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student, so the flexibility of HyFlex was very important for her. Winona, a third participant in
this subgroup, likes the flexibility to attend online because she and her family were worried
about getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. She said:
I had
the chance to attend in person, although I didn’t choose to because my family was
really afraid of catching the virus. Okay, yeah, I would say this is my first time making a
hybrid learning type of thing. Yeah, I like that you don’t technically have to be there in
person to attend the class. I could be at home and attend the class, I could be driving
somewhere and still be able to attend the class and receive the information from the
lecture that he gives us.
Flexible mode of attendance and participation allowed Winona to participate online thus keeping
herself and family safe by minimizing exposure to the COVID-19 virus; although for Lyle,
HyFlex’ flexibility allowed him to have a job while attending college. To mitigate the cost of
living, Lyle shared an apartment and a car with his maternal aunt. Lyle’s aunt worked at a
hospital, and the two of them had worked out a system that allowed them to
carpool to work and
school. Because the end of his class coincided with the time his aunt got off work, and to avoid
rushing to pick her up, Lyle usually drove early to the hospital where his aunt worked and logged
into his HyFlex course using his cell phone and attended class from the parking lot via Zoom.
When his aunt out got off work
and his class ended, he and his aunt drove home together. Lyle
was taking a practical approach and making the best of the situation based on what was available
to him. He said:
I would say like, the reason will be, like, it’s a matter of what’s currently available to me,
and like a kind of like,
has to deal with like, the time that I have for, you know, other
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things like kind of like work. I kind of like revolve around it, and, like, have half time.
And I would like I completely prefer to go in person. And like,
if I had the time to and
have like everything in order, then I would go to class. But like if I don’t have work, like
within an hour, or if something isn’t really matching up with my timeframe, prior to do
the HyFlex course online, or I would have to just try to do the work when like to do the
assignments and when it’s due.
Similar to Lyle, Josephine also used the flexibility of HyFlex to take a practical
approach to her
education but under different circumstances because she was a parent and her case was different
than Lyle’s and Winona’s. Although these participants enjoyed the flexibility of choosing an
attendance mode, being in diverse learning environments, and being able to work at one’s own
pace, they did have some thoughts about ways HyFlex could be made better. The next subsection
presents their ideas for improving the HyFlex experience.
