Converting a graduate-level course into a HyFlex modality: What are effective engagement strategies?

Highlights

• HyFlex is a promising modality for enhancing student engagement in business education

• Flexible-synchronous sessions ease student learning support and instructor's facilitation role

• Open and trustful interactions promote behavioral engagement of students in HyFlex courses

• Links with practice and learning support foster student emotional engagement in HyFlex courses

• Instructor's facilitation role also encourages student cognitive engagement in HyFlex courses

Abstract

Blended courses are rising in business education, and new modalities have emerged to increase flexibility of students. HyFlex courses combine online asynchronous activities with “flexible-synchronous” activities where students choose to attend online synchronously, face-to-face, or online asynchronously through recordings, bringing them full flexibility of participation. Additionally, the flexible-synchronous activities preserve interaction opportunities between students and the instructor and support student learning. This study reports on the transformation of an operations course into a HyFlex modality to enhance student engagement through regular flexible-synchronous sessions as well as equivalent T&L activities across course sections. The study also brings a new perspective by highlighting effective strategies for engaging students in a HyFlex course. First, exploratory qualitative data suggested that the course organization with weekly flexible-synchronous activities, providing regular interaction opportunities and video-recorded, encouraged student engagement. Engagement strategies were also identified using both quantitative and qualitative data. The main strategies were open and trustful interactions for student behavioral engagement, links with practice and learning support for emotional engagement, and links with practice, learning support and instructor's facilitation role for cognitive engagement. The study suggests that HyFlex is a promising course modality for fostering student engagement at the graduate level, especially in large-group business courses.

Introduction

According to a recent survey (Donovan et al., 2019), the proportion of Canadian higher education institutions offering online and blended courses has respectively grown to 83% and 78% in 2018, and is presumed to expand further in the future. Benefitting from the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT), these course modalities derive their popularity from their flexibility in terms of time and/or space, allowing students to better balance academic, personal and professional responsibilities, especially at the graduate level (Abdelmalak & Parra, 2016; Lakhal & Khechine, 2017; Taylor et al., 2018). Online and blended course modalities are also very popular in business faculties (Arbaugh, 2014; Kumar et al., 2019; Popovich & Neel, 2005; Wolverton, 2018). In particular, most Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in Laval University (Quebec, Canada), in which this study was conducted, are offered through online and blended modalities to accommodate the diverse needs of students.

Laval University is a multimodal university offering more than a thousand online courses in addition to blended and face-to-face courses. In 2018–2019, alternative course modalities (traditional blended, HyFlex and online) accounted for 26% of total student credits, with a more than 40% increase in the last four years. In particular, the Faculty of Business Administration (FSA ULaval) has developed a leadership position in online and blended learning, offering such courses since 1997 with the expertise and investment of a dedicated team of learning technologists and instructional designers. The development of alternative course modalities is also a component of the faculty strategic plan to facilitate balance between students’ academic, personal and professional responsibilities.

Learning outcomes in online or blended courses are considered equivalent to those of face-to-face courses (Arbaugh, 2014, 2016; Kumar et al., 2019; Popovich & Neel, 2005). However, online (often asynchronous) courses have some major drawbacks, such as high dropout rates and students’ feelings of isolation (Angelino et al., 2007; Bolliger & Martindale, 2004; Kranzow, 2013), which could be associated with a lack of instructor support resulting in lower student satisfaction than in face-to-face courses (Bolliger & Martindale, 2004; Mullen & Tallent-Runnels, 2006). In contrast, blended courses preserve synchronous student-student and student-instructor interactions and yield higher student satisfaction than face-to-face or online asynchronous courses (Owston et al., 2013). While a “traditional” blended course usually refers to a combination of face-to-face and online asynchronous teaching and learning (T&L) activities (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004; Garrison & Vaughan, 2008), new blended modalities have also emerged during the last ten years, whether for cost-optimization purposes or to increase the flexibility and accessibility of higher education for students. These new modalities, labelled blended online (Power, 2008), blended synchronous (Lakhal et al., 2017, 2020), synchromodal (Bell et al., 2014), multi-access (Irvine, 2009; Irvine et al., 2013) or HyFlex (Beatty, 2007, 2019) courses, replace face-to-face sessions with online synchronous sessions for some or all students. Specifically, HyFlex courses combine online asynchronous T&L activities with “flexible-synchronous” T&L activities where students can choose to attend online synchronously, face-to-face, or online asynchronously through recordings and videos. In business faculties, this emerging course modality could be particularly well-suited for MBA students, who often have very diverse backgrounds and needs.

Out of a total of 583 courses at FSA ULaval in 2019, 157 were online (mostly asynchronous), 67 were traditional blended and 43 were HyFlex courses. In keeping with the assumption that one size does not fit all, numerous courses are offered through multiple sections and modalities that enable students to enroll in the one best fitting their styles or needs. At the graduate level, especially, alternative course modalities at FSA ULaval made up 45% of total courses in 2019. In a context where 71.5% of graduate students were registered part-time in 2019, offering almost half of courses in online, traditional blended or HyFlex modalities helps students to balance studies with their work and family responsibilities. Particularly, a growing percentage of courses are now offered in a HyFlex modality given its large flexibility of participation and regular opportunities for interaction with the instructor and other students, especially at the graduate level. This study monitored the transformation of blended and online sections of a graduate level course in operations management into a HyFlex modality at FSA ULaval.