‘Not as a temporary fluke but as standard’: realising the affordances of hybrid and online teaching for inclusive and sustainable education

84.5% of disabled students (Disabled Students UK, 2022) reported that the continuation of online or distance learning and teaching options post-pandemic would be beneficial. While concerns about quality of experience, isolation, wellbeing, access to technology and poor pedagogy in online and hybrid interactions are legitimate and must form part of decision-making, so too must considerations about the affordances of these ways of working and teaching. Framed around inclusive practice, and flexibility and sustainability drivers to enhance belonging, community and collaboration, we argue there are imperatives for us to learn the hard lessons of the pandemic and to listen to the voices of those who benefitted from changes in how and where teaching and assessment happened, especially in terms of so called ‘hybrid’ teaching. Our argument is framed by reflections on our own institution’s approach to hybrid teaching and working, the literature on experiences of remote learning during the pandemic, and – most centrally – the experiences and perspectives of students with disabilities.


Introduction
According to Disabled Students UK,84.5% of disabled students reported that the continuation of online or distance learning and teaching options post-pandemic would be beneficial (p.8, 2022). Attainment gaps narrowed between white and global majority students, students without and with disabilities, and in the female to male achievement gap in upper awards between 2018-19 and 2019-20 (Snelling, 2022). Additionally, in a large proportion of universities in the UK, fully online and hybrid meetings remain common, reflecting a culture shift in working practices that appears to represent a 'new normal'. Despite this, there are pressures on universities to eschew 'online tutoring' (Somerville, 2022;Turner, 2022). We believe that this lack of nuance in what both 'in-person' and 'online' teaching might entail risks a failure to realise the ongoing benefits of the 'unexpected silver lining' that Universities UK report is a consequence of the rapid and unprecedented shift online of 2020 (Snelling, 2022).
In this article, we draw on our roles supporting academic development and digital accessibility in a large research-intensive university to focus on one aspect of the possible digital future of higher education (HE). We argue that an inclusive, sustainable and flexible provision should actively consider the affordances of what we are calling 'hybrid teaching', by respecting the value of all learning interactions. The comprehensive and timely MIT report (2022) on the lessons they learned in Covid-19 sees positivity in teaching and assessment outcomes that were both 'scripted' and 'unscripted': The creativity and ingenuity brought out over the past year by the necessity of finding ways to engage with students and support group interactions, thinking anew about what works and why, when we could not just teach the way we always have, is sure to bear fruit in the long term. (MIT, 2022, p.4).

Background
Despite some limited interest and experimentation prior to the pandemic with 'Hybrid Flexible' or 'HyFlex' teaching (both terms relating to simultaneous in-person and online attendance Compton, Standen and Watson 'Not as a temporary fluke but as standard': realising the affordances of hybrid and online teaching for inclusive and sustainable education Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Special Issue 26: February 2023 3 options), in which choice was a key feature of both design and, crucially, a flexible ethos (Beatty, 2019), it was rarely used (Kohnke and Moorhouse, 2021). That is until the postlockdown, but still in-Covid-19 period, when it evolved as an approach to cope with ongoing infections, lockdowns overseas and travel restrictions. As it evolved in multiple ways across the world, several terms emerged in addition to HyFlex: 'blended synchronous', 'mixed/ dual mode', 'multimodal' 'concurrent teaching'. Most common appears to have been 'hybrid' teaching, perhaps to distinguish an emergency and reactive approach from a fully planned, by-design approach.
Indeed, our own institution adopted the term 'Basic Hybrid' to emphasise the anticipated limitations and as an expectation management strategy for both staff and students. We equipped over 300 rooms with 'basic hybrid' teaching capabilities. At its most basic, this was little more than improved in-room audio and an ability to live stream. Most rooms, however, had two-way audio/video using either Zoom or Microsoft Teams as the principal interface, and upgrades focusing on adding this software to existing lectern set-ups with camera and microphone installations were prioritised. Opportunities to improve the experience for staff and all students using new technologies such as multiple screens, ceiling mounted omnidirectional microphones and telepresence robots were a dream but are very much within the realms of possibility looking ahead. Training materials and workshops emphasised the constraints and pushed the necessity for support in the form of an additional online or in-room assistant or 'co-pilot' (Compton, 2021). Whilst many colleagues adopted this approach, others preferred to separate teaching to in-person and online cohorts, and others focused on asynchronous supplementary material for those unable to attend in-person. Hybrid may have proved at times incredibly vexing for staff, but in addition to successes in enabling ongoing connection and contact for institutional meetings, it was simultaneously an invaluable lifeline, potentially offering greater control, agency and empowerment to disabled students in particular (Disabled Students' Commission, 2021).

Inclusion, access and accessibility
In HE we manage and control information, with research, dissemination, teaching and assessment just some of our information exchange channels. We are obligated by law (The

Equality Act 2010 and The Public Sector Bodies [Websites and Mobile Applications]
Accessibility Regulations 2018) but more, we hope, by building shared values as a sector, to enable easier access to that information and to develop frameworks for producing and sharing it. This means, for example, that resources are not only produced and checked with accessibility in mind, but that learning experiences and assessments which utilise new technologies to extend the reach of our education will do so in such a way as to ensure that no-one is left behind.
Information and systems that are accessible may be driven by legal compliance, but improvements in access, availability and information retrieval also help better adaptation to future ways of teaching and learning. These principles reach into how (and where) teaching happens. Progress made during the pandemic offers an opportunity to produce a proactive and more inclusive legacy, where information exchange is smoothed by ever-improving technical solutions (Hector, 2020). Yet, while many in HE continue to embrace hybridity and remote access for aspects of business such as conferences and meetings, there are tendencies to forget some of the successes in terms of teaching and assessing. In our view, we should aim to create more of an information 'Swiss Army Knife' for the accessibility, usability, and business advantages this would bring.
A clear commitment to inclusive design says a lot about the organisations we represent, has great potential for students both with and without disabilities, and represents how we want all our staff and students across intersections to be fully involved: There is growing recognition of the issues and challenges of intersectionality and the multiple factors that influence students, including different equality characteristics, and issues relating to social class or other widening-access considerations. Each of these can, and does, combine with issues of disability (Williams et al., 2019, p.4).

Belonging, community and collaboration
Increasingly, 'belonging' is being discussed alongside questions of equity, diversity and inclusion in HE (Capper and McVitty, 2022;West, 2022), a consequence of the experiences of studying and working during Covid-19 and associated with students' self-assessed mental health (Jackson, 2022). Even pre-pandemic, belonging was already being linked to student retention and success (Jackson, 2022). One common assumption is, of course, that a sense of belonging was lost during remote and hybrid learning and working, and that it is something that universities need to ensure students regain.
However, recent research into experiences of learning during the pandemic does not necessarily support that picture. Kohnke  During collaborative activities, everyone seemed to have a presence. . . . This perception was something both in-class and online learners mentioned in the interviews: completing activities online made them 'feel as a group' and 'not separated'. (Kohnke and Moorhouse, 2021, p.239).
Alongside the recommendation to think carefully about how tools that enable synchronous collaboration (such as document creation, post walls, polling and anonymous questioning) could best be utilised in hybrid settings, the authors propose pairing face-to-face and remote students when designing teaching and assessment activities, to strengthen belonging in dualmode situations (Kohnke and Moorhouse, 2021).
In our own discussions about experiences of hybrid teaching, the social side of learning came through as a strong theme, centring on how community can be built, how space for informal conversations might need to be curated, and how positive lessons from Covid-19 around daily touch points, virtual common rooms and uses of chat channels must continue to feature in hybrid settings. We acknowledge how challenging this can be, but when well facilitated, hybrid spaces can contain not just one place in which an individual can belong, but multiple possibilities for this.

Conclusion
HE achieved something unprecedented and remarkable during the Covid-19 lockdowns. It may have been clunky, flawed, inconsistent, and not as good as planned and fully-resourced online education, but it showed that where there was a will, driven by an abled majority, there was a way. The immediate post-lockdown period demonstrated similarly that although beautifully resourced HyFlex rooms were generally out of financial and logistical scope, hybrid options could be enabled swiftly and relatively cheaply. We are therefore concerned that