By Anna Ainsworth – President – OPSEU Local 560
We asked you to reflect on your experiences of HyFlex teaching, and you did not hesitate to share. Within 4 days of sending out the survey, we received 79 responses. Two of those were optimistic.
The optimism expressed was centered on the flexibility afforded to students with various needs.
The rest were very unimpressed with the concept of HyFlex teaching and the experiences of students.
There were five central themes that faculty addressed, and nearly all the respondents spoke to all five.
The themes were classroom management and pedagogy, training and support, SWFs, clarity of expectations, and health and safety.
You were very concerned about the learning experience of students. Given that Hyflex requires 3 separate modes of delivery, you were clear that it is not possible to effectively teach in person and online simultaneously. These modes of delivery require very different pedagogical approaches, and very different classroom management skills. We are being asked to do both, and then produce asynchronous content as well. You told us that that you witnessed your students becoming alienated from learning and from the sense of community that develops in a classroom, be it online or in person. You found that you were not able to afford the students who were online the same level of attention as those who were in class, and you worried that they would feel neglected.
This mode of delivery reduces the classroom experience to lectures, which denies the students the dynamism of a classroom where vigorous debate can happen.
All who responded to the survey and are full-time faculty have not received any additional time on their SWFs to do the additional work of preparation and evaluation that this mode requires. Contract faculty are even more penalized for teaching in this mode as they are not recognized for preparation and evaluation at all.
You expressed concern for our support staff colleagues who are running about campus because, predictably, the technology is inconsistently effective. You are frustrated to lose precious class time with your students. Before this moment there was the opportunity to improvise when the technology failed us, and those moments could lead to a more connected learning experience for our students. Now, we have to wait in deadening silence till we can resume, chilling the classroom atmosphere.
So many of you wrote of not getting sufficient clarity about what HyFlex means. When we are assigned to teach in this mode, we need to understand what the expectations are. The level of anxiety that faculty expressed about teaching HyFlex may be the most worrying of all. We have all been under stress for a long time, so it is distressing to see the College enforce a system that only furthers our anxiety.