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across the entire system. Adopting this policy is the first step educational leaders and
practitioners can take to ensure all stakeholders are clear about what HyFlex teaching and
learning is and what it is not. Establishing a common definition for the CCC system will help
teachers, students, and administrators have a clear understanding of what the expectations are for
everyone participating in this type of modality. Faculty will have a clear sense about what is
expected of instructors, students will be better informed about what it takes to be a student in a
HyFlex course, and administrators will be able to assess how they can support their institution’s
commitment to HyFlex teaching and learning. This type of policy is necessary
to ensure
everyone understands what is required of each role to make HyFlex an equitable and worthwhile
experience.
Policy Recommendation 2: Matriculation HyFlex Codes. The invention of the internet
and its rapid growth created new possibilities for teaching and learning. As the internet became
more ubiquitous and
powerful and users savvier, online and hybrid (blended) courses exploded
in popularity because of the flexibility they afford to students. As these modes grew in
popularity, institutions began creating policies to guide the implementation of such types of
courses. Similarly, statewide policies also emerged over time that became systemwide guidelines
for online and hybrid teaching and learning at the CCC system. Since
its inception at San
Francisco State University (Beatty, 2019), the number of HyFlex courses have been growing
slowly but steadily, and when the COVID-19 global pandemic arrived in the United States,
educators at all levels were forced to move face-to-face courses to other modes of
delivery, such
as online, hybrid, and HyFlex. As a result of this, the number of HyFlex offerings went up
considerably because the CCCs did not formally adopt a definition and the
term HyFlex has been
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used to describe many things that are not necessarily HyFlex as defined by Beatty (2019); and as
the pandemic has waned, there seems to be sufficient interest to continue to offer HyFlex. For
this reason, it is necessary to make it a systemwide policy to create a code or codes that clearly
indicate to students that a given course has HyFlex designation.
This type of policy will allow students in the CCC system to immediately know when
they register for a course if they are signing up for a HyFlex course, helping them calibrate their
expectations accordingly. In addition to helping ensure consistent experiences of good quality,
this policy will help educational leaders, practitioners, and researchers
gather data to evaluate
how well HyFlex teaching and learning is serving CCC students. This policy will help gain
knowledge about who takes HyFlex and whether they succeed and how that success compares to
other delivery modes. Establishing a common matriculation code for HyFlex will allow
institutions to measure the effectiveness of their HyFlex offerings
and compare them against
their local face-to-face and online data and against statewide data for HyFlex. Having this ability
should empower institutions to make decisions about ongoing institutional commitments to
HyFlex teaching and learning.
