 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Everyone, welcome to our presentation today, High Flex Model Recommendations for Students, Access and Success. My name is Jia Sun. I work for San Diego College of Continuing Education. I currently serve as the ESL Digital Literacy Coordinator. I also teach a beginning-level conversation class. I've been in the area for almost nine years. Again, thank you so much for joining our presentation today. Now I'm going to hand it over to Monica. Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming today. I'm Monica Cueva and I am also at San Diego College of Continuing Education. I'm currently teaching an intermediate-high vessel class online. So that includes synchronous and asynchronous instruction on Canvas and Zoom. And I also am serving as our ESL Technology Coordinator. And so in that role, I've been supporting our High Flex faculty and classes with Jia. So for today, we would like to, we have quite a bit to cover, but we'll start off with a short brief overview of what High Flex is and an explanation of why our continuing education and why our program decided to move forward with this modality of learning as well as share some information about our High Flex pilot and some of the hardware options that we've used, and that could be options for you as well as some technology recommendations and information about the support and professional development that we've provided and also share some High Flex strong practices from our ESL faculty in our program. And we want to first start out with a Zoom poll just so we can know what, you know, how many people here know about High Flex and have actually taught High Flex or if it's all new to you, we can kind of, we would know better how to gauge our and pace our presentation. So I'm going to go ahead and launch this poll. There are two questions for you. The first question is single choice. You just have one option and the second question you can select as many that apply. So let me launch this and you should see it on your end now. Has completed the poll. Okay, great. So let me go ahead and end the poll and I'll share these results with you just so you can see as well. So it seems like most everyone knows what High Flex is, but has not taught at a High Flex class. So that's, you know, you're in the right spot to learn more about, you know, how a High Flex class is taught and what are some of the practices that you can use. And a couple of you have actually taught a High Flex class. And for the second question, it seems like you're here and want to learn as much as you can. So technology seems to be number one. We'll definitely be reviewing some of those options for you as well. Okay, thank you for responding to that. Okay, so I'll just briefly go over this. And to the same as many of you already know what High Flex is, but High Flex includes two components, an asynchronous and synchronous. And for us, for the asynchronous instruction, students go to Canvas. That's our LMS and students will complete all their assignments and do activities and review the content in Canvas. And then in addition to that, they have their synchronous instruction, which they can choose to either join via Zoom or in the classroom. And these are usually in High Flex, these are broadcast simultaneously. So the teacher is not just instructing one group of students. The teacher is in the classroom and instructing two audiences. So they have students on Zoom and in the classroom during each session. But students get to, they don't have to choose which modality they want to learn study in at the beginning of the semester. This is something that they can decide day to day, session to session. One day they might feel like joining Zoom or they're busy and that's their only option. The next day they might have a little bit more free time and they would like to be in the classroom. This is also great flexibility with the student's work schedule, family schedule, transportation. So all around it provides a flexible option for students. And why High Flex? So our program as with many actually all of continuing education, as I'm sure you all have experienced, we had a significant decrease in the number of many of our students, but significantly our beginning level students. Once we transitioned to remote instruction, we lost a lot of those students. And so High Flex allowed for us to provide an opportunity for those students that we lost to come back to campus. And it also allowed for us to keep those students that we're studying successfully online in those classes as well. And then of course, you know, it's the flexibility. It's great for our students and how unpredictable their lives can be, how busy their lives can be. So this is really a great modality for that. And also we've used High Flex as a sort of soft launch for reopening. And this allows us the flexibility that High Flex offers allows us to support the changing COVID restrictions that we have. And this also allowed us time to prepare any technology updates that might have been needed after two years of not using any of our equipment. So that's kind of the background information of why we decided to move forward with our High Flex course offerings. And our High Flex pilot really started summer 2021. And that's when we started field testing technology. We received some owl devices that we started testing. We also then tested, in the summer we also tested using laptops and tablets with microphones for High Flex instruction. We provided some demonstrations of a High Flex model for faculty and we also provided training for our instructional assistants and faculty over the summer moving closer to fall 2021. And all of this allowed us to successfully launch 39 ESL High Flex pilot classes in fall 2021. So those were just ESL classes. We had 39, which was a significant pilot launch. And so then our total enrollment for fall 2021 was 1,348 students. And that's increased a bit. And I can just highlight that for you. So this was our fall 2021 enrollment. And then our spring 2022 enrollment has increased a little bit. We're now at 1,370 students. And we're still continuing to add some additional High Flex classes throughout the semester. So that number will likely increase. Pass it over to Gia. Hey, thank you, Monica. So I'm going to show you three different High Flex hot wear setups. The first one, as you can see here, is just to bring your laptop to the classroom. You can use the laptop building webcam and microphone. Or here in this image, our High Flex instructor Ingrid Greenberg added a microphone for better sound quality. The advantage of this option is that it's easy to get started. It does not require the school to provide any special technology equipment. It's budget-friendly. Everyone can start a High Flex class just using a laptop. The problem with the first option is that the instructor is pretty much tied to the podium or the laptop. If the instructor moves around in the classroom, Zoom students won't be able to see or even hear the instructor. And the second one you can see is the Owl camera. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this device. It's a 360-degree camera mic and speaker. It's the combination of the three. The camera automatically tracks the active presenter. When there are additional in-room speakers, it will automatically start the split screen view to include all speakers. So the advantage of the Owl is that the camera follows the instructor, so Zoom students won't lose teacher presence. The disadvantage of the Owl camera is that the microphone will reliably pick up audio within a 12 to 18-inch radius. So that doesn't give the teacher much flexibility to move around the classroom. And another concern was the second option is student privacy. With the current COVID situation, everyone is wearing a mask in the classroom, so it's not a problem. However, if the teacher decides to record a High Flex session, we'll have to keep in mind to provide the student's privacy. There is a way that you can lock the camera using an app on the smartphone, but since the teacher is busy teaching, so it will probably require a second person, like an instructional assistant, to control the app. And the third option, smart technology with ceiling mic and wall camera, is what SDCC EESL program is currently using. As you can see in the picture, there are two ceiling microphone panels, a camera that is installed on the back wall of the classroom. The camera has three presets that you can set up to focus on different parts of the classroom. It requires a desktop classroom computer and an additional laptop. On the podium, there is a touch screen control panel and a content box that teacher will use to control what content to share on Zoom. So teacher will host a Zoom meeting using the laptop and present the content on the classroom desktop. So this setup provides the best audio quality. Teacher and students can be heard clearly wherever in the classroom. The back wall camera with the three presets also allows the teacher to move freely in the classroom. The disadvantage is that as you can see, this setup includes several parts. It needs additional professional development. It takes time for teachers to get familiar with the system. Also if any tech issue happens, troubleshooting is not as easy as just one device. Okay, so these are the three technology setups our program has tested and used. There is just a question about the cost of number three. Well, we don't know the exact number, but we've heard it's very expensive. Okay, so high flex technology recommendations. So our first recommendation will be test audio. In fall 2021 high flex faculty survey, 70% of the faculty and 63% of the instructional assistant wanted more support in troubleshooting audio. So one of the common issues is that with multiple devices joining the same Zoom meeting in the same room, it creates the feedback. So you need to make sure that only one device is connected to audio. Another thing is that if the instructor is using a laptop or the owl device, the Zoomers may not be able to hear the people in the classroom. So one solution is what we call the talk to the owl. So the instructor will invite volunteer students to come to the front and speak right in front of the owl camera to be heard by the Zoom students. So our recommendation is that whatever technology setup you will use, always make sure that you double check the audio quality before the class. Okay, teacher presence. So here you can see a screenshot from a Zoom meeting. This is what we call the ghost speaker. The presenter left the podium and the Zoom students could not tell who was speaking. So we definitely do not want this to happen to our students. Using the owl device will increase teacher presence because the camera follows the active speaker. The high flex smart classroom setup also have three presets to enhance teacher presence. So the instructor just need to remember to change the presets before he or she moves from the podium. Okay. And our last recommendation for technology is to arrange for IP support during class sessions. So if the technology is not working, it can be really frustrating for both the teacher and the students. So we recommend IP support during class sessions. Monica and I provided some onset tech support for the first two weeks of school to just troubleshoot. But we will recommend professional IP group to provide that support. Okay, so SDCC ESL high flex support. While high flex is new and challenging, it requires more work for both the students and our faculty. So our ESL program made sure that our students and faculty had enough support to begin the pilot. The first one is the high flex orientation for students. Monica and I designed orientation in which students will learn what is high flex, what the high flex schedule looks like, how to use email to communicate with their teachers, how to use zoom and log into Canvas. So before students go into a high flex class, they have some foundation knowledge of what this is. Online learning skills class, our program offers those classes at different levels. So students can learn the skills they need to participate in online and high flex learning. Instructional aid training, each SDCC ESL high flex class has an assigned instructional assistant to support high flex instruction. We provide a training for the IA so that they know what they can do to support the instructor. They learn some Zoom basics, how to spotlight, mute people, how to create breakout rooms. Later on, Monica will tell you more details about what the IAs can do. We had technology training for the AL and the smart classroom. The top left picture you can see is the AL training. Monica was showing everyone how to use the meeting app on their smartphones. Yes. Thank you. Okay. And next one, on-site support troubleshooting is really important, especially at the beginning of the semester. Monica and I and several other faculty in the leadership team provided that support for our high flex instructors so they're not completely on their own. Monica has been providing weekly ESL tech mentoring for all high flex and online instructors. Teachers can get help with questions about Canvas, Zoom, and other online tools. We also have monthly high flex meetup. Our high flex instructors communicate, share ideas at these meetups. It's a great way for them to collaborate and support each other. The bottom left picture is a screen of our high flex meetup. Okay. So now we want to show you what high flex looks like in the CCESL program. We have included some strong high flex practices shared by our instructors. And we put them into three categories, engaging two audiences, working with instructional assistants, and building class community. Okay. I will share the first one, engaging two audiences, and Monica will show you the rest too. So one of the challenges we hear a lot from our high flex instructors is divided attention to the two audiences. We want to share some great activities that could bring the two audiences together. So the first one I would like to share is a writing activity created by our level one high flex faculty, Raya Elmont. She creates a writing assignment. Yeah. Thank you. She's creating a writing assignment on Canvas discussion and asks Zoom students to respond to the prompt on Canvas during the class time. She projects the writing assignments on the classroom screen and asks classroom students to write with paper and pen. She will help with the students on Zoom and have her IA to help the students in the classroom. Okay. Click. Thank you. To review and give feedback, she will screen share on Zoom the Canvas discussion board for everyone to see. And she will use the document camera to show the paper submissions. So this allows all students to see each other's work. And they also work together to correct the writing arrows. Okay. Okay. So the second activity is shared by our ESL level one high flex instructor, Johanna Gleason. Here's a picture of Johanna and her instructional assistant, Riza, and her high flex students. Instead of me explaining how she used the information gap activity to engage both rumors and Zoomers, she kindly created a video to demonstrate the activity. So Monica, can you please play that video for us? Yes. Let me just make sure I share computer sound. This is an activity that I do with my level one English class. They're learning about jobs. They know the names and duties of a number of jobs. I ask one student at a time to come to the front of the room and choose a piece of paper. Just ripped up pieces of paper. They can't see what's on the paper. Okay. And they choose a piece of paper. They look at it and don't show anyone. And all of the students in the class, both in the room and on Zoom, call out yes no questions until they can guess what the job is. So for example, and we've learned we've practiced all of these all of these questions and all of this vocabulary. And when we first start the activity, I actually have this on the projector so students can see it. Okay. So after we've done that a few times, then I tell all the students in the room to sit down and I turn the projector off. So the students in the room can't see the image, but the students at home on Zoom can. And then I put a word and an image on the screen for the students at home to see. So the students at home will see what you see. The students in the room don't see anything. And the students in the room have to call out the yes no questions. And the students home on Zoom have to answer the yes no questions until the students in the room can guess the questions. So they'll look at this and maybe ask questions like do you count money? Do you serve food? Do you sell clothes? Until finally, do you clean buildings? Yes. Yay. Okay. So we'll do that a couple of times with those questions. And it's a lot of fun. Typically, the students really enjoy it. They laugh a lot. And I enjoy it. And I think it's transferable to other types of vocabulary activities too. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Monica. So we think, well, as you can see from the video, we think this is really a brilliant way to engage both audiences. The Zoom students and classroom students all have to participate and work with each other to get the correct answer. So yeah. So thanks to Johanna who shared this great activity with us. Now I'm going to hand it over to Monica. Thank you, Gia. So now I will go ahead and share some of the amazing ways that our instructional assistants are helping our High Flex classes. We really could not have gone through the fall semester of High Flex and our current semester of High Flex without the help of our instructional assistants. They have provided support for students in so many ways. And so we reached out to ESL faculty member Ingrid Greenberg who taught an ESL level one class in the fall semester. And we asked her how her instructional assistant, Jew, had supported her High Flex class. And she gave us a long list of all the ways that her IA had supported. And we've just listed a few of those ways. But as you can see from Ingrid's introduction here, the High Flex model is very demanding on the instructor. So she says, while I was busy micromanaging technology in order to teach two student audiences during my High Flex ESL level one class, my PA or IA instructional assistant assisted with the following. So that is a challenge. The teacher is very busy working with the technology, trying to work with two groups of students. And you know, the IA can just make help facilitate that. And so some of the things, as you can see, we have them listed here and there's a lot more. But some of them are that IA would check for COVID-19 clearances as students came into the classroom. They might help by registering students for following semesters. We have a textbook loaner program. So the IA helped students sign up for that program and get their textbooks. They might also help students purchase textbooks that they might need for the class. They distribute handouts in class. Excuse me, sorry. So the instructor has logged into Zoom from their podium computer to be able to teach the students in the classroom and on Zoom. And so while the teacher is there, the instructional assistant is in the classroom as well on their laptop. And they've logged into the Zoom meeting as a participant. And they are changed to co-host so that they can help admit students if there's a waiting room. They can also alert the instructor if there are any problems with their audio or video or maybe if students can't see what the teacher is sharing in Zoom. So they're able to really help with the quality of the Zoom meeting for the remote students. And they also can help facilitate Zoom breakout rooms as well and maybe answer any questions that might come through in the chat. And also Ju was able to help provide tutoring for to help students with Canvas and Zoom. And there were so many other ways that you provided support in the High Flex class. And next I'll also share how students or how the teachers helped build class community. And there are many ways that this is done by our amazing faculty and we'll just share a couple of these ways. But so the first is from our ESL level one High Flex faculty member, Alyssa Clark. She teaches at our Cesar Chavez campus. And you can see from this image that she has this really nice table set up in the class to welcome students as they enter. So they sign in, they grab the handups that might be needed for the class session. They have the class calendar. They can write their name on a name card and display it on their desk. She also has the clean dirty pen set up for students, hand sanitizer. So it's just really welcoming for students as they come into the classroom. Another thing that Alyssa does is that she recreates what already happens naturally in our face to face classes during break time, especially at the beginning levels. During break time, our students tend to congregate with other students that speak their same L1, their same native language. And so she has recreated that in her Zoom breakout rooms during their break time session. So she has a two hour Zoom session, a Zoom High Flex session. And so they have a 10 minute break time. So she ends up creating same language breakout groups for students that so they can join for those 10 minutes and speak with their classmates in their native language, ask questions about the class that maybe they missed or didn't understand and just to help them feel a little bit more comfortable with their classmates to help encourage persistence in the class. So we thought that was a really great idea. It's not directly related to instruction, but it does help with building class community. And we have another example from Johanna Gleason about how she builds class community with her Level 1 High Flex class. So she creates a Google Slides presentation and she will have put students photos in this Google Slide presentation of themselves or their family members. And she uses it for grammar practice. And this allows students to get to know their classmates and their families a little bit more and help build that class community. And you can see here, this is an example of a Google Slide presentation where they are learning more about Diana's family. So Diana shared these images of her family and the students will work together as a whole group. So both Zoom students and in classroom students, they'll work together to create sentences about Diana. So they know that this is Diana's son, that her son has a dog, that she has a daughter-in-law. And it just is really helpful in inspiring that classroom conversation. And she said even that students after they do these activities that they'll continue to ask questions about each other's family members and see how everyone is doing. And it's, you know, for Level 1, some students are actually able to add their own images to the Google Slides presentation. But for students that can't, then they just send the images to Johanna and she adds them to the Google Slides presentation. But she has done this for several other grammar activities as well. And that is what we have for to go over for the high flex strong practices that we wanted to share with you. Some of the amazing things that our faculty are doing and we have so many more things that, you know, our teachers are doing in the classroom and the ways that our instructional assistants are helping out as well. And I think we are now moving. Let me just move through the slides. And we are now at our questions and answers for you. So we wanted to open it up for some questions that you might have about high flex and what we are doing for high flex. And we see Barry, you have your hand raised. Yes, thanks. So this is sort of related to what I asked in the chat a little bit about like that third option, the totally asynchronous students who only access activities through the LMS. And I see that we have the esteemed David Rosen in the audience who, you know, has written quite a bit about high flex instruction. And so what I'm sort of wondering is you did mention that there's a lot more work involved for the instructor in terms of dealing with the two audiences. And I think that's because you said you don't have that many asynchronous only students. But in reality, if it's a high flex program in the way that David Rosen describes, there really are three audiences, correct? And so that's actually another audience. Who's dealing with that? And then as a second question, a second part of that question is, if everybody is recognizing that these are increased duties and responsibilities on the part of the instruction, is there anything in the way of compensation for your instructors who are doing this type of instruction? Or is it, well, we're just doing it because we need to keep up the numbers of students in our classes. And that's our compensation. That's the question. Thank you, Barry. Gee, I don't know if you want to respond to that. Okay, I can respond to the second question. So for the compensation, we do have currently, the agreement is that each high flex instructor will get a one hour, as they're a non-classroom teaching rate. So we, our leadership to feel like that's just not enough for, you know, the professional development they have participated the extra work they have done. So we have proposed another for the next school year. So we are trying to request for 10 hours of professional development for a new high flex instructor and additional five hours the next semester. So yeah. And can you remind me the first question? The first one was that we technically have three audiences for high flex. Correct. Correct. The only thing is when we piloted these high flex models, we started from like beginning level, like beginning level one and two, that's the our target group. So the majority of the students for their level, it's very challenging for them to only participate asynchronously. Yes. But if it's a higher level, yeah, there should be three audiences. And yeah. Yes. And we, so we are still, you know, trying to get those lower level students to complete the canvas activities. But that is the same instructor. So the instructor is developing the canvas portion of the class, as well as teaching the synchronous portion of the class. And then they're dealing simultaneously with those two audiences when they are teaching their synchronous sessions. And I see another, there's a question in the chat, how is the IA funded? Is this something that can be or will be continued post pandemic? So yes, we had IAs prior to the pandemic. We've increased the number of IAs that we have and because they were going above and beyond the regular job duties, we did change most of our IA positions to project assistance, so that they are getting paid at a higher level. Because and so that they are getting recognized for all the work that they've been doing to help us. And they don't only support us in our high flex classes, but they support us for our ESL registration as well as for CASAs testing and many and EL civics as well. So they support us in many ways. And I think David Rosen has a question. I do. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Thank you. And hello, Barry. And thank you. I first of all, this is a very impressive presentation. It seems like you're doing a terrific job. And this is what I would describe as a fully high flex model in the way that it was described by the inventor of high flex, Brian Beatty at San Francisco State about a decade ago, he and his graduate students developed this model. And it's reached our field really only within the last two years. And as you probably know, some of you know, many people only have two modes, the rumors and the zoomers. I love that. I hope to use that maybe even in my presentation coming up here. But the the question I have is, since this is a really a very faithful to that design. And really part of this is providing maximum flexibility where student can switch modes literally day by day. And it sounds like you do that. So I'm interested in what you may have discovered in terms of patterns. Do most students switch every day? Do very few students switch every day? Are any students just using the asynchronous mode and really basically doing distance learning? What are you finding in terms of what the students are actually doing? Yeah, I'll let you respond to that. Okay. I will say from what I've heard from the high flex instructors, very few students switch day to day. One of the reasons could be we for the students to be able to participate in the classroom, they need to have their vaccination proof. And when the instructor really look at their roster day, some of the class have like even a 50% of the students don't have that proof. That means those students cannot participate on campus. But for the students who are participating on campus, some of the students do enjoy the flexibility because sometimes they do have other obligations that they cannot attend on campus. So they join the Zoom meeting. And I've also heard from one instructor that one of the students, I guess it's because of the bus schedule or something, but the students join the class first using the smartphone on the bus. And the second part of the class here arrives at school then participate on campus. So that's a very fun way to use the flexibility of this model. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. Thank you. I have another question, but I want to see if there are other people who want to ask questions. Thank you. I do see in the chat that we have a question about how will attendance be counted when the pandemic is over? So I believe we'll continue counting attendance as we are now even once it's over because it's still we're basing attendance for this class as an online course. So we are using census dates for attendance. So we have two census dates for each class. And that's the same formula that we are using for fully online courses as well. So a student is awarded attendance based on their participation in the asynchronous or synchronous portions of the class. And then I see the question, will the state of California recognize all of these different student engagement modes in their funding formulas? I don't have the information about that, but I imagine that's where we are headed. And okay, and would this model be at all feasible for schools that are not lucky enough to have IAs? How many students in a class would be feasible to serve with this model? I would just strongly encourage that schools, you know, really advocate to have that additional support in the classroom as much as possible. You would definitely, you know, I think there are schools out there currently that are have adopted the high-flex model without IAs. So I would say, you know, it can be done, but advocate as much as you can to have them in the classroom. How many students in a class would be feasible to serve with this model? Right now our caps are, our class maximum is, is it 40 for high-flex? Yeah, so ours are capped at 40. And then we don't allow any new students after our first census date, which is usually maybe about four weeks into the semester. Okay, and okay, yeah, and Barry just followed up saying they are still looking at funding formulas for the state. Okay, and I think David had a question. I did and do. I'm very interested in what kinds of data you might be collecting on your flex models. And particularly I'm interested, it is claimed that flex models are very likely to increase retention, course completion, and learning gains. And so I'm wondering if you're collecting data on that and are seeing any patterns in that. So we are currently not, but we always can make the request to our team to retrieve that data. And so I think, you know, as we get further along with our pilot, that that's definitely something that we will request to look at. We also have our distance education online coordinator Ingrid Greenberg, who is assisting with high-flex instruction. And so that's something that we will probably, you know, communicate with her that that would be of interest to look into that. That would be great. I'd love to hear about that once you have the data. Thanks. Yeah, of course. Thank you. And yes, we will be sharing our slides and I can actually do that right now. And I see Barry also said at the beginning of the pandemic, when we went to all online instruction, it was decided that attendance could be counted based on work performed in that period ended with the return to in-person instruction. It's not clear. Okay. Yeah, I just know for us that we're continuing and we continued with our online classes prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic to go by recording attendance through census dates. And we've continued that now. And I imagine for online and high-flex courses that will continue after the pandemic and shut down any closures that we have. And I'm going to get the link for our slides and share that with you in the chat. Okay. So I put that in there. And I think did we have anything else, Gia? I think that's it. Okay. Well, thank you, everyone.