Aidan is a faculty member in the Management & Human Resources (HR) Leadership (MHRL) department. She completed her PhD during COVID, and while she was working on her dissertation, realized that research was not where her interest lay – instead, she wanted to teach. So, three years ago, after she moved to Victoria, she started at Camosun, and now teaches mostly HR courses, including Organizational Behaviour, Recruitment and Selection, HR Foundations, and Occupational Health and Safety.
Aidan teaches in all modes: in-person, asynchronous, blended, hyflex, you name it! “If I’m teaching four courses in a term, typically two are fully in-person, one is blended, and the fourth will either be blended or entirely asynchronous – it depends on the courses I’m teaching that term. But for my upper-level courses, including recruitment and selection, I’ve been exploring a hyflex approach, so while I teach in the classroom, students can choose to attend either via Zoom or in-person.”
I wondered how the hyflex model was working for her recruitment and selection course. “It’s going really well even though it developed into hyflex accidentally. The first time I taught it was the year the course moved from fully synchronous during COVID back to in-person. Some students were hesitant, wondering what would happen if they were sick and missed several lectures. A colleague advised me to record the audio for the lectures so if students could not attend, they would not miss content. But then I realized that students were just hearing me and looking at lecture slides for 3 hours, which was not engaging. So, I spoke with Derek Murray in CETL about the idea of hyflex, and what does it means, and during my first Scheduled Development time I revamped that course to hyflex.” And a large part of that redevelopment involved redesigning activities so they could be done hyflex.
Aidan taught two sections of the new hyflex version of the course, one during the day, and one in the evening. “Student feedback was phenomenal. Those who really wanted to be in-person came in-person and those students who had family commitments or other challenges making it hard for them to come to class, loved that they could still participate online. Some students attended the whole term either in-person or online, but many went back and forth depending on their schedules.”
There is currently no “hyflex” designation in Camosun’s course registration system, so I wondered if students know ahead of time how Aidan teaches the class. “I send out an email to students before the first day of class to let them know what to expect, and that information is also in the course outline. And then, to make students who miss that email know, I also let tell them on the first day of class.”
Aidan told me that her chair has been very supportive as she (and some of her fellow faculty members) dove into hyflex teaching. And that encouragement meant Aidan felt supported to also redesign her occupational health and safety course for hyflex. “Students who had taken the recruitment and selection course loved the model and asked if I was offering anything else hyflex. But my chair, Dr. Steve Scott, is phenomenal, and says if you want to do something, try it, and if students love it, let’s look at how we can make it better. So, there’s definitely support in our department, and interest among some of my colleagues to do more.”
I knew that accessibility was important to Aidan, and I wondered how she made her courses more accessible for students. “In the recruitment selection course, I moved away from using a textbook, to using a mixture of academic articles, news articles, etc. which are all freely available for students. I’ve asked students if they would rather have a textbook, but most say, no, they’re happy not paying for a textbook, and that they find the information in the resources I supply gives them what they need for this course.” In addition, Aidan feels that the hyflex option also provides access and flexibility for those students who struggle to make it to an on-campus course for a variety of reasons. For example, “I had a student who had severe social anxiety and for her, taking class from home and still being able to interact with classmates and ask questions with the camera off meant she was able to get more out of the class than she would have otherwise. Plus, I record the hyflex lectures so all students can review them later.” In addition, Aidan offers students extensions for any assignment as long as they ask in advance. “Quite a few students have taken me up on that when they have a tough week or have many other assessments due at the same time.”
I asked Aidan if she could tell me a bit more about how she designed her hyflex course. “First, not all courses are suited for hyflex; it depends on the amount or kind of information students need to learn. But the recruitment and selection course relies on students sharing their experiences, and using those experiences as examples to build on, so there’s a lot of engagement happening. And because I wanted ensure students were present and participating, hyflex seemed like a good option to explore.” And to encourage engagement in a hyflex class, Aidan looked at Mentimeter and Kahoot. “The engagement needed to be online, meaning students could be in-person or at home, I wanted it to be anonymous, so students didn’t feel pressured, and I wanted to see the results of the engagement immediately. So using tools makes it easier to move to hyflex teaching because it doesn’t matter where students are – if they have a mobile device or a laptop, they can participate.”
Hyflex does not mean Aidan’s students no longer work in teams. At the same time students do groupwork in the classroom, she sets up breakout rooms for students online. “I’ll open breakout rooms, but I don’t force people into them. This way, students can form their own groups online just like they do in the classroom, with the people that they want to be with. Because some students like breakout rooms and some don’t, I only use them every third class or so.” I wondered how Aidan felt about some students not engaging in breakout rooms. “I had to let go of attendance, and understand that if students are not engaged, it’s either because I’m not engaging, or they just don’t want to engage. If I’m doing everything I can to make this class engaging and somebody still doesn’t want to engage, that’s not on me. They’re adults and I’m not here to penalize them or force them into breakout rooms. If this is how they choose to learn I’m here to support them. If they want help, I’m here. If they don’t want to come to class, they don’t have to come to class. If they want to learn on their own, that’s their choice.”
Turning to a new topic, I wondered how Aidan was handling some of the concerns around assessments and students using Generative AI. “For my take-home quizzes, which are open for 48 hours to provide some flexibility for students, I first run my questions through ChatGPT and Gemini to see what answers AI is going to give. I also base my questions either on things we talk about in class, which GenAI would not know, or I use what AI gave me as an answer and then develop the question to purposefully set that as the wrong answer. So, for example, I won’t specify in my question that we’re in B.C., but all the legislation we discuss in class is B.C.-based. However, GenAI will assume the question is about federal, or American, or some other legislation, giving the wrong answer. I also write my case studies in such a way that GenAI answers most of my questions about them incorrectly. I do tell students not to use GenAI because it’s not great for their learning, but I don’t tell them that if they use GenAI, they will get a zero. Instead, I let them know that if they use GenAI, they will probably get only one or two out of seven for that question because it’s not actually answering the question with the nuance needed.”
However, students can use GenAI for some assignment components. “In my recruitment and selection class, the major assignment is an interview. Students work in teams to come up with competencies and interview questions, then they conduct an interview with someone and record that interview. Students can use GenAI to come up with their interview questions, because in the real world, they would probably use GenAI like this, but GenAI will not help them conduct the actual interview. So that’s how I’ve navigated the use of GenAI, through creating authentic reflective assessments.”
I asked Aidan what she enjoyed most about teaching. “One of the things I love most is that I get to influence people who are going to make a difference in the real world. That was one thing I struggled with around research: you spend three years working on a project, the review process takes another two years, then if it’s published, few people read it, and it doesn’t usually make any change. But I’ve taught managers and CEOs who later tell me that what I taught them made a big difference in terms of how they manage their teams or how they deal with various situations. So, I felt like I could make more of a difference teaching than through doing research, and I find that very rewarding.”
As we came to the end of our time together, I asked Aidan what advice she might have for a new faculty member coming to teach at Camosun. “I would say, don’t be afraid of using resources. In my first year, while I knew about CETL I didn’t reach out because I didn’t want to be the person who was new and didn’t know anything. It wasn’t until I attended a workshop and met people from CETL that I realized they want to help. In addition, reach out to your chair and ask for help, and, if possible, sit in on other instructors’ classes to see what strategies they’re using to engage students. I’ve learned a lot from other teaching styles, and even if someone else’s style doesn’t work for you, you can still learn a lot from them.