HyFlex for Faculty

First, check all the steps you would normally take to both ensure accessibility and account for accommodations in any class.

If you don’t have one already, consider including a statement about accommodations (or accommodations and accessibility) and related student services in your syllabus.

• Check the Student Access & Accommodation System (SAAS).
  • More about SAAS from Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES).
  • More about SAAS from NCOD: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services.
• Review your new Course Accessibility Report.
  • More about Canvas Ally and the new report.
• Make sure all videos are captioned.
  • More about captioning at CSUN.
• Get any questions answered by DRES, NCOD: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, the Faculty Technology Center (FTC) and/or the Universal Design Center (UDC).

Make a plan for who will be physically present in the classroom, and on what schedule. Account for service providers, including ASL interpreters and transcribers. They often work in teams, and will increase the number of people in the room on in-person days.

Communicate the plan ahead of time to any students with accommodations and DRES and/or Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services. The student or CSUN office will communicate the plan to any service providers.

• Add assigned service providers to the Canvas course for the class.

Maintain a consistent schedule. Start and end class as planned in the schedule of classes. While this benefits all students, it’s extra helpful for service providers who support multiple students and classes, and any student who needs time to navigate between classes.

The whiteboard can be difficult to see on Zoom.

• Use the darkest markers available, ideally black.
  • Blue may work if the pen is fresh, or red if the lines are extra thick.
• Write large! Aim for your capital letters and numbers to be at least 8 inches high.

Think about how your physical space affects access to information and participation, both for students physically present and for those who are remote.

• Are there any barriers in the classroom?
• Can remote students see all important classroom elements?
• The camera will often be on you. If you have content you’d like the class to see as well, such as on the whiteboard, stand where students on Zoom can see both.
• Solid-colored clothing, especially dark and/or neutral colors, will look best on video. Consider the color of the background behind you as well.
• Avoid standing in front of a window.

If you have more than one student in your classroom sharing a team of ASL interpreters, there may need to be some coordination so that all these students can all see the interpreters. If the interpreters are in the classroom and some students are remote, the interpreter may need to be on camera with you. If the interpreters are remote and some students are in the classroom, those students would need some means to see their interpreters. This could be the interpreters’ videos projected within the classroom, or the student(s) viewing the videos on a laptop or tablet.

• Zoom focuses on sound. If you have a deaf student on Zoom addressing the class, spotlight them.
• Students with interpreters – and the interpreters – need the ability to pin more than one video: Allow Multi-pin.

After space, think about sound, and especially dialogue. You’ll have your own microphone, as will the students who are remote, but the students (and any service providers) who are physically present all share one microphone.

• How will you ensure that remote students are able to join the conversation? They be unable to give physical cues that they have something to say, and they may have trouble reading the physical cues of the students who are present.
• How do you make sure remote students can hear comments from individual peers who are physically present (and sharing one mic)? Consider building in an opportunity for each student to practice speaking to the room mic, with feedback on how they are heard, before their participation and/or class dialogue counts towards class activities and/or grades.
• What if participants in the class conversation start overlapping each other? How do remote students follow the conversation? How do they participate? What if they’re interacting through a service provider?

It might help to think of sound in terms of traffic control – managing the flow of conversation, even enforcing stops/pauses – so that everyone gets a chance to be heard.

The microphones in the classroom and on devices may not cooperate. If a student (or ISA) who is present in the room also has the Zoom session open, they must mute both their microphone and the sound from Zoom on their device.

To see some examples of a HyFlex classroom at other CSU campuses, visit the Fresno State University HyFlex teaching page or the Cal State Long Beach HyFlex Classrooms page.

The 18 rooms on campus being upgraded for HyFlex are:

• BB 1133
• BB 1208
• BB 1238
• BB 2204
• CR 5122
• CR 5125
• ED 1130
• EU 103
• EU 131
• EU 132
• EU 133
• EU 134
• EU 135
• JD 1553
• LA 181
• NA 101
• NH 113
• SQ 104

Lecture capture is available in several classrooms and large lecture halls on campus. However, Lecture Capture does not have a synchronous online component. HyFlex is a specific course designation in SOLAR and HyFlex classrooms require a higher degree of technology to incorporate the synchronous online elements. 

If you are new to Hyflex or currently use the Hyflex course format and need support, contact:

Dominic Little
Lead, Classroom Technology, and Media Support
dominic.little@csun.edu
Phone: (818) 677-4799

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