Abstract:

Since March 2020, all schools, colleges, and universities in the United States (U.S.) have been facing the challenge of maintaining the continuity of learning as well as instruction and of providing for the public health and safety of students, faculty, and staff alike. Thus, an unprecedented step to migrate all courses online in response to the global pandemic has been taken. To conduct schools remotely is apparently a simple, immediate, and safe solution. According to Technavio (2018), prior to the paradigm shift of the teaching modality, the eLearning market in the U.S. will have grown to $6.22 U.S. billion between 2017 and 2022. In addition, graduate students’ favor on online instruction had also been reported. Duffin (2019) reported that a survey showed 52% of the graduate students in the U.S. found their online education to provide a better learning experience than their face-to-face instruction.

With the release of the vaccine in December 2020 in the U.S., more and more educational institutions are offering instruction in a HyFlex mode. The HyFlex online instruction blends a hybrid format of synchronous online student in-person attendance as well as face-to-face student attendance and allows students to have the flexibility to choose when and how they attend in a single course. No matter if it is amidst or after the global pandemic, one can be sure that the demand of online instruction moves on. Thus, it is more important than ever that instructors need to make prudent selection about effective pedagogical design and educational institutions also need to provide judicious choices about course delivery methodology.

There are several challenges that need to be addressed for the ideal balance of online community building and interaction among students in HyFlex learning environments. One of the pedagogical challenges focuses on how instructors can effectively scaffold and select an online discussion modality to promote positive, vigorous, and encouraging online asynchronous discussion to engage students. Thus, a research study which followed the best practice of online pedagogy that the more direct involvement students had in a course with online components, the more dedicated and productive they would be was conducted. It aims to examine and compare student performances and perceptions on two different interface designs for online asynchronous discussion in Hyflex learning environments.

This research study adopted an exploratory mixed method approach designed to investigate student’s satisfaction level and academic performance with different interface design platforms for online discussion in HyFlex delivery modality education courses. Study results indicated that different interface design for online discussion platforms had a significant impact on academic achievement for students on the assessment of online discussion. Study results also indicated that applying different interface design for online discussion did not impact the students’ overall satisfactory levels toward the courses. Implications from the results suggest a need to select and integrate effective interface design for online discussion to engage students in HyFlex learning environments.

Keywords:

Interface design, online discussion, digital learning tools, HyFlex learning.