Hi everyone!
My name is Selma Kasımay. I teach ESP courses at Başkent University in Ankara, Türkiye. I recently completed the HyComm HyFlex Teaching Programme, using my Presentation Skills course for many of the activities.
Let me first explain why HyFlex interests me. I teach final-year engineering students who also work as candidate engineers. Our course meets twice a week for two hours each session, but some students regularly miss classes because of work. In a Presentation Skills course, this means missing speaking practice and feedback from classmates. I wanted to explore how they could participate meaningfully even when they could not attend in person.
To be honest, I expected another theory-heavy programme. Instead, HyComm offered examples, practical activities and ready-to-use AI prompts to help teachers work with their own courses. But could these tools really help me redesign a lesson for three learning modes? I decided to put them to the test.
I chose my lesson on attention grabbers, where I model different techniques and ask students to create openings for their own presentations. But how could I adapt this lesson to three modes while keeping speaking practice, peer interaction and feedback? In Module 5, Gemini helped me draft a learning resource, critique it and explore adaptations guided by Brian Beatty’s four HyFlex principles:
- Learner choice: Students could choose their participation mode according to their work schedules.
- Equivalency: All students would create an attention grabber suited to their topic and audience, receive feedback and revise it.
- Face-to-face: Prepare two openings, try them with a partner and revise the stronger one.
- Live online: Present two openings in breakout rooms, receive feedback and share the revised version.
- Asynchronous: Record the openings, receive feedback from an assigned classmate within 24 hours and submit a revision.
- Reusability: With permission, students’ openings and feedback could be shared across modes and reused in future classes.
- Accessibility: Videos with transcripts, mobile-friendly materials and low-bandwidth audio options could support students with different access needs.
This was my first test of the design using HyComm’s tools. The next test will be in the classroom, where I can see how well the activity works for students.
Other practical features I appreciated
I believe knowledge is accumulated, so discovering repositories such as MERLOT, OER Commons, OpenStax and BCcampus in Module 5 felt like finding a treasure trove. The module also introduced AI tools for curating resources, and Gemini suggested materials I could adapt and combine with students’ work, with their permission.
The AI Playground was another feature I appreciated. It brings together reusable tools, including customised GPTs, that I can return to beyond the programme. Module 6 also introduced the idea of the teacher as a learner architect, which encouraged me to think more carefully about how I design assessment and feedback.
My next step is to try more activities adapted for the three learning modes and see how students respond. I still need to consider teacher workload and university attendance regulations, but HyComm has given me practical tools to explore what could work in my own classroom.
Selma Kasımay
English Language Instructor
Başkent University, Ankara, Türkiye