Calls for Expression of interest: Hyflex Teaching Spaces Pilot
Are you interested in piloting our hyflex teaching space? Do you have a module or sessions where you would like in-person students participate together with students online in the same teaching session? We have a maximum 18-person seminar room available for trial in Semester 1 or 2.
We are looking for a few modules, or discrete teaching sessions/workshops where you would be using our 126 Mount Pleasant room on the third floor for teaching purposes. We have different kit in the room that IT Services installed which can be used for the hyflex trial.
In return, we would like to ask you and your students to take part in the evaluation. As a project outcome, we will share our report in the form of recommendations and suggestions to the wider university. If interested or would like to know more, please contact cie@liverpool.ac.uk
Project outline
As our students require more and more flexibility in their learning experience, we are exploring different ways of providing flexibility. One such approach is enabling students to choose whether they attend on-campus sessions in person or online at the same time. This is called hybrid flexible (or hyflex) teaching. Hyflex teaching can be challenging for a number of reasons – it requires appropriate hardware, software and teaching space as well as well-designed teaching and facilitation for this dual mode of teaching.
In the Centre for Innovation in Education, we are working on a project that aims to evaluate hyflex teaching spaces so that we can make institutional recommendations for this kind of delivery from a teaching perspective. The project comprises seven phases:
- Phase 1 – get outline approval for this activity.
- Phase 2 – work with existing 3rd party providers to draw up proposals for a hybrid teaching space (including outline costings).
- Phase 3 – identify and select preferred proposal and finalise cost.
- Phase 4 – Implementation of hyflex space.
- Phase 5 – Invite staff to teach and use the space.
- Phase 6 – Evaluate effectiveness of space and staff/student experience.
- Phase 7 – Report findings to help in planning future hyflex teaching/meeting spaces.
We have been collaborating with our IT Services to kit out a small teaching room for hyflex delivery and have now completed Phase 4. The next phases (5-7) involve inviting staff to use this teaching space so that we can evaluate its effectiveness from a staff and student perspective. For instance, one challenge with hyflex teaching is that it puts a lot of cognitive effort on educators to monitor the participation of both online and in-person students. From a student perspective, the engagement and feeling of presence of online and in-person participants may differ. With the project evaluation, we hope to establish good practices and make suggestions to help future hyflex teaching both from a pedagogical and a learning space and technology infrastructure perspective to inform future planning.
If interested or would like to know more, please contact cie@liverpool.ac.uk
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