Clarification of Terms

We've been bombarded with some new terms over the past few years - hybrid, hyflex, asynchronous, and the like. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Likely, many of these terms are not actually new - the concepts having been around for many years. What IS new is the actual implementation of said instructional and meeting strategies. I wanted to make a table of terminology for myself so as to not get confused.

Web Facilitated Course

A course would be labelled as Web Facilitated when less than 30% of course content is delivered to students online through a learning management system (LMS). Arguably, this is basically every college / university classroom. Items usually posted include the syllabus, content documents (PDF, PPT), announcements, and maybe a few supplemental materials.

Blended Teaching

Blended Learning (or a blended teaching model in this case) is the bucket term used to indicate the purposeful integration of online and in-person components of teaching and learning. The 'blending' of the in-person and online components can look very different from course to course and may even look different week to week within a course. A course would be labelled as blended when between 30% - 80% of the course content is provided online, with the remaining content and active learning strategies provided in-person.

Flipped Teaching

Teaching using a Flipped Classroom model is a specific type of blended learning. In this case, learning starts online. Students are exposed to and engage with online content (reading, images, videos, etc.) and this is typically coupled with some form of pre-assessment or preparatory activity that students complete before attending an in-person lecture. Students have the flexibility to choose where and when they complete the pre (and any post) class work. During the in-person lecture time, the instructor engages students with themselves, with each other, and with the content to focus on analyzing and synthesizing knowledge.

Online Teaching: Synchronous and Asynchronous

A course would be labelled as being a fully Online Course if more than 80% of the course content is delivered to students - you guessed it - online through a learning management system (LMS). These courses would include little to no face-to-face time with students.

Generally, we can broadly categorize online teaching as being either synchronous or asynchronous. Asynchronous teaching means that the teaching components do not occur at a specific time - access to these materials exists within the LMS and students are free to work through the content at their own pace at times conducive to their schedule. Synchronous teaching means that the teaching happens at a scheduled time and is provided in an online setting. This usually occurs over a virtual meeting platform such as Zoom, WebEx or Teams. In this case, the instructor is the one who sets the time and "place" of the formal teaching event.

Hybrid Teaching

It is (unfortunately) common for people to use the terms 'hybrid' and 'blended' interchangeably, insinuating that they mean the same thing. To make matters worse, the term 'hybrid' teaching is defined using the same definition as blended learning in a lot of scholarly sources. Maybe pre-pandemic they meant the same, but post-pandemic, they take on different meanings. We are probably most familiar with using the term hybrid in relation to meetings as I'm sure almost everyone reading this has been in a hybrid meeting (or 1, 207, 356 of them) over the past couple of years.

Many instructors offer what they call 'hybrid' lectures - students can attend in-person or attend a live-stream of the lecture from a place of their choosing. This lecture may or may not be recorded for later viewing purposes. But the point remains that students would have the choice on how to 'show up for class' on a lecture-by-lecture basis. I'll be honest here and say that I tend to think of this as hybrid teaching - mainly because I hear others speak of it that way. This is truly HyFlex teaching, which I talk about in the next section.

So, what is Hybrid Teaching then? Hybrid teaching (or my personal understanding of hybrid teaching) means that the lecture is taking place at a specific time and is available for students to attend in-person or synchronously online by watching a live-stream of the lesson. However, the student chooses ahead of time whether they will be an 'in-person' learner or an 'online' learner (in theory anyway), and that is how that student engages with the course for the entire semester. If they choose to learn online, then there is no switching to in-person, and vice versa. Hybrid teaching does not mean that all students will receive a mixture of online and face-to-face learning environments - they will receive one OR the other.

In Hybrid classrooms, there may also be two distinct assessment arms: one for those who will attend all lectures in-person and one for those who will attend all lectures online. This does not have to be the case, but is a strategy commonly employed.

HyFlex Teaching

Hybrid Flexible Teaching, coined HyFlex for short, combines components of hybrid and online teaching. A HyFlex teaching model provides students (and instructors) with options: 1) attend class in-person, 2) attend class by watching the live-stream of the class from somewhere outside of the classroom, and 3) attend class by watching a recording of the lecture at a later date (of course, this is only an option if the live-stream was recorded).

Unlike a Hybrid Teaching model, where there may be two distinct assessment arms, the HyFlex teaching model returns to that single assessment arm: one assessment model for all students. Students have the flexibility to choose, lecture-to-lecture, whether or not they will attend in-person or online.

This can be a nice model for instructors as well as it provides them the opportunity to lecture from elsewhere (say while attending a conference) to have guest speakers teach their class, and potentially, team-teach a course with an instructor from a different institution while live-streaming said instructor into your classroom over the virtual meeting platform.

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References:

Brame, C. (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved September 19, 2023, from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/.

Calafiore, P. & Giudici, E. (2021). Hybrid versus Hyflex instruction in an introductory finance course. International Journal of Education Research 16(1), 40+.

Garrison, D. R., & Kanuka, H. (2004). Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 7, 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2004.02.001.

Hrastinski, S. (2019). What do we mean by blended learning? TechTrends, 63, 564–569. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00375-5

Teaching Philosophy Statements

I fell in love with teaching as a graduate student. It was the driver behind the pursuit of my PhD. I wanted to be able to teach in higher education and make a difference in the lives of students. I took the initiative to develop my teaching skillset through various workshops and development programs. The first workshop I ever took through the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo (my alma mater, and current employer) was about how to create your own teaching philosophy statement. If you have ever done this before then you know what I mean when I say that it is no easy feat!

I have applied to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of jobs over the past 3 years; anything and everything from sessional instructor positions, 1, 2, 3-year contract positions, full time permanent positions - with a focus on teaching within kinesiology and health science and / or with a focus on educational development. I have spent a lot of time polishing my teaching philosophy statement.

I've been reflecting on teaching and learning in higher education a lot since I began my current role back in July of 2022. So much has changed! Instructors are invested in incorporating a lot of things into their teaching: anti-racist pedagogies, Indigenization, decolonization practices, mental wellness strategies, accessibility and AODA requirements (Ontario, Canada), components of institutional initiatives (as an example, UW's Future Ready Talent Framework), and likely a bunch of other things that I am missing. Furthermore, the release of various generative AI tools such as ChatGPT (language) and DALL-E (images) has the propensity to drastically change how we teach, how we assess, and how our students learn.

I started my current, 1-year contract position as a junior Ed Developer / Instructional Designer with CTE back in July of 2022. Anyone in the "academic arena" knows that even on a 1-year contract, one must still continually search and apply to potential career opportunities. This means I keep all of my application materials up to date and have the opportunity to review and reflect on my teaching philosophy on a regular basis.

It got me thinking - do academics and professionals continually reflect on their teaching philosophies once they attain that coveted permanent position? Probably not. I think many of us create a teaching philosophy statement early in our careers and then tuck them away in a drawer somewhere (like our students do with our feedback, LOL), never to be seen again. With everything we learned about teaching and learning in higher education over the pandemic, and the various pedagogical practices that we want to (or are being told to) incorporate from the list above, it feels like higher education is undergoing, and will continue to undergo, large fluctuations over the next few years. I think now is the time for us to dust off that teaching philosophy statement tucked away in the proverbial drawer and review it. Does it still resonate with you and your beliefs about education? What would you keep? What would you change (if anything) and why? I know I personally have been reflecting on my own teaching philosophies. I know what I thought in 2017, and in 2022, but in light of everything that has changed even over the past year, I really am starting to question - what do I believe NOW? What about my beliefs will serve my students and what might actually be a hindrance to their learning? What am I holding on to and what can I - and SHOULD I - really let go of?

I say this as though it is an easy thing for educators and academics to do. Well, guess what - it's not. It's actually really really hard. Introspection is difficult, and often times uncomfortable. However, it is a valuable practice, and will serve us, and our students, better in the future.

Resources to help you examine your teaching philosophy:

• University of Waterloo - CTE Teaching Tip: Exploring Your Teaching Philosophy

• University of Western Ontario - CTL Resources: Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

• University of Toronto - CTSI: Developing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy

• Faculty Focus Article - A Teaching Philosophy Journey

Name, Rank, and Student ID Number

Back when I was in high school, in the late 1990s and early 2000s - i.e., in the olden days of yore - high school teachers all told us the same thing:

"In University, your professors don't care about you - you are just a number to them."

Ask anyone who went to high school around that time, and they'll nod their head in agreement. Funny (well, not really) thing is, you talk to kids who are in high school today in 2023, and they are still hearing the same message loud and clear - once you reach college or university you are nothing but a student ID number to your instructors. You cease to become a person.

Here's the thing. That never bothered me as a student. I knew I'd go from a class size of 30 to 300 - how could you expect the professor to learn everyone's names? It just didn't seem feasible to me in the first place. I never had the mindset that I needed my professors and instructors to actually care about me - their job was to teach me. MY job as a human is to care about me and do the things I need to do to be successful. In case you haven't deduced this yet - I'm a bit of an odd duck.

Twenty years later and I'm on the other side of the podium. I'm the instructor in front of a class of a couple hundred students - and you know what? I care. I care about them and their well-being, and who they are as a person. This notion that students are nothing but a string of X digits is complete poppycock! Also, what a great word that is just not used enough (at least not here in Canada anyway).

Furthermore, in my current position working in educational development & instructional design, I work with faculty, staff, instructors, and graduate students, and guess what - they all care about their students too! There is a large focus on how to support students from a course and instructional design mindset. In consultations, I talk a lot about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how this can help students AND can help instructors as well. We talk about "slip days" as a way for students to be able to hand in an assignment a bit past the deadline without penalty, and without having to send their instructor an email the length of War and Peace explaining why they need an extension. Furthermore, sometimes those emails mean that students feel like they are required to disclose highly personal information in order to be granted an extension. They don't want to have to send them, and many instructors feel bad that the student feels that they need to disclose sometimes highly sensitive information. Slip days as an instructional method helps everyone all-round. This is just one example of ways that college and university instructors are, albeit subtly, supporting and caring for their students.

So, can we stop this pervasive narrative that those working in tertiary education don't care? To students - you aren't just a number. You are a person, and we want you do develop and thrive - as a person.

Image Source: Public Domain Pictures - Free Stock Photos