At present in our Community Learning Centres we facilitate flexible learning:Our students learn at their own pace.The course is at a level appropriate to the student's skill level ranging from Beginners to Level 3 (Year 13) Computing Qualifications.Students choose what time they want to come to a session (our sessions run in 2-hour blocks), we are flexible within a session ie people can come late or leave early (it's not like school).We do have an online course for National certificate in Computing (Level 2) which has been initiated through in tuto. In our area this online option does not appear to be popular. I don't know if the problem is that people don't know about it or if it is the style of the course. There is very little contact with the student, no discussion boards etc. The student has to come in to our centre to a 2-hour Introductory Course, where we show them how to access the Resources for the course & ensure they feel confident about it then they go home & do the course online & make a time to come in & sit a paper assessment & attend the Introductory Course for the next unit. I do always tell them to ring or e-mail if they have a problem, however that is not the same as giving regular feedback & encouraging the student to learn by asking questions. There is also a helpdesk they can ring but after participating in this Flexible Design Course I think our in tuto course lacks communication.

Hi Bronwyn,
I guess I was a bit tunnel-visioned in my interpretation of Flexible Learning. I have planned to design a course for ages & as I deal with computer courses I wanted to design a course which I felt would fill a gap in our range of courses. As for plan B students could communicate by telephone (tele conference) or by cellphone, or face-to-face in workshops (this decreases the flexibility a little), or by exchanging CDs(either video or aural). If we are to design a flexible learning course to give the student the most flexibility then a computer is an assett (in my field). We are looking at increasing our student numbers & trying to reach students who may not know about us in the area. We were thinking (for our computer courses) that we could actually take a laptop to more outlying areas to get people started on our online courses & give them an introduction to the course & then go back when they contact us for them to sit their assessments & sign up for the next unit. Granted this still involves a computer but we are trying to accomodate students who can't come to our centres by taking the resources to them initially, which is flexibility of a sort. We haven't actually done this yet but it is a possibility.
I am enjoying the current thread in the communication re learning, it has brought some very interesting points.
Vida

Hi Leigh,
I went to the site you suggested & thought it was great, I didn't realise that resources were available at sites such as these. I think the open learning approach would be a great way to encourage new & current students to participate in Flexible Learning Courses.
Vida

What is Flexible Learning to me?
I see a Flexible Learning Course as a course where a student can access all the resources, tools & information required from anywhere at any time as long as there is a computer available.
This is probably looking at Flexible Learning from a student's perspective but as a Facilitator I look at problems from a studen'ts point & try to give them answers that they can relate to.
I think this is the direction Flexible Learning is heading towards, we don't have teachers but Facilitators who point the student in the right direction to enable them to learn for themselves but are always there to help with problems.
The Goals which I hope to have attained when I finish this course
I hope to have a plan in place to enable me to design a Flexible course which fits the above criteria. In order to achieve this I need to think carefully about many things: Learner Profile ( who the students will be, what level are the students? Will the course be at the correct level for the students or will they need to do a prerequisite course of some sort?) Type of Course ( will it be part of a certificate etc), Resouces and Tools required, Course content, Assessment.
I'm going to use a Flow chart /mind map in order to group all these factors together & produce a course that works for students.