t understand how computers really work, you know, like, we
were talking about earlier with people not understanding the microphone will pick up
noise from their environment and things like that. So I would say that would be good for
the students.
In addition to computer literacy training for students, Robbie recognized there was an issue of
equity manifested in the form of access or the lack thereof for some students who may not have
the economic means to afford the resources necessary to attend college. Robbie acknowledged
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some students need assistance to afford the devices needed to participate in class and made a
general recommendation for offering services to allow students to participate in the HyFlex
learning experience, saying:
And then maybe any kind of assistance programs for like. . . do you have a laptop? Do
you have a microphone or a webcam? Like, are there things that are roadblocks currently
for your learning that, you know, maybe you can apply for an aid grant or something like
that? And or scholarship and get those needs met?
Robbie was aware having an optimal experience in HyFlex required students to have adequate
technology to participate in those courses. He was also personally aware of the critical role
technology integration in the course design plays for students with disabilities. He said:
It’s a big thing for me, I’m a little hard of hearing, but I also have a lot of auditory
processing issues. And so when you have technology, you know, I think that that kind of
butts heads sometimes with those problems, because when you have auditory processing .
. . at least for me, I rely a lot on lip reading, as well as like body language and stuff like
that, to kind of understand the tone and what’s actually being said, and so if there is a
video presentation, but the video cuts out, and I can’t understand something that’s being
said, then I sometimes miss note-wise, what’s going on, because I can’t understand
what’s actually being said. And there’s no you know, there’s no subtitles, unfortunately.
Although I recently have heard that Google is like introducing kind of subtitles as you go,
kind of thing. So, I think that might be interesting, if that could ever be added into this
kind of working learning environment. But those are pretty much the only challenges that
I really struggle with. Aside from regular technology, you know, sometimes your laptop
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just you know, messes up and, or Wi-Fi goes out. Um, but aside from that, really, that’s
it.
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