In hybrid classes, flexibility drives online participation, and social presence drives campus attendance

By Student Voice AI

Published Feb 21, 2026 · Updated Feb 21, 2026

At Student Voice AI, we often see “attendance” treated as a single engagement signal. Student voice data tells a more nuanced story, particularly in hybrid teaching where students are actively choosing between online and on-site participation. In a recent paper in Higher Education, Lisa Breitschwerdt, Christina Hümmer and Regina Egetenmeyer analyse why students choose to participate online or on campus in synchronous hybrid settings, and what those reasons imply for inclusive design. Read the paper here.

Context and research question

Synchronous hybrid teaching, where students can attend the same session either online or in person, is often framed as a route to flexibility and inclusion. For UK institutions, it also raises operational questions that show up quickly in dashboards and committee papers: what does “low on-campus attendance” actually mean, and what should we do about it?

Breitschwerdt and colleagues focus on the student perspective behind those participation choices. Their central question is straightforward but practical: what reasons do higher education students give for participating online or on site in synchronous hybrid settings, and how do those reasons relate to learning and interaction?

Key findings

Flexibility is frequently an access requirement, not a preference. Students described choosing online participation because it fit their live situation, including commuting distance, work patterns, caring responsibilities, or illness. In other words, online participation often enabled students to participate at all, rather than representing a weaker form of engagement.

Mode choice also prompts students to reflect on the conditions they need to learn well. Students linked participation decisions to learning preferences, such as where they could concentrate, how structured they wanted the session to feel, and how much self-organisation they could realistically sustain. The paper highlights that online participation can demand more self-responsibility, while on-site participation can feel more structured and easier to manage.

Social presence is the strongest pull towards on-site participation. Students repeatedly associated on-campus attendance with better interaction, informal exchange, and a clearer sense of belonging in the learning group. This was not only about what the instructor did, but also about peer dynamics and whether students felt “part of” the group in a given mode.

"Perceived successful interaction is closely tied to on-site participation while the value and roles of online participation are being redefined."

Finally, the authors argue that hybrid settings can become more “participant-sensitive” when they support students to make intentional choices about how they participate. However, that only holds if institutions design for interaction across locations, rather than treating online participation as a secondary option.

Practical implications for UK higher education

For Student Experience teams, Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Education, and Market Insights professionals, the takeaway is that hybrid participation patterns are interpretable, but only if you listen for the reasons behind them.

Add a “why this mode?” prompt to your feedback loops. A short open-text prompt in module evaluations or pulse surveys, such as “What made you attend online or on campus most often?”, can quickly surface whether hybrid is functioning as access support, a learning preference, or an interaction trade-off.
Analyse participation themes separately for online and on-site students. When you segment free-text comments by participation mode, different issues tend to emerge, for example access barriers and self-regulation challenges online, and interaction quality and group presence on campus. Student Voice Analytics is designed for this kind of categorisation and benchmarking at scale.
Design explicitly for cross-location interaction. If students see on-site participation as the only “socially real” mode, hybrid becomes a two-tier experience. Practical fixes include clear interaction norms, structured turn-taking that includes online voices, high-quality audio, and purposeful small-group work that does not exclude remote participants.
Avoid using attendance as a proxy for satisfaction. A student may be fully engaged while participating online, or disengaged while physically present. Hybrid settings make it even more important to triangulate: combine participation data with qualitative feedback, and look for barriers you can remove, not deficits you can label.

FAQ

Q: How can we use student feedback to understand low in-person attendance in hybrid modules?

A: Ask directly, and make it easy to answer. Add one targeted open-text question to module evaluations or mid-semester check-ins, then analyse the comments for recurring drivers such as commuting and timetabling, caring and work obligations, health, learning preferences, and interaction quality. Segment results by cohort where possible, because the drivers for commuters or part-time students can differ from those on a standard full-time pattern.

Q: What should we be cautious about when applying this research to UK institutions?

A: The study is based on a specific setting, with a defined student group and a particular implementation of hybrid seminars. It provides a well-evidenced map of reasons students give, rather than a guaranteed prediction of outcomes in every context. The practical approach is to treat these reasons as hypotheses, then test them against your own student voice data, including free-text comments, response patterns, and engagement indicators.

Q: What does this imply for student belonging and the role of student voice in hybrid teaching?

A: It suggests that belonging can become mode-dependent if social presence is only reliably experienced on campus. Hybrid can widen access, but it can also unintentionally isolate online participants unless interaction is designed across locations. Student voice is essential here, because the risks and benefits show up first in narrative feedback: whether students feel seen, included, and able to participate meaningfully in the learning group.

References

[Paper Source]: Lisa Breitschwerdt, Christina Hümmer, Regina Egetenmeyer "Online and on-site participation in synchronous hybrid settings: reasons from the perspective of higher education students" DOI: 10.1007/s10734-025-01487-z

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