In 2004 the Australian Flexible Learning Community began a public online group, "Getting Started in Flexible Learning" which was moderated by Judy Fawcett and targeted especially for practitioners who were new to flexible learning and wished to engage in a process of guided discovery. This article is drawn from the discussions that took place in the group between February and November. Many thanks to all who participated.

What are some different educational strategies that I could use in flexible learning?
Adopting a flexible learning approach doesn't mean changing everything about your approach to teaching and learning. Many current practices can be part of a flexible approach. Educational approaches and strategies that contribute to flexible learning include:

• Workplace training
• Community classes
• Study centres
• Recognition of Prior Learning
• Alternative learning pathways to various levels of accreditation
• Self-paced and self-access study
• Work-based projects
• Mentored learning
• Teleconferencing
• Video conferencing
• Using a range of learning activities (role play, simulation, reading, listening, presentations, group work, discussion, out-of-class projects etc)
• Student support services
• Using a range of resource types (print-based, web-based, multi-media)

Flexible learning can be viewed as an incentive to reflect on teaching and learning environments, and develop new ways to engage with students. Flexible learning is not a goal in itself; the goal is to improve the learning experience and the learning outcomes. Flexible learning is a method by which educational goals can be achieved. This means that the decision to implement particular flexible learning strategies should be informed by educational values and goals and by specific educational contexts

Why use flexible learning?
Recognition of the need for and value of a flexible learning approach has been a response to a number of factors. As higher education has become more widely accessible it has needed to cater for a more diverse range of students. There has also been greater recognition of individual differences in preferred learning styes, cultural differences and gender differences, and a greater understanding of how these differences can be catered for in educational programs.

A demand for more flexible approaches to education and training has also emerged from the changing social context of education and the diverse needs of employers. Flexible learning is seen as a mechanism for making learning more contextualised than classroom based learning alone. The increasing pace of social change and the consequent focus on lifelong learning are further factors.

What are the main Features of Flexible Learning?

Learner centred
Underlying the practice of flexible learning is an educational philosophy that puts the learner at the centre of the learning experience. The aim of a flexible learning approach is to respond to the diverse needs of learners.
 
Constructivist learning theories
Related to this learner-centred philosophy is a view of learning as being an active and interactive process that fosters independent learning rather than a passive learning experience. Learners are engaged in a process of guided discovery and exploration that involves using what they know to learn more about what they are interested in. Learning strategies such as contextualised or situated learning, collaborative learning, team work, project-based or activity based learning, and problem based learning facilitate a process where learners construct meaning to make new knowledge relevant to them. Flexible learning approaches support such a constructivist approach to teaching and learning by offering choices in learning strategies, and access to a wide range of resources.

What part does technology play in flexible learning?
Technology has become a very significant component of the development of flexible learning because it offers a lot of new options for offering choice. However, flexible learning is a much broader concept than technology or computer based learning. The various learning technologies that are now available are best viewed as tools, which can be used, amongst others, to make learning opportunities more flexible. Becoming proficient in the use of new learning technologies often becomes the focus of training in the field of flexible learning, because, people working in education and training feel that this is the aspect of flexible learning that they are least familiar with or skilled in.

However, this doesn't mean that technology based learning is the same as flexible learning. Ability to use new technologies gives teachers and trainers new tools they can use in order to provide a greater range of choices, but educational decisions still have to be made about how best to use these tools, together with other tools, strategies and teaching approaches, to meet educational goals.

Another risk of over-emphasising the importance of technology, is that new learning technologies may be used as an add-on to existing educational programs, simply because they are new, and seen as innovative and motivating in their own right. Using a new technology effectively means examining how it can best be embedded and integrated into the educational process to genuinely enhance learning, not just embellish it.

How has the role of the teacher and learner changed with flexible learning?
New approaches to learning and teaching, and the introduction of new technologies have meant some new and different roles for education professionals. Central to the learning process are the teacher and the learner. Flexible Learning approaches emphasise the teacher's role as facilitator, as a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage". The learner's role is an active one rather than a passive one. Flexible learning approaches allow, even expect, learners to take responsibility for their learning process, to make choices, to control their learning. These views of teacher and learner roles can involve a considerable shift in thinking for those accustomed to more traditional approaches.

Apart from the teacher and learner roles, there are many other roles needed for flexible delivery, particularly where new learning technologies are used. These include student support, management, instructional design, online design and development, and technology support.

One of the features of these new approaches is that roles are no longer as clearly defined. That is in some instances one or two people may cover all the roles mentioned above, whereas in other instances large teams of people fulfilling very specialised roles will work together on one educational project. Team work is often a crucial aspect of delivering education and training in a flexible learning environment.

Adapted from: Welcome to Flexways: A Professional Development Guide, 2005, Australian Flexible Learning Framework, http://flexways.flexiblelearning.net.au/aboutfl/index.asp

What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is the infrastructure on which e-learning can be built and delivered. It is an applications software package that contains instructional materials and manages, tracks and deploys all learning across the extended enterprise.

Within a higher education environment, the LMS usually focuses on the support and integration of teaching and learning. Specific functions include: Course Development, Content Management, Course/Curriculum Management, Course Delivery, Assessment/Skills-Gap Analysis (pre, ongoing, self, etc.), Communication (individual and group), Tracking/Reporting (across a degree or program or department, participation), Tutor Support, Skills and Records Management, Student Interfaces to all components of the LMS, Administration Processes/Requirements/Registration, etc. Conceivably, an institution can easily deploy thousands of distinct e-learning offerings, hybrid courses, and instructor-led classes and manage them all from one place, the LMS.

What are the Benefits of using a LMS?
Depending on your perspective, a LMS can provide the following benefits:

From the Administrator perspective, a LMS should:

• Allow the institution to serve a greater number of students
• Improve student performance tracking
• Increase student retention
• Increase the opportunity for additional tuition dollars
• Increase administrative efficiency and decrease expenses
• Shorten the ROI payback timeframe

From the Faculty perspective, a LMS should:

• Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of course/content management efforts
• Improve assessment capability
• Increase assessment opportunities
• Decrease course preparation time
• Improve content availability
• Improve content sharing within the course, among instructors, and across disciplines
• Improve intra-class and interclass communications
• Increase overall productivity of faculty

From the Student perspective, a LMS should:

• Enhance the personalized nature of the learning experience
• Provide additional, timely, convenient academic support
• Provide personalized academic support opportunities
• Increase course completion opportunity/capability
• Improve overall learning

From the IT Professional perspective, a LMS should:

• Be scalable and reliable in terms of performance
• Promote standards compliance, quality control, and integration across product and vendors
• Allow for easy campus-wide deployment and management
• Increase IT operational efficiency

What are some examples of LMS?

Moodle
Moodle is a course management system (CMS)—a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), education via computer-mediated communication (CMC) or Online Education.

Moodle was the creation of Martin Dougiamas, a former WebCT administrator at Curtin University, with postgraduate degrees in Computer Science and Education. Martin's later Ph.D studies examined "The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry" and this research has strongly influenced some of the design of Moodle, providing pedagogical aspects missing from other commercial e-learning platforms.

Constructivism asserts that knowledge is constructed in the learner's mind, not transmitted in an unchanged form from books or teachers. A teacher operating from this point of view creates a student-centered environment that helps students build upon their existing skills and knowledge, rather than simply publishing and then assessing the information they think students need to know.
 
The social constructionist philosophy of Moodle builds further on constructivism by asserting that such learning occurs particularly well in a collaborative environment that everyone builds together (like a Wiki in fact!). Each participant in such a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. One's task as a 'teacher' can change from being 'the source of knowledge' to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the (sometimes negotiated) learning goals of the class.

For more information their URL is:
http://moodle.org/

A Working Example of Moodle:
Jennifer Phillips is using “Moodle with her college students which is great as they can access it from home. It has built in quizzes, forums, journals etc. that can be added and files can be uploaded and accessed by clicking on the link.”
http://citwings.com/

WebCT
Taken from their website: WebCT, Inc. is a provider of e-Learning solutions for higher education. WebCT developed a flexible, integrated environment designed to foster inquiry, encourage discourse and inspire collaboration. They say their mission is “to help institutions deliver on their commitment to educational excellence with enterprise-wide learning management solutions which integrate the richest and most flexible pedagogical tools with existing campus infrastructure.”

For more information their URL is:  http://www.webct.com

Janison Toolbox
Taken from their website:  Janison Solutions is also a provider of innovative e-learning software through the provision of quality, client centred e-Learning solutions and the development of fully integrated interactive portals.

Their flagship product Toolbox is a powerful component-based learning management system (LMS) incorporating all the tools developers need to quickly design, author and manage all aspects of the online e-learning environment - no plug ins required. The Janison Toolbox is now in every State in Australia as well as overseas.

For more information their URL is:

http://www.janison.com.au/janison/default.asp

Do you need a Learning Management System to do Flexible Learning?
In a word, No!

What is Open Source? What role can it play in Course Development?
Here is one explanation of Open Source:

"The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.

We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.

Open Source Initiative exists to make this case to the commercial world. Open source software is an idea whose time has finally come. For twenty years it has been building momentum in the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing all the rules."

This site is a good starting point when investigating what all this means (eg. the FAQ page): http://www.opensource.org/

Further reading:

10 Tips for Flexible Learning

Open Source CMS article

Open Source 101