The spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic triggered a crisis in education as all instructors were suddenly required to modify face-to-face courses for remote delivery (i.e., synchronous and/or asynchronous) within a matter of days. In response to the need to move suddenly online, reliable video-conferencing software that had been unavailable in the past was made available to both faculty and students. What is not clear, however, is how effective the teaching and learning experience was in this "trial by fire" synchronous online course delivery mode compared with in-person or even asynchronous online formats (Lu et al., 2013). Moreover, as the world awaits (as of this writing) the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, universities were faced with the challenge of determining how to deliver classes in the upcoming fall semester. New formats were proposed to address the dilemma about whether to bring students back to campus full time or to continue to deliver instruction remotely. One such format is "HyFlex" (hybrid + flexible) in which instruction consists of blending online student attendance and face-to-face student attendance in a single course. Another format-- "BlendFlex" (blended + flexible)--differs slightly in that instructors preassign student face-to-face attendance on certain days and students may choose how to participate on other days (e.g., attend remotely, watch a recorded session, complete online module) (Quinn & Lee, 2016). Whether or not these new delivery modes are here to stay can be--and ought to be--informed by what instructional communication research can teach us about them.