Hyflex Is Ill-Advised

A hybrid-flexible approach (aka Hyflex) is ill-advised for the launch of the fall semester.

What is Hyflex?

A class session modality that places some students on-campus in a physical classroom and some students Zooming in from remote locations. In times of COVID-19, the on-campus students must socially distance and wear masks... so must the instructors. A video camera setup covers the whiteboard and the lectern. The instructor wears a lavalier mic. A projection of the Zoom students appears on a screen somewhere in the room, and all students (on-campus included) are logged into Zoom.

Why is this a bad idea right now?

Well-intentioned but uninformed, the decision to do this so close to launch leaves little time for faculty to pivot instruction accordingly. That is, adjusting the way they teach for a class model they've never seen and technology they've never used.

Imagine a WWI fighter pilot travels through time to 1991 and is expected to jump into an F-15 Eagle to fight in the Gulf War. Or, a Gulf War pilot travels back to WWI and is expected to engage in dog fights in a bi-plane. It's not that they don't know how to fly. It's not that they're not great pilots. They just don't have the training for this equipment or environment. And if you force them in there with very little training, chances are that they will crash and burn.

Bottom line, they need proper training to come out of this unscathed. But, we just don't have enough time or resources to do it. Throwing faculty into a Hyflex modality will have several negative impacts- proactive memory interference from the summer experience, in-class group work, and myriad tech issue of which their troubleshooting will soak up precious class time. On top of all of this, Hyflex is supposed to allow the students the choice between physically going to campus or Zooming in. However, COVID calls for social-distancing and this eliminates 70% of classroom space. For larger classes, that student choice goes out the window and creates a logistics clusterf#$%.

What is the alternative?

The smart move would be to continue fall remotely.

Yes, this summer had its issues due to such a quick turnaround for training in addition to the heavily poisoned well which spurned both student and teacher motivation. However, an online summer allowed for instructors to "speed-to-failure" as well as pivot their class sessions away from lecture-style teaching to a more active and flipped approach with the learner at the center of a problem-oriented lesson. This also empowered students to self-regulate and take more responsibility for their learning.

Now that instructors and students are more comfortable with the online/blended synchronous format (now with a tested support infrastructure), a fall iteration will be much smoother in terms of tech implementation, more conscientious in terms of design, and more effective in terms of delivery. In video game terms, we've completed the training module of the game and have progressed past level 2. We should continue playing instead of starting a totally different game.

Furthermore, if all students and instructors must be on Zoom anyway, why not just invest in better home teaching setups for instructors and maybe some kind of rebate for students to improve their internet connections?

So why are we going through with it?

I get the feeling there is some sunk-cost bias, pluralistic ignorance, and hyperbolic discounting happening across institutions.

Hyperbolic Discounting

Hyflex was initially an emergency measure to ensure that foreign students could maintain their visa status in the wake of the recently rescinded ICE mandate. Although that mandate still applies to "incoming" international students, "continuing" ones can still stay in the country if they're taking online courses. So, it only makes sense to continue with the Hyflex model if our main goal for fall is to garner more tuition from incoming international students.

However, this is an example of hyperbolic discounting: the tendency to "choose a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward". In the case of Hyflex, Higher-Ed, and ICE, we may be choosing a slight monetary gain now (which may result in a dented reputation due to a lack of quality) over the large gains later of becoming a school highly capable of delivering quality blended/online instruction over time.

Here are the options as of right now; choose wisely. Option A: Do poorly what everyone else will also be doing poorly in order to make a little more money temporarily, or; Option B: Do better than any institution can later on at a short-term cost in order to deliver a product everyone in the future is going to want to buy.

Sunk-Cost Bias

Another reason we're going through with this may be because we've already put some money and time into it. This is the sunk-cost bias--the tendency to continue a behavior as "a result of previously invested resources". It occurs when we say "well, we've already come this far..." and move forward without direction instead of doubling back to make sure we're headed in the right one.

We've bought cameras, mics, software licenses, wifi routers, done marketing, thrown together boot-camps for faculty, bought PPE, rolled out COVID safety training, etc. We've invested money and time into this already and we'll be damned if we're not going to roll it out.

Perhaps we should take this opportunity to refine the new skills we've recently acquired to thrive in a land we now have the lay of. In the meantime, we can start designing courses and training faculty for a future Hyflex model that might actually function.

Pluralistic Ignorance

Humans have this weird tendency to go along with a group norm even if they, as individuals in the group, privately reject it. This is because they infer, incorrectly, that everyone else approves of that norm. This is also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes".

Have you ever been in a lecture that was complex and confusing, and when the instructors asks "any questions?" you look around to see no hands raised so you don't raise your own? That's pluralistic ignorance in action. Chances are, everyone in that class had questions. But nobody asked one, so nobody asked one.

What's more, it also occurs at much higher stakes. Pluralistic ignorance can cause whole groups of people who don't think something is a good idea to carry out that idea because they think everyone else in the group thinks it's a good idea. This is how cult leaders manage to carry out mass-suicides; why people vote strictly along party lines; why triple-pleated pants lasted as a fashion trend as long as they did.

Now I'm not saying that carrying out the Hyflex model for fall is a ticket to Jonestown. But someone at the decision-making level needs to start knocking the proverbial Kool-Aid out of the hands of other decision makers.