STRATEGIES & EXAMPLES
Defining Terms and Expectations
There is no singular model for flexible teaching; instructors may vary in their course structure, expectations, and attendance and participation policies. Your particular approach to flexible teaching may be unfamiliar to your students.
Consider the following questions your students might have about your flexible teaching strategies:
- What does flexibility mean for your students in this class?
- When can students switch from in-person to online modalities during the semester?
- What does participation look like across in-person and online modalities?
- What technology and resources will students need to be successful in this class?
Introduce your flexible approach early and revisit often. Spend some time at the beginning of the semester setting up your expectations and provide clear guidance on how students can participate successfully in your class. Introduce your expectations for flexibility during the first class session and consider including a welcome module in the learning management system (LMS), a syllabus statement, or even a video message to orient students. Revisit expectations throughout the semester through regular communication with students:
“Sending a brief email describing how class works before the semester, sending emails with the zoom link for the course or when an assignment is due is extremely helpful in keeping the students engaged with the course.” – UMass Student
Provide opportunities for all students to practice participating in different modalities. Build time into class sessions early in the semester for students to familiarize themselves with the technology used in the course and how other students joining from online are experiencing the class session. Consider providing a brief overview of your flexible set-up for students, noting the cameras, microphones, and screens where online students may appear in your classroom and how to participate if joining online synchronously. For courses with asynchronous participation options, provide a short guide for the students (or a scavenger hunt) through the LMS to explain the course and show them where they can engage with async students. You might also encourage students to try an online modality at least once during the semester to get a sense of other students’ experiences.
Engaging with Content: Using Structure for Flexibility
Flexibility does not mean the absence of structure. In fact, clear expectations and structure can benefit all students, regardless of their mode of participation; and, in courses with flexible participation strategies, clarity is critical (Sathy and Hogan, 2022).
Get into a rhythm. Allow students to spend more time focused on learning rather than logistics by designing a course rhythm—a series of regular activities in a predictable format that work across flexible modes (Masland 2020). In courses with flexible participation, this might look like a chunking your course into different modules that follow a clear, repeatable format. For example, each content module in your course may include a similar model of information delivery (e.g. lectures or readings), regularly-occurring class activities, assignment due dates that occur on Tuesdays, and an end of module quiz on Fridays. After you have designed your course rhythm, consider creating a visual guide of the course structure as a reference point for your students (see example below). Read more about course rhythms and visual guides in Lindsay Masland's chapter in Resilient Pedagogy
Design your LMS for easy access. Similarly, providing a clear pathway for students to engage with course material and find support reduces time spent searching and is an important part of course structure. First, consider developing a resource section in your LMS that contains any general information needed for course success including links to all online materials and how to contact you for additional help.
You may also consider sharing asynchronous materials such as Echo360 or Zoom recordings, class notes, and other supplementary materials that students can engage with on their own time as part of offering flexibility in your course. Students find these materials are helpful both for reviewing materials from class session they have attended and maintaining engagement when they are not able to attend class. In these cases, consider choosing a regular uploading schedule for content and communicate any changes with students in advance. Contact IDEAS at @email to learn more about options for selecting and designing your LMS.
“The online materials are very useful for study purposes as I find myself reviewing older material with the online videos.” – UMass Student
Engaging with you and each other: building community across modalities
With flexible participation options, communication between online and in-person students and with you as the instructor is both a challenge and important for fostering student belonging and ensuring your students are able to engage with the course equitably.
Familiarize yourself with your classroom technology. The ability to understand what you are saying and what other students are sharing clearly via audio (or read through a transcript) is critical for student engagement when using flexible participation options. Some recommendations for ensuring ease of understanding and clarity:
- Reach out to Classroom Technology Services at @email to learn more about your technology options in your classroom.
- Use a microphone and enable captioning, especially if you plan to record. Test it out with IDEAS at instruct@umass.edu.
- When students share a comment in class, pass around a microphone (if available) or reiterate the comment for those online and/or watching asynchronously.
- Designate time for you or your TAs to monitor and check the chat feature on Zoom. You may also encourage a rotating system where students sign up to watch the chat and respond to others’ questions.
- Pause for online students to answer a question—If they are using the chat feature of Zoom or another platform, sometimes it takes a bit longer to type out a thought. A little more time gives students in the room a chance to ruminate on the question as well.
- In studies of flexible teaching, when students can see both the instructor and each other across modes, they feel more connected to the course (Raes 2022). Discuss expectations about video use and visibility with your students early in the semester and consider encouraging students to turn on their video when appropriate.
- Follow up in the next class to share asynchronous student responses, if applicable to include their perspectives in your class sessions.
“I feel like asynchronous students' responses are unread by synchronous students due to the fact that they are not required to do it but asynchronous students may have great ideas.” – UMass Student
- Know your back-up options. The microphone is broken so there’s no audio in your recorded lecture, Zoom quits in the middle of class, there’s a campus-wide internet outage. These things happen—communicate with your students in different modalities about what to do before it happens to reduce stress in the moment for you and them.
Include opportunities for crossover collaboration. Providing frequent opportunities of participation and interaction via low stakes assessments encourages student collaboration across in-person and online modalities. Consider using class polling (e.g. iClicker or Google Q&A) that is accessible to both in-person and online or structured discussion boards in the LMS to encourage dialogue between students asynchronously. See this resource guide for different examples of activities students can complete in different participation modes, organized by class length. While designed for hyflex courses, this resources offers ideas that can be used in many other options for flexible teaching.
Provide multiple ways to engage with you. Consider offering both virtual and in-person office hours to provide multiple ways for students to meet with you. Further, having a regular place for students who may need to participate asynchronously to ask questions can help them feel connected to the course as well.
“People watching recordings can't ask questions, so having a place where they can ask questions later is helpful.” – UMass Student
