Assignment 1: Five Dimensions of Flexibility

In the first lecture of ‘Pedagogies for Flexible Learning supported by Technology’ we talked about flexibility of learning. Off course, I thought about distance education. But the lecture and the article describes that flexibility is more than distance education. We had to read the article of Collis,

Vingerhoets, & Moonen (1997) about Flexible Learning.

According to the literature and the lectures there were five dimensions of flexibility.

The used the word flexibility as a synonym of learners choice. I will explain the five dimensions and the advantages and disadvantages of each dimension.

Dimension 1: Flexibility related to timeThis dimension has everything to do with time. For example the moments you can hand in your assignment. We had to hand in this assignment at 27^th of September. But according to this dimension the deadline of an assignment can be optional.
Not only is time flexible for hand in an assignment, but also when lectures being given.
Advantages of this kind of flexibility is that a student can study when he has time to do that. But that’s also an advantages of the teacher.
On the one hand the flexibility of time is very nice if you want to work in your own time, but there will be a lot of miscommunications when teachers and learners do this. As a student it’s very hard to work in groups, because everybody wants to study at a different time. Also the communication with the teacher is difficult. When you hand in an assignment, the teacher will maybe look at it a couple of weeks later even if you expecting just one day later.
                Conclusion: Flexibility of time is handy, but there must be some kind of rules, I think.

Dimension 2: Flexibility related to content
This dimension will focus on the content of a course. For example: is the course practical or theoretical? And what’s the content of the course?
 When we were in second education we can choose some courses. Not all the courses, because some of them were standard and obligatory. So we can choose between English, French and German. We can’t choose the type of course. So most of all the courses were theoretical.
The advantages of choosing the content of your courses can be very motivated. You can choose whatever you like. That’s motivated I think.
For a teacher it works the same way. He can teach about his interests. A down side of this is that maybe students just choose the simple courses, just to have more spare time. Also student may pick a course that’s not useful in the future.
Another disadvantage is that there must be a lot of teachers who know everything about everything, because everyone can choose a different course, so teachers must know a lot. That’s not workable.

Conclusion: To choose the course of your interests is good, but it’s not practical for schools to organize it.

Dimension 3: Flexibility related to entry requirements

This kind of flexibility has to do with the conditions of participants. When your flexible in the requirement more people can do a study that they like. A big advantage is that you can do a study you really like without doing any tests.
Off course the disadvantage is that there are a lot of difference in level. Some students can easily learn, but others can’t. For a teacher that’s very complicated, because they have to make assignments that everyone can do.

Conclusion: I think it’s impossible to have no requirements, off course you can compromise in some way.  

Dimension 4: Flexibility related to instructional approach and resources: This flexibility contains the way a course is being given. You can choose for a group lessen, a face-to-face lessen or individual lessons. Also the language can be discussed. For a course you can also choose your way of examination and you resource. There are a lot of advantages. A learner can choose his language and the way he want to work. Maybe he likes to work alone or with a big group. Also he can choose between a verbal or a written assignment. And maybe the learner likes to work with WWW or just with books. A lot of options are possible. This is the same with the teacher. He can choose what he likes. The disadvantage is that it’s very hard to form a class. If everyone likes another way of teaching, you need more teachers and you can’t form a class. For a teacher is difficult to support learners, because they choose different assignment and resources.

Conclusion: The options are very nice and if it works you make a lot of students and teachers happy, but I think it is very complicated to give all these options. Maybe you only give an option on assignments.

Dimension 5: Flexibility related to delivery and logistics:

This dimension contains the way student learn, like from  home with a computer (distance learning) or how people make connection with technology. So technology is an important factor in this dimension. An advantage of this dimension is that you can choose your own technology. Maybe you more a person for face-to-face contact rather than sitting behind a computer. Off course the biggest advantage is that everyone around the world can follow your class and as a teacher you can reach everyone around the world. You will learn a lot from other students and teachers.
Teacher can tape their lessons and put them online so every student can see it. A disadvantage is that students maybe say they seen it, but they didn’t.  As a teacher you have no control of which student participate in your class.

Also the relation with each other is not so personal if you just have contact via email.

              Conclusion: Some ways of flexibility in delivery are very handy for students who need to travel                a lot to the University. Also email contact is handy, but when you really need to discuss something  it is harder by email.