Our organization uses a hyflex model that was initially adopted as a temporary measure but has proven popular with students and less so with instructors. A hybrid-flexible or hyFlex course is a student-centered model of class delivery that can integrate in-class instruction, online synchronous video sessions, or asynchronous content delivery. Due to its popularity with students, it is likely to become a permanent change. There are three main challenges I see that could be addressed to better manage this digital change: instructor burnout, instructor buy-in and lack of data analytics for larger classes and classes that have a longer duration. 

First, now that the hyflex model is here to stay, instructor burnout should be a priority for our organization. By gathering data about the time instructors spend on preparing, creating, and marking could be the first step. Understanding how much time instructors are spending could then be used to create guidelines for how many classes teachers are expected to teach and how to better support them. There are some tools currently available to collect this data, but they have not yet been utilized.  

Second, as teachers have been leading this change, it is important that teachers themselves see the value in digital learning environments so that they can better lead their students to success. As many of our teachers’ highest level of education is a bachelor’s degree in a variety of disciplines and mostly not in education, a short course could be put into a tool kit for new teachers as well as senior teachers.  

Finally, as our organization uses Microsoft Office and its Teams platform for its lesson delivery, there is already some data analytics that are offered to senior leaders but by sharing this data with teachers and in turn make data driven decisions, it could present some exciting potential. Zettelmeyer states leaders ought to ensure knowledge is shared across their organization (2015). This raw data would need to be refined and teachers would need to be guided to be responsible, literate, and ethical when using this data. These changes with some potent leadership could lead to a reevaluation of our institution’s goals and continue to serve our community better. 

Zettelmeyer, F. (2021, March 24). A Leader’s Guide to Data Analytics. Kellogg Insight. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/a-leaders-guide-to-data-analytics/