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Chapter 2: Literature Review
Through more than a decade of work in instructional design and technology at the
community colleges, I have been immersed in online teaching and learning. Being this close to
online teaching and learning has allowed me to observe the good, the bad, and the ugly of what
happens in online classrooms. Through those observations I have developed an interest in the
concept of agency and the potential benefit of fostering agency in online students, especially for
minoritized students. From my work I have learned there are many variables in the teaching and
learning dynamic that can help or hinder the student experience: course design, variety of
assessments, universal design for learning (UDL), timely feedback, digital literacy, and
technology integration, to name a few. All these variables play important roles in getting students
motivated enough to keep them engaged and succeed in their courses, but the number one issue
that has come up in the literature and in my personal observations is the importance of teacher–
student relationships for keeping students motivated and engaged. In the next section I discuss
the relevant literature to illustrate HyFlex learning.
HyFlex learning addresses students’ needs for flexibility by giving students at least two
paths to achieve the same learning outcomes whether they chose to participate online, face-to-
face, or a combination of both. Instructors and course designers must consider not only the
technology required for implementing HyFlex learning, but they must also take into
consideration other aspects, such as equivalency, the time commitment HyFlex course design
and facilitation requires, and the inherent requirement to use universal design for learning.
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