Effect of Modalities on Group Performance in Hyflex Environment
Abstract
The pandemic disrupted and challenged higher education institutions across the United States to find an effective and feasible solution to deliver instruction without impacting students’ social interaction and performance. HyFlex model, which blends the best of the two modes of instruction namely, face-to-face, and online instruction, emerged as an effective solution during the pandemic and proved that it has the potential to stay relevant even in the post-pandemic world. The purpose of this study was to examine if the attendance patterns of students during group work in a HyFlex classroom affect their group performance. Evidence from literature studies on HyFlex has focused their investigation on understanding how attendance patterns affect students’ individual performance while there are limited studies that have looked into group performance. The guiding theory behind this study is social constructivism. The research question investigated the relationship between the extent to which teammates were remote and the group’s assignment grades. This study used a sample of 645 students enrolled in first-year undergraduate course which involved working on two significant group projects at a Midwestern university during Fall of 2021. There were 168 and 146 project groups across 18 sections of the course. Data were analyzed using the non-experimental Pearson correlational design method, where the two continuous variables included group remoteness (number of times students participated remotely in a group) and group performance (points received in group assignments for each project). The results of the study indicated a slightly negative correlation that was not statistically significant between group remotenessand group grade for Project 2 (r = -.068, p= .38) and Project 3 (r= -.095, p= 0.25). Even though the results were non-significant the negative correlation hints that the remote participation might affect the group grades. Based on the weak correlation between student participation and group grades, we can recommend that the Hyflex model can be adopted in the future for courses that involve working in groups even in the post-pandemic period.
Degree
M.S.
Advisors
Mentzer, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Educational technology|Epidemiology|Pedagogy
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