Flexibility in Learning

Flexible Learning

Flexibility is seen in many ways shapes or forms, I consider myself to be quite flexible. 4 years of breakdancing have taught me to bend in ways people consider unhealthy or impossible. I'm also very much flexible in my time, you can call me in order to do something and I can usually fit it in my schedule somehow, someway. When we're talking about flexibility in education we are talking about something else though. Flexible learning refers to moving away from a curriculum planned out in advance by instructors or institutions but going to a situation where the learner has a range of options available to plan the learning process. This flexibility has long been regarded as mere location-based but flexibility in learning allows for much more than just choosing a time and place to learn. In this post I will review 5 different types of flexibility in education.

Time-Related Flexibility

A form of time-related flexibility is allowing students to dictate their own pace of studying. The instructors can set out a course with supporting literature, video-classes and clear end-goals but no deadlines on when these goals have to be met. Students can choose when they want to work on this and how much time they want to spend on the subject.

The big advantage for the learner is that it allows the learner to dictate the way they follow the class. If they don't have a lot of time right now they can catch up later when they do, or when they do not fully understand a certain topic they can spend extra time on that which might not be possible if they had to meet a strict deadline. The big disadvantage is off course students slacking off, without external pressure of meeting deadlines students who don't have enough intrinsic motivation to finish the course might postpone, postpone until they do not complete the course at all.

Content-Related Flexibility

In content-related flexibility students get a choice in what part of the content they want to study. The CIMA-Mastertrack of Educational Sciences at the University of Twente is a great example. 6 electives are presented but only 4 have to be followed. The students get a choice in which subjects they want their master-education to be focused on. There's the choice to go very theoretical or very practical or one can choose to focus strongly on the Instruction and Media approach whilst some students might look at the Curriculum aspects more. With this form of flexibility students can give shape to their own education by selecting the subjects they want to study.

For the learner this is a great advantage, it allows them to focus on what they want to learn and what they want to get good in. This same advantage holds for the instructors, if students choose their own subjects to study one can expect them to be highly motivated to learn these. Off course this might interfere with the general evolvement of the student. If I were to get the option of choosing between studying history or mathematics as subjects I would most likely choose history. Math might have been the better choice for me though as it could support my general evolvement as a study. By giving students choice over what content they want to study there's always the risk they will create a "fun-package" rather than a set of content which will teach all the knowledge and skills they will need in everyday life and when they are going to work.

Entry-Related Flexibility

When we are talking about flexibility related to the entry of a course or even a complete study program we can look at what prior knowledge students must have to participate. One can be very strict about this and say that you need to have completed course A and B to participate in course C. Or one can be flexible. In order to participate in course C you need to have completed either course A and B, B and F, F and A or maybe even X and Z.

This allows students from different backgrounds to participate in the same course. This can foster discussion from different perspectives which can greatly help in the evolvement of the knowledge about the subject matter. It also allows students from different backgrounds to widen their view and perhaps study something they are interested in but is not covered in their study program. Whilst these advantages hold true there can be downsides to this as well. Due to a lack of shared background knowledge the educators will have to choose if they will discuss the basics in-depth which might turn off students or skip these basics and head straight for the in-depth subject matter which might alienate students which limited prior knowledge.

Instructional Flexibility

With regards to instructional flexibility there are off course a myriad of ways to be flexible. If one were to discuss them all this blog-post would become a book in its own right. I will contain myself to a form I find interesting and that is how we arrange the instruction. For education the teacher-in-front-of-the-class method has long been prevalent. However there are very many other ways of arranging how instruction is given. Students can discuss the subjects on fora, they can be assigned to study a certain topic and present it to their fellow students or they can study a topic and present their results to the whole world via a blog.

This freedom allows the students to give shape to the way classes are followed and can make instruction more interesting than just listening to a teacher for 4 hours. The downside is that it becomes harder for the teacher to control what is learned. If students have to study a certain instructional approach and explain it to their fellow students the teacher no longer has control over what information to give and what information to leave out. The teacher will have to assume another role in the learning process and this can be hard.

Flexibility of Delivery and Logistic

When discussing this last form of flexibility I wanted to focus on the types of help a student can get. For the longest time if learners get stuck they would come to the teacher to ask for help. However with the invent of media there's a lot more ways students can search for help (but help can still be found off-line off course, asking your neighbour during class if you get lost is still a viable solution). One can think of searching for information on Google, asking for help in a chat-room or forum or watching a lecture from a different professor on the same topic via iTunes U.

In this way students can find information they want faster and are not limited to the contact hours on which a teacher is available. It can also help the students if they are able to comprehend the subject matter at hand but are unable to understand the way the teacher explains it. The downside to this might be that the other sources available do not have the direct feedback you'd get if you were to ask a teacher or might not provide the same in-depth insights a teacher could give you.