Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s12528-025-09452-6

Publication Title

Journal of Computing in Higher Education

Pages

29 pp.

Abstract

Since it was first developed in 2006, the hybrid flexible, or HyFlex, course model has been growing in prevalence in higher education. HyFlex courses are defined as those allowing students to decide whether to experience course material in person, online synchronously, or asynchronously on a weekly or daily basis without warning to, or permission from, the course’s instructor. Empirical research regarding this instructional approach is still relatively limited despite increased attention during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasing interest in providing alternatives to fully in-person instruction has made it necessary to closely examine the existing body of research to determine the effectiveness of HyFlex instruction, challenges that it presents, strategies used to meet these challenges, and gaps in knowledge that must be filled by future studies. This systematic review analyzed 57 empirical studies focusing on the HyFlex course model during the last 10 years to determine its learning outcomes, challenges, beneficial technologies, instructional strategies and supports, and recommendations for future mitigation efforts.

Rights

© 2025 The Authors.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Original Publication Citation

Barr, T., & Luo, T. (2025). HyFlex course design: Outcomes, challenges, and supports for students and instructors. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-025-09452-6

ORCID

0000-0001-6156-6807 (Barr), 0000-0002-8138-3722 (Luo)

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