2008 - 2013 Flexible Learning Course

For those of you who weren't able to make the last face-to-face session you may be wondering what happened. We shared some ideas about people's design plans and teaching resources and hopefully people felt they got some help from each other regarding ideas and strategies. For example, Daniel and Bibiana have students who may not be able to access a computer let alone the Internet. and if they can access a computer, their computing literacy is low.

Remember flexible learning is not just about online delivery. Demonstrations of practical skills can easily be videoed and put on DVD. If you develop some meaningful questions and activities to accompany the DVD, the students will be guided to think about the concepts and reasons for carrying out the skills and techniques in a particular way. Bibiana has described some of her ideas for her flexible design plan and will be sending out videos of machine knitting techniques on DVD, accompanied by learning materials to distance students. on-campus students can also access the DVDs from the library which will enable them to review the demonstration over and over as many times as necessary.

Where students have difficulty accessing a computer think about referring them to the Community Learning Centres in Central Otago and all around NZ. These are TANZ facilities so wherever their is a campus belonging to a TANZ partner our students can use the facilities. Or you may use other method other than online/email for communication e.g the phone is a very useful tool still and teleconferencing is quite effective. and videoconferencing through Otago Net schools.

Chris is also going to use video resources as a strategy in her design plan.

To finish the session, we joined an Elluminate computer conference with Gibbsland TAFE, Australia, where there was a presentation by Leigh about wikis and some discussion.

There has been very little action on people's blogs so it would be great to see this as your next task - to add something about what you have been doing and what your plans are for a teaching resource and your design plans. I need to get Chris and Rebecca's blog addresses and add them to the participant list. I have added some comments to people's blogs...hope you got the alerts.
Bronwyn