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for a few years now. Naturally, her experience in instructional design allowed her to appraise her
HyFlex experience not just from a student’s perspective, but also from the point of view of
someone whose daily work involved a fair amount of course design
and providing training to
instructors to teach online. Kate explained:
And actually, here’s just a tangent. That course was, I think, designed for a man, because
there were no videos. And I think a lot of women with math would like to see somebody
demonstrate, so maybe that’s something that we can pull in there . . . um, I think okay, so
maybe the thing that I could
say was challenging was again, really from the faculty’s lack
of experience in putting together a course designed for HyFlex, and again, not their fault.
It was as you know, rapid adaptation and adoption of a new battle for them . . . and we
were kind of, you know, the guinea pigs of it, so that might have more to do with the
nature of why we had to go to the HyFlex than just the HyFlex itself. But it still
highlights the fact of you can’t just throw a course online, you know, and we know that
as instructional designers . . . you know? Having a course that you
teach facilitated in
person, you can’t just throw everything and put it on a webpage and say that’s an online
course. Right? So, um, yeah. So, I guess that that would be my answer.
Another participant, Robbie, whose experience is presented later in this chapter also pointed out
that same need explaining how often instructors simply move content from one delivery
mode to
another without redesigning for the new medium and the affordances for teaching and learning
each medium provides. Kate’s observation about instructors’ lack of experience in HyFlex
resonated with my own observations in my experience as an instructional designer and
technologist. As Kate pointed out, it is not the faculty member’s fault, but
the lack of training
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ultimately does hinder the student experience if institutions do not make adequate investments in
professional development for faculty considering HyFlex and other forms of distance education.
