Originally posted on December 14, 2012 by Brian Beatty
We recently surveyed students in the Instructional Technologies MA program at San Francisco State University, and found that students once again report that they appreciate the flexibility offered by the HyFlex course design. No surprise there; its the most consistent “finding” in surveys, end of class evaluations and anecdotal reports we receive.
We did find out a few things that are interesting to note. I’ll talk about two of them here, and more in later posts.
- Students who planned on completing the class fully in person often found themselves completing some of their coursework online because their participation desires just didn’t work out. Many more ended up attending class online instead of their stated desire to be in class in person than those who attended class in person more than they had planned. This isn’t a surprise to us, since we know that most of these students (graduate) prefer to attend class in person, but it was confirmed by the survey data. The flexibility of having the online option consistently available made a difference to many.
- Female graduate students, on average, reported that it was more important to them to feel connected to the people involved in the class (teacher, peers) than it was to feel connected to the content or activities. Male graduate students, on average, reported that it was more important to them to feel connected to the content or activities being studied than it was to feel connected to the people involved in the class (teacher, peers). This is also not surprising, but it was interesting to see it confirmed in our survey data.
More later …