This presentation reports on the next phase of the HYCOMM project, an international Erasmus+ initiative designed to support higher education teachers in developing the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed for effective HyFlex teaching and learning. At HCC 2025, the HYCOMM team shared preliminary findings from focus group research with academics in Norway, Spain, and Turkey. Those findings showed that faculty valued flexibility for increasing student autonomy, access, and participation, but also raised significant concerns about workload, student readiness, engagement across modalities, technological infrastructure, institutional constraints, equity, and the responsible use of AI. The findings directly informed the design of the HYCOMM professional development workshop, including modules focused on HyFlex foundations, flexible course design, AI-supported teaching and delivery, ethical AI use, learning resources, and evaluation of HyFlex learning. In this 2026 update, we move from preliminary design findings to pilot implementation and evaluation-in-progress. The HYCOMM workshop has now been piloted at three partner universities: University of Bergen in Norway, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain, and Özyeğin University in Turkey. We will describe how the workshop functioned across these institutional settings, what participants experienced as most useful or challenging, and how emerging evaluation evidence is shaping revisions to the training modules, AI-supported activities, and collaborative learning supports. Particular attention will be given to what the pilot reveals about faculty readiness for HyFlex design, the practical role of AI as a design and reflection partner, and the conditions needed to sustain flexible teaching practices beyond a single training experience. By sharing early lessons from three international pilots, this session contributes to the HCC 2026 conversation about how HyFlex learning communities can be strengthened through thoughtful faculty development, responsible AI integration, and ongoing evidence-informed improvement.
