SLN SOLsummit 2010 http://slnsolsummit2010.edublogs.org February 25, 2010 Bill Pelz, Professor of Psychology (1968) and Jane Verri, Assistant Professor of Psychology (2002), Herkimer County Community College Introducing: the Herkimer HyFlex! Two seasoned instructors at Herkimer County Community College are pioneering a new instructional design strategy which combines two current pedagogical trends in higher education: hybrid course design and heutagogy. * Hybrid course design: some portion of required class activity occurs within the classroom environment, the remainder occurs within the online environment. * Heutagogy: learners assume as much responsibility for determining their own learning conditions as possible (what to learn, how to learn, where to learn, when to learn, etc.) * HyFlex course design: all or most course learning activities are offered both in class and online. Learning activities can include content presentation (lecture / multimedia / PowerPoint / etc.) content engagement (class and small group discussion / group projects / research papers / etc.) and assessment (quizzes / exams / written assignments / etc.). Each learner determines for her/himself which environment to attend for each activity. The Herkimer Hyflex model utilizes two instructors who agree to team teach a double-enrollment section of students. These two instructors collaborate in the development of all course learning activities. One instructor assumes primary responsibility for synchronous face-to-face instruction, the other for asynchronous online instruction. Students are required to attend an initial face-to-face class meeting to receive some ANGEL training and review the class policies and procedures. Then, with the exception of a required mid-semester and end-of-semester face-to-face focus group class designed to allow students to express their thoughts about the course structure and content, each student is allowed to decide which learning environments (classroom, online, or both) to utilize for every graded learning activity.