Online or F2F? students decide as they go

Have you ever created another option to complete the work for a student who couldn't make it to class?  Have you planned an out of class assignment to substitute for a class you had to miss? In other words, have you been flexible? What if the class were designed to be flexible from the get go? That's what instructors are doing in what's called a HyFlex Course Model. In this model, basically a face-to-face and online course are both designed and all components are offered within the same course. Students can elect whether to participate in person or online or both, depending on their schedules, their learning style and the degree to which they want to engage with the material.

At the recent 2014 Online Learning Consortium International Conference, I saw a presentation by Penn State Lehigh Valley on their FlexLearning courses. They stressed that the course needs to be designed to offer equivalent learning activities for both the classroom and online environments. By offering their students flexibility, Penn State Lehigh Valley was able to fill under-enrolled courses and resolve course scheduling conflicts. There were those that questioned - would any students come to class? Here is what they found when they asked students -How do you participate in your FlexLearning Course?

• 48% Combination of Online & Face-to-Face 
• 31% Entirely Face-to-Face
• 21% Entirely Online

To increase flexibility, the course could be team taught by instructors so that the face-to-face times could vary. For example, a student could choose to either go to a morning, afternoon or evening class OR do work online. 

Would this work here at HCC? Would it increase enrollment by offering our students more flexibility?