Seneca has been pushing for faculty to train in hybrid flexible (HyFlex) course design and delivery — what the College calls “FunFlex”. HyFlex teaching is a new mode of delivery that was introduced fairly recently. It entails teaching simultaneously in-person and online. In effect, it doubles the workload of Professors. You need to have developed both online and in-person content; you need to manage both a virtual and a remote classroom; you need to deal with the cognitive dissonance of “do I talk into the camera, or to the students in person?”.
Full time Faculty are not given more time on their SWFs to teach HyFlex; contract faculty are also not reimbursed proportionately to the task.
If you choose to agree to teach HyFlex, we encourage you to reach out to the local to discuss how we can support you.
We have not yet had any arbitrated decisions about HyFlex, so do not yet have a precedent for how to approach this issue.
We do have Academic Freedom (Article 13 of our Collective Agreement), so the Local’s position is that faculty, who are the subject experts, should be able to determine what is the most pedagogically appropriate form of course delivery.