149
Chapter 5: Discussion
This phenomenological study explored how minoritized college students in
the United
States experience HyFlex learning. As I conducted my review of the literature, I discovered there
was almost no empirical literature addressing the experiences of minoritized students in HyFlex,
even though HyFlex had been around for almost 2 decades and gained more popularity during
the COVID-19 global pandemic. I was interested in unpacking the lived
experiences of four
categories of minoritized college students in the United States to augment the body of knowledge
regarding HyFlex teaching and learning and the experiences of minoritized students in those
environments. My aim was to learn about the HyFlex experiences of students who have been
minoritized by: (a) race/ethnicity, (b) gender, (c) native language, and (d) disability status. Three
reasons gave me impetus for conducting this inquiry:
(a) the need for a plan for sustaining
instructional continuity, (b) the need to better understand if HyFlex learning environments can
help create access
and promote student equity, and (c) the need for a set of specific guidelines for
community college leaders considering implementing a HyFlex approach at their campuses.
For this study, I conducted phenomenological interviews with 10 participants selected
through purposeful sampling via nationwide outreach. Participants were selected using a
demographics survey to ensure that through the sample’s combined number of intersectionalities,
there would be enough representation for each category of minoritization declared in this study.
Although each minoritization category had at least two participants (some participants fit
multiple categories), I did not force the direction of the interviews to fit my categories. I adhered
to the same predefined set of questions for each participant and asked
some follow-up questions
were warranted but was always mindful not to steer the participant in any given direction. As a
150
result of allowing for the interviews to develop organically, the participants’ responses did not
yield sufficient data about students minoritized by their native first language even though two of
the participants had a native language other than English, so that line of inquiry remains
unexplored. Although those two participants did not share too much about their experience as
non-English native speakers, their experiences as mothers are represented in the themes that
emerged from the data.
In general, the participants generously provided candid accounts
of their experiences, and
through that generosity, I gathered enough data to begin the discussion about students who are
minoritized by their gender, race/ethnicity, and disability and how those intersections of their
identity variegate how they perceive their experiences in HyFlex and the daily events in their
lives while they are HyFlex students.
In Chapter 4, I presented the findings of the study, discussing three major themes: (a) the
Indigenous experience in HyFlex, (b) motherhood in HyFlex, and (c) disability in HyFlex. I
identified two subthemes for each major theme. The subthemes were: (a) best features of
HyFlex, and (b) improving the HyFlex experience. These subthemes appeared in parallel across
the three major themes. Rather than applying the theoretical framework as an interwoven filter
across all themes, I went back to the findings data and applied the theoretical lens
of agency from
the perspectives of heutagogy (Hase & Kenyon, 2007) and social cognitive theory (Bandura,
2001, 2006) to identify specific instances of agentic behavior on the part of the participants.
HyFlex learning environments do not exist in a vacuum isolated from life, and students
go in and out of HyFlex classrooms bringing with them thoughts, emotions,
and motivations into
the classroom, but also taking out thoughts, emotions, and motivations with them from the
151
classroom into their lives. Therefore, I needed a theoretical framework that would help filter for
the kinds of agentic things students do naturally and for the kinds of agentic choices that appear
in the HyFlex learning environment by design through the careful calculations teachers and
course designers make about how they want to design the HyFlex experiences of their students.
The heutagogical (Hase & Kenyon, 2007) view of agency was useful for looking at
agentic actions participants take because of their lived
experiences in the world, and social
cognitive theory was useful to examine manifestations of their agentic behavior in HyFlex as the
product of instructional design. This bifocal lens approach should be useful for readers interested
in specific examples of manifestations of agency as told by these participants and to discern
whether the agentic behavior is something participants would do any way or if agency was
facilitated purposefully through instructional design. Chapter 5 synthesizes the study’s findings
with the literature, discusses implications and recommendations for leaders and practitioners, and
calls for future research.
