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