Some thoughts on Flexible learning

In his article Reorganising Universities for the information Age, Annand (2007) draws attention to the age old struggle of coping with change! I love his reference to the early 19^th century uprising of the Luddites and his comparison between this group and contemporary educationalists fighting for retention of their craft. What I don’t understand is how anyone can fail to see the extent to which online learning can enhance our craft, particularly when the object is flexible learning.

Flexible learning originated in the hearts and minds of radical education reformers. It is about promoting life long learning opportunities that are accessible to all. An article in the June 2007 Economist discusses a system being developed by IBM’s India Research Laboratory in India. The system is based on something called “voice extensible markup language” and aims to create a ‘spoken web’ enabling illiterate people to access and use the internet, follow links, set up websites etc using spoken language and their mobile phones (sorry I couldn't find a decent online link). I’m not sure how the technology differs from the text converting technology used by people who are visually impaired or that which I saw in a recent TV documentary enabling severely impaired people to communicate their thoughts which are picked up and played back by computer but the point is that online technology allows people access to education who didn’t previously have it.

I do not think that online learning is right for everyone but nor is face to face. It’s simply another tool for my kete allowing me to better cater to the needs of students who are diverse in their characteristics, personalities, socio-cultural up-bringing, ethnicity, generational needs, gender needs, learning support needs, experiences in their world, maturity, emotional needs, general support needs, life circumstances and so on (let’s call all these factors learning styles). In short online learning enhances my capacity to cater to the diverse learning styles of my student group.

There is a problem with online teaching and learning options when they cease to be a tool one includes in their kete and start to be the new regime enforced by political and economic agenda’s. Unfortunately New Zealand has entered a new era and online teaching and learning are being imposed. As I see it, this climate makes it absolutely essential that I up-skill in preparation for a digitized learning environment. This is particularly so if I value the craft of teaching and value the importance of offering students a flexible learning environment. “It is the increased possibilities of instructional media and communications within the electronic environment that requires additional expertise, and this need not strip academics of their core academic responsibilities even in an industrialized setting.” (Annand, 2007).