<p>  </p> <p>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’ <em>individual </em>performance while there are limited studies that have looked into <em>group</em> 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 <em>group remoteness</em> (number of times students participated remotely in a group) and <em>group performance</em> (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 remoteness and 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.</p>

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This thesis investigates student engagement in the Media and Communication Programme at Malmö University through the lens of audience- as well as learning theories. It has two main aims: Building a systematized theoretical framework to distinguish different nuances of audience activity in a cross-mediatic learning environment, and exploring factors influencing student engagement in our Media and Communication Master Programme (MCS). Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz 2006) with a multi-method approach for data collection is applied to gather rich data and analyse it accordingly through coding processes and constant comparison. Following social constructivism, it argues that each student, actively constructing knowledge, has her own subjective learning preference. This thesis takes a non- normative stand on the subject. A matrix of audience activity, grounded in audience theories and developed through the collected data, is established. In a second step this is used to illustrate the concepts participation, engagement and collaboration and then further employed to examine factors influencing student engagement. Thereby, the matrix is tested, refined and further developed. Through this approach eight states a student might be situated in while studying as well as possible barriers for student engagement were identified. Factors influencing student engagement this study found are the personal situation of the student, the access Hyflex education allows, possibilities and challenges of physical and virtual learning spaces, the interaction between teachers and students, the structure of the programme and how students are connected with each other. By looking at student engagement in a media rich environment from an audience- as well as education-angle this thesis expands existing research. It presents influencing factors for student engagement. More importantly the theoretical model is a useful tool to investigate different kinds of student activities and to develop educational media tools. It could also be transferred to research other audiences.

<p> Universities have increased the number of fully or partially online courses they offer to meet students' family, work-life, and academic needs. As a result of this shift, the HyFlex learning paradigm, which provides hybrid and flexible learning options, has gained traction in academia in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the standards for academic levels of success in higher education for the foreseeable future. In order to offer a sense of belonging and sustain an equal or greater degree of engagement, instructors have been compelled to try and replicate the rich interaction of face-to-face situations in a virtual context. During the pandemic, the results of studies and surveys revealed a story of student dissatisfaction due to a lack of involvement, participation, sense of community, lack of faculty readiness, and technology concerns. Evidence from the past has supported the fact that synchronous online modality not only facilitates the tasks of a traditional face-to-face learning environment, but also has some distinct advantages over conventional approaches. Students' commitment to stay connected in the learning experience is linked to their sense of belonging to a learning cohort. It is vital to create a learning environment in which students feel a part of a learning community and actively participate in the learning process in order to foster knowledge generation. An Interactive Synchronous HyFlex model, intended to help students feel committed and engaged in their learning community through these uncertain times and beyond, is being explored as part of this research. The approach is studied using a Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, as communities are a crucial part of effective student-centered learning settings. A convergent parallel mixed methods case study design was used to gain a deeper knowledge of the usefulness of the new HyFlex model under study. Students enrolled in the Interactive Synchronous HyFlex design thinking course during the Fall 2020 semester were the study's participants. The quantitative phase of the study looked into a) the students’ perception of overall teaching, social and cognitive presences in the HyFlex design thinking classroom; and b) if there was any change in students’ perception of community of inquiry based on their mode of participation (face-to-face/remote). The qualitative part of the study looked in-depth at the lived experiences of students in the HyFlex design thinking classrooms throughout the semester. The integration and interpretation of the two phases provides a positive student perspective of the Interactive Synchronous HyFlex model, and it helps to observe how the community of inquiry has played out in HyFlex design thinking classrooms. </p>