Students are required to post a reflection (essentially a journal entry) each week to an online forum. Weekly participation accounts for 10% of their course grade. The assignment complements additional content/application posting requirements for online students and content-focused discussion participation for in-class students. Reflection posts are public to course peers; the LMS sends out daily email digest (all posts that day). When asked, most students report reading these email digests. Students have the option of replying to other students’ reflection, but are not required to read or reply to others.

Here is a student reflection comment about their course experience that references this assignment:

“This term has been a valuable one for me, and this class played no small part in my success. I would have to go out on a limb and say that what I lost in social interaction by attending online was more than made up for by the process of reflection, essays, and blog posts. It is surprising to me the power of being able to record my thoughts for posterity. The intentionality of posting a thought or request is surprisingly effective in directing one’s actions and goals. Perhaps it is just as important that these posts were tempered with the knowledge that they were in a public forum and I would be accountable for my statements. Thank you all for the wonderful semester.”

In any semester, about 90% of students complete most of all of these assigned posts. Some students clearly do not see the value in completing them and choose to sacrifice part of their grade instead of complying. But most find value in reflecting publicly on their learning. The study I completed looked at 300 posts completed by 24 students in one recent semester. I wanted to know what kind of posts they were writing (social, content-focused, metacognitive, or application oriented), how much they posted, and whether or not their patterns changed over the course of a semester.

The results … I’ll post next week!

After new information has been presented to students, they usually need an intermediate opportunity to develop understanding before they focus on applying new knowledge to their complex project settings. This is what interactive discussions are for … test out new ideas and begin thinking about how information is relevant, similar or different to what is already known, fits or doesn’t fit within schema, contributes to or detracts a sense of confidence and satisfaction in learning content, and on. Interactive discussions provide a vehicle for generative learning, which is critical to learning complex intellectual and cognitive skills.

Offline (in-class) students participate in weekly discussions about the current course topic. These are often recorded and archived for later review by all students – both on- and off-line. Recordings capture more that just content, they also capture information about how students are learning – who is talking (or not)?, what is being said (or not)?, and how are understandings changing?

Online discussions typically take place in an asynchronous forum. Students working online respond to a prepared discussion prompt that asks them to “talk about” course information in a meaningful way – often challenging them to begin to apply new concepts to their project context. Students are required to post their own response, reply to several others, and then to “reply to replies” before the discussion closes after a week. And after a discussion is “closed’ students can continue to read and interact in the forum even though the grading period has ended.

Besides generating learning activity, both on- and off-line interactive discussions also generate additional course content. In most discussions, students bring up applications of concepts to situations they’ve experienced or to their current application project(s). Whether on- or off-line, archived discussions represent a substantial amount of learning opportunity for students (and faculty!).

Next time I’ll write more about how effective these discussions in supporting student learning.

Weekly you will post your thoughts about the class, your project and the instructional design field in an ongoing discussion thread. These posts are intended to help you consider questions important to you, and capture your thoughts at selected instances in time. Posts will be viewable by others, though there is no requirement for others to read anyone else’s posts.

My rationale for this assignment is two-fold. First, I want each student to reflect on and reveal something about their learning process throughout the semester on a regular basis. The reflective post, open to whatever they want to talk about (as long as it is somehow connected to their course experience), provides evidence of their reflection for me to see. A weekly assignment keeps them reflecting on a regular basis. Second, I want them to be able to read the reflections of their peers without the requirement to read and interact (reply) with others. I want to give students their own “soapbox’ in a public forum without adding to the already significant interaction/work load for the course. I also want to provide students with the option of replying to others’ reflections if they want to. Interestingly, about 5% of the reflection posts elicit replies from other students. And while it is impossible to tell how many reflection posts are read by peers, the LMS we use (Moodle) generates a daily email summary of all discussion activity (including reflections) and sends it to each student. LMS logs reveal that many students read the reflections of their peers prior to posting their own refection in a given week.

Because all students complete weekly reflection posts and because the assignment is relatively easy to complete quickly (typical posts are 100-200 words – 50% shorter than this post), I have found this to be effective in connecting online and offline students with each other. The weekly reflection activity is itself a common experience shared by all students, and students often discover other shared learning experiences in the anecdotes, questions, and insights shared by their peers.

Next post I’ll write about the topical discussion activities used in my HyFlex courses.

What does drive (enable, facilitate, require) interaction? In the HyFlex courses I teach, it is interactive discussion requirements. Students use discussions in at least two ways; as a place for open reflective discourse about their learning process and products, and as a social environment that provides an opportunity to test out ideas, receive feedback, and generally share their developing understanding about course content (asking and answering topical questions). I’ll write more about each form of discussion in coming posts.

Principle 1 – Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes weekly (or topically).

The primary reason a HyFlex course design should be considered is to give students a choice in how they complete course activities in any given week (or in some cases, per topic). Without meaningful choice, there is no flexibility … no “Flex” … and therefore no HyFlex. Without flexibility all you have is a standard hybrid course. Not a bad thing, perhaps, but also not HyFlex.

Choosing to implement this value may requires that an instructor or designer value providing participation choice to students more than s/he values forcing everyone into a pre-set “best” way of learning a set of content.

Principle 2 – Equivalency: Provide equivalent learning activities in all participation modes.

Well-designed alternative participation modes should lead to equivalent learning. Providing an alternative approach to students which leads to inferior learning “by design” is poor instructional practice and is probably unethical.

Equivalency does not imply equality, however. An online learning experience (i.e., asynchronous discussion) may turn out to be much less socially interactive than a classroom based discussion activity. In each case, however, students should be challenged to reflect upon learning content, contribute their developing ideas to the discussion, and interact with the ideas of their peers. Providing equivalent learning experiences in various modes may be one of the greatest challenges in the HyFlex approach.

Principle 3 – Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as learning resources (“learning objects”) for all students.

Many class activities which take place in classrooms can be captured and represented in an online-delivered form for online students. Podcasts, video recordings, discussion transcripts or notes, presentation files and handouts, and other forms of representation of in-class activities can be very useful – both for online students and for classroom students wishing to review after the class session is finished.

In a similar way, the activities completed by online students, such as chats, asynchronous discussions, file posting and peer review, etc. can become meaningful learning resources for in-class students as well as provide useful review materials for online students. And indeed, artifacts from some learning activities, such as, glossary entries, bibliographic resource collections, and topical research papers, may become perpetual learning resources for all students in future courses as well.

Principle 4 – Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and enable full access to instructional resources and activities in all participation modes.

Clearly, alternative participation modes are not valid alternatives if students cannot effectively participate in class activities in one or more modes. If a student is not physically capable of attending class, then in-class participation is not an option for that student. If a student does not have convenient and reliable Internet access, then online participation may not be a realistic option for that student. Students need the technologies (hardware, software, networks) and skills in using technology in order to make legitimate choices about participation modes. It may be incumbent upon an instructor or academic program to provide resources and extra training to students (and instructors) so that flexible participation is a real option.

Another key aspect of accessibility is the need to make all course materials and activities accessible to and usable for all students. For example, audio or video recordings should include text transcripts or be close-captioned, web pages and learning management systems must be “screen reader friendly”, and all forms of online discussion should meet universal design guidelines for accessibility. As more students with varied learning-mode abilities enter graduate programs and public, regulatory and legal pressures for universal design for accessibility increase, this aspect becomes increasingly important.

In my experience, this has also been challenging, and I don’t believe that I’ve been able to implement this principle fully. And it may be that there will always be some inequity in access to alternative participation modes, much like some students learn better verbally (listening to instructions and explanations) and some learn better visually (watching others do or view visual explanation), and some learn best by doing. Of course, other students never realistically be able to attend class in person if they are located in a distant place. So perhaps this principle is the least likely to be fully implemented; however, I believe that full and equitable access is still an important goal.

There may be more fundamental principles that should be included in this list, and I (of course) reserve the right to add to and revise these as the HyFlex approach evolves and matures.

What do you think?