5 Reasons Your College Needs HyFlex Classrooms (and the Arena)

2020 has been a year unlike any other for Colleges and Universities largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the ways these institutions have adapted to this crisis is through the adoption of the HyFlex model.

The HyFlex model provides a flexible classroom structure for students and educators, allowing students to attend classes online or in person due to their personal preferences. Online students are provided with the same tools available to them in person via live broadcasts of lectures, the ability to raise their hand and ask questions, and even the educators’ ability to see all their students at once as they interact. For a closer look into the HyFlex environment check out our overview video.

1. Safety

Decreasing the amount of students in classrooms can help allow 6 feet between people promoting social distancing, but HyFlex provides safety beyond the pandemic. Feeling sniffly or a bit nauseous? Don’t risk it! watch your class from online. When students no longer feel a need to come to class even though they’re feeling under the weather, the whole campus is safer and healthier as a result.
 

2. Attendance

 
Whether valid or a bit exaggerated the number of reasons students may be unable to attend classes has been growing at a constant rate since the dawn of time. The HyFlex model cuts that number of reasons easily in half. Family emergency? Health concerns? Sleeping in? The student now has far more accessibility to tune in for class regardless of environmental factors.
 

3. Increased Class Sizes

 
Allowing students to attend class online can increase your class sizes exponentially. The facilities no longer become a limiting factor, and classes are able to grow as large as the instructor and university are comfortable with. This can effectively double, triple, or even quadruple class sizes, all while providing an environment that is more engaging than a traditional classroom setup.
 

4. Engagement

 

Engagement in large classes is very hard to obtain and often results in lectures that might as well have been videos. The HyFlex model splits students into smaller groups, those that are in-person and those that are online. In-person student are far more comfortable engaging with the professor by asking or answering questions when they’re only perceiving a small group of peers around them. This concept is the exact same for online students as well who only see the instructor and are located behind their in-person peers.

 

5. Better Margins

 
As universities and colleges continue competing to provide the best education experience, margins are shrinking and as a result tuitions are being driven upward. HyFlex classrooms help solve both ends of this problem. They are able to provide a huge selling point for recruiting and they are also able to increase class sizes by large amounts. Larger class sizes means that a total enrollment ceiling is higher without having to build new facilities to accommodate larger classes. This increase in class sizes without making major physical modifications to campus allows for much higher margins and a potential slowing in tuition increases.