The race is on for Higher Ed to adapt: Equity in hyflex learning

Learning today is increasingly done online, with colleges and universities offering a growing number of remote and hybrid learning opportunities. 

While this change may have been triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, administrators have come to see that a ‘hyflex’ approach to educational environments, combining in-person learning with online lessons, has clear benefits for students.

Education continues to change to meet the demands and needs of its students, and there’s an undeniable trend among learners toward the availability of more hyflex options.

The stats are clear: nearly half (49%) of students from across the US surveyed as part of recent Barnes & Noble Education research state they like having the option of remote learning. Some go even further: just under one-third (29%) of students surveyed in Educause’s 2022 Students and Technology report expressed a preference for learning completely online.

Adopting hyflex properly

To ensure hyflex courses feel just as rewarding and seamless as fully in-person courses, educational institutions need to invest in the right mix of hardware and software. When a student using a laptop easily joins a virtual learning environment, others using an in-person meeting room should be able to take part just as easily.

This means leaders have to provide cameras and microphones that don’t leave any student out of sight or unheard.

Camera setups such as the Logitech MeetUp2 All-in-One Conference Camera can help remote students feel like they’re right in the room, with AI-powered microphone technology to pick up every voice in the room and a wide-angle camera to give them a proper view of their classmates.

Like all Logitech’s hyflex devices, including conference cameras with built-in speakers, side cameras that augment existing screens and whiteboards, and tabletop cameras that provide another angle on students, it’s easy to set up and works out of the box with the most commonly used meeting software. 

Of course, as with remote working in corporate environments, achieving a proper hyflex learning environment also requires concerted effort on the part of IT leaders.

These leaders must establish clear strategies for delivering seamless adoption, ensuring students still feel engaged, and overseeing meeting devices to keep meetings running smoothly.

Solutions like Logitech Sync can help leaders remotely support devices at scale, such as rolling out firmware updates to cameras or even taking remote control of devices. 

This can be a lifeline to educators who need tech assistance during a lesson, as well as to IT teams who can use it to build data on the gaps in room hardware and how much energy meeting rooms are using up.

The benefits of hyflex

The preference for hyflex isn’t evidence of students slacking off, nor preferring the approach simply because it lets them learn without having to leave their rooms.

Hyflex courses give students more personal freedom to responsibly shape their educational schedules around their other commitments and important life events. For example, those with family duties to perform can easily set out when they’ll be able to attend lessons on campus and when they need to do so remotely, while others can plan hyflex classes according to work schedules or their personal health.

Establishing hyflex courses now, meeting the needs and educational demands of students, also opens the door to further transformation down the line.

As colleges and universities seek to teach courses on new technologies such as AI, machine learning, and virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), more opportunities may open up for interactive learning powered by hyflex platforms.

Technologies such as AR and VR could, in turn, make hyflex more immersive in the near future, enabling classes where students are brought into the same virtual space regardless of geographic divides.

Sources

Barnes & Noble Education research 

Educause’s 2022 Students and Technology report