Table 2: Definitions of flexible and distance learning in EU countries (EIOL 5, 1991, p. 38)

Country	Definition
Italy	Flexible and distance learning, normally provided at a distance with tutorial support.
Germany	Decentralised training for specific qualifications by means of multimedia tools certified by concerned authorities: permanent training and distance teaching are often used in comparable contexts.
United Kingdom	Openness of training activities in terms of; (a) accessibility (time and place); (b) learner-centred pedagogy; and (c) learner's control of content. Distance teaching and new technology-based training can be a component of open learning but do not coincide with it.
Portugal	Promotes training of adults encouraging "self-learning".
Denmark	Capacity of students to influence and fine-tune the contents. Training is based on student groups communicating through computer conferencing.
Belgium	Promotes distance teaching through periodic exchange between the students and the training centre
France	Introduction of multimedia tools in training courses. More recently flexibility, individualisation of the learning solution and integration with classroom based learning have been introduced.
Spain	Promotes training based on distance teaching. More recently flexibility and modularity have been underlined.

The main issue, however, is that 'flexible delivery' implies a one-way direction from provider to learner. The interactive technologies, on the other hand, empower professionals to send as well as receive, and thereby initiate professional development networking that goes beyond the unidimentional implication of 'delivery'. It is, therefore, necessary to re-look at the terminology and perhaps place the emphasis on 'flexible teaching and learning'.

Flexibility can, for example, be limited to a range of teaching and learning strategies, including various resource-based options, such as: lectures with tutorials, independent study, discussion/seminar groups, debates, computer-based education, and many more. It may also, however, include organisational arrangements such as summer schools, block programs, emersion programs, part time evening programs, distance learning (off-campus) and mixed mode.

However, these ignore the major power shift being experienced in post-compulsory education and training. That is, the shift in power from the institutions to the learner. Whereas previously universities used to be able to dictate entry requirements, entry times, sequencing of curriculum components, content of curriculum components, timing and mode of delivery and assessment requirements, this is no longer possible in the deregulated educational marketplace. Learners can now choose from a range of providers and negotiate these elements of their learning. Such new demands from the 'clients' means that there needs to be increased flexibility in administrative procedures as well as curriculum content and delivery.

The result is that we are truly confronting a major paradigm shift for teaching and learning, and that many of the components of the new mainstream paradigm come from the distance/open learning tradition. This new paradigm is based on a new 'philosophy' of higher education which is inexorably linked to the applications of communication and information technologies.

Resistance from traditional/conservative universities and staff is severe in some instances, because of their elitist philosophy of higher education. This is based on a Middle Ages view of education being not only elitist but also part of a secret society. So in those days there was the masses without the privilege of education and the cloistered academics practising their literacy. The story goes that this led to magical practices among the masses when, for example, the developed chants and words like 'abracadabra' which was an imitation of the monks reciting the alphabet.

In summary, flexible teaching and learning is that mixture of educational philosophy, pedagogical strategies, delivery modalities and administrative structures which allows maximum choice for differences in student learning needs, styles and circumstances. It is characterised by:

• a shift in the emphasis of responsibility for learning from the teacher to the learner;
• the use of a range of teaching and learning strategies;
• the ability of the learner to negotiate various aspects of the learning program;
• flexibility within the curriculum to provide learners with alternative pathways through the content to suit learner needs;
• a range of delivery systems, including the use of communication and information technologies;
• flexible administrative procedures; and
• increased learner support systems, including guidance services, pre-packaged learning resources, library and information services and access to computer facilities, in the recognition that there are several sources of information and knowledge, especially online electronic sources.

The extent to which these forms of flexibility will apply in a given situation will depend on the needs of the learners, the nature of the subject and its objectives, the approach of the ;teacher and the feasibility of the ;various options. These four elements are considered further in Section X below as a decision-making model.

3. National and international contexts

There are at least three major developments in higher education which require flexible approaches to teaching and learning:

• increased flexibility for students in terms of access to and progression through courses to move closer to meeting their needs, including delivery of courses to where they work and live;
• use of a range of technologies, but increasingly the Internet online, for delivery; and
• globalisation of markets and delivery.

Universities in Australia, however, have not been slow in recognising this potential for their own purposes. Open Learning Australia, for example, is moving into the Asian market-place using the ABC and its learning packages, and several of them already have courses online on the Internet. USQ, for example, has a Graduate Certificate in Distance Learning available internationally on the Internet.

The use of communication and information technologies in higher education has been a major aspect of change in the past 10 to 20 years. Whereas universities were using various single function technologies (eg. audioconferencing, satellite television, electronic mail) during the 1980s, they are now moving to multimedia formats, such as CD-ROM, videoconferencing and online Internet, which itself is becoming increasingly 'interactive multimedia'.

Globalisation of delivery and markets is evident in the examples above. It will become less feasible, and perhaps less socially and politically desirable, for increasing numbers of overseas students to come to Australia to study on-campus. Universities in the USA, for example, are advancing their delivery directly into overseas countries or they are exporting their expertise to assist overseas universities in developing countries to become self sufficient.

4. International examples

4.1 United States

Western Governors' University - USA

In February of 1996, the 13 members of the Western Governors' Association (WGA) endorsed and approved a document entitled From Vision to Reality.

Governors' Goals for a Western Virtual University

All western governors are feeling the press of increased demand on their state systems of postsecondary education. All recognise that the strength and well-being of both their states and the nation depend heavily on a postsecondary education system that is visibly aligned with the needs of a transforming economy and society. At the same time, the states' capacity to respond to these challenges is severely constrained by limited resources and the inflexibility and high costs of traditional educational practices and by outdated institutional and public policies.

The governors of the western states see the exploding availability and capabilities of advanced technology-based teaching and learning as a potentially powerful means to address these challenges, and to make cutting-edge educational and assessment services much more widely available. Therefore, the governors, meeting in late Fall 1995, charged a WGA design team with creating a design plan for a western virtual university to serve the region and an implementation plan through which such an entity could be established and financed.

These actions received the unanimous support of the governors present. The basis for this unprecedented gubernatorial support is the potential for a regional virtual university to serve a number of important shared goals. These include:

• expanding access to a broader range of postsecondary education opportunities for citizens of the West;
• reducing the costs of providing these opportunities and providing a vehicle for cost sharing;
• providing a means for learners to obtain formal recognition of the skills and knowledge they acquire through advanced technology-based learning at home, on the job, or through other means outside the formal educational system;
• shifting the focus of education to the actual competence of students and away from "seat time" or other measures of instructional activity;
• creating high performance standards that are widely-accepted and serve to improve the quality of postsecondary education;
• and demonstrating new approaches to teaching and assessment that can be adopted by more traditional colleges and universities.

4.2 Europe

Europace 2000

EuroPACE 2000 is a trans-European network of universities and their partners in education and training, i.e. private enterprises, regional and professional organisations and public authorities. EuroPACE 2000 has approximately 60 member organisations all over Europe, 45 of which are universities. Through the use of different models EuroPACE 2000 demonstrates and develops the potential of telematics for the European university of the future and thus contributes to the realisation of the concept of lifelong learning.

The Coimbra Group

Coimbra Group is a network of 33 European universities - relatively old, not in capital cities, where tradition combines with modernity and plays an important role in academic and student life - with a common goal of strengthening and improving academic cooperation.

As a group, the member-universities intend to establish special academic and cultural ties, as well as to set up privileged channels and concrete and advanced facilities of information and exchange.

When creating this web site we intend to bring you the most up-to-date information about the Coimbra Group's activities as well as its policy and goals. This site will not only serve as a source of information for those surfing and wishing to know about the Coimbra Group and its Universities, it will also intend to be, progressively, a point of contact for the Group members.

University of Exeter - T3

Telematics For Teacher Training - A European Union Funded Project:

Telematics is a European term for Telecommunications and Information Technology which describes the electronic transfer of sound, images and text.

The Telematics for Teacher Training project will encourage over 4,000 teachers to adopt telecommunications and new technologies in schools and universities across the European Union. It will establish courses for teachers within a growing consortium of universities and commercial services, which will continue to develop beyond the millennium.

Primary and secondary teachers, their teacher trainers and library staff will develop new practices together enhancing the quality of learning and knowledge of Europe within the curriculum. Best practice will be refined for teachers of mathematics, languages, science and technology in several European languages and many cultures.

T3 will focus on supporting the new approach to education and training within the European Union: lifelong learning. Teachers will model this practice in front of their students. Teachers' skills in both Telematics applications and in tutoring students how to learn for themselves will be available, even in remote rural areas, with the use of new technologies.

Universities in Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and the UK form the consortium with support from partners which include telecommunication companies. These universities across Europe will design and develop courses for both staff and students. For example, 'Telematics for teachers of mathematics'. Other courses will use Telematics naturally within their delivery, such as in school based teacher training and in the tutoring of teachers studying for a Masters of Education. Commercial partners and ministries will use the experience to develop policies, services and marketing strategies appropriate to education.

The three year project will commence in January 1996 and, within two months, the 'T3Centrum' will provide a meeting place for teachers on the Internet. There they will find resources, information and opportunities for team teaching and collaborative development across Europe. International desk top videoconferencing through dial-up ISDN will provide further opportunities.

The project will also refine a European core curriculum in Telematics for teacher trainers and provide guidelines for library staff in their support of teachers. These will be validated with European professional associations and education ministries.

RATIO - Plymouth University
http://www.ratio.org.uk/

RATIO will create a network of 40 local innovation centres, equip & resource them, install computing satellite & videoconferencing links and then deliver business and vocational information & training services to the heart of communities across the south west

TELEMATICS
the convergence between Computing and Communications Technologies to provide flexible solutions to life in the 90's

Poised on the brink of almost boundless advances in communications technology, representative regional Telematics policies and initiatives can play a major part in the shape of future marketplaces. That said, such activities must aim to be at least as flexible as the volatile networks which they seek to take advantage of and customers which they seek to serve.

The South West is potentially one of the biggest beneficiaries of technological advance, in keeping with other UK areas whose populations suffer from Socio-economic exclusion through geographical remoteness or industrial decline. Paradoxically, such areas are likely to be less attractive initial targets for commercially orientated providers. It is therefore important for regional activities to be proactive in encouraging providers / key players to establish a presence.

To do so truly effectively, any Telematics decision should seek to reflect the widest range of views opinions and needs within the local & business communities. And to do this, it is imperative that the community is given every opportunity to experience and thus understand the potential of the medium so that their feedback is both informed & relevant to their day-to day needs.

RATIO - the South West Telematics Regional Challenge Bid will implement a strategy which aims to establish the South West as a UK Telematics Region of Excellence and a demonstrator Region for the European Union.

Across the Region, a network of 40 Innovation Centres will be equipped with computing, satellite reception & videoconferencing equipment, bringing affordable access to Lifelong Learning opportunities to the entire region.

The Bid will create a visible telematics infrastructure, with a presence which will impact across the entire Region at local level. it will attract a vast range of local information & training providers and encourage dialogue between them and their clients.

The envisaged network will be sufficiently flexible to employ appropriate technologies to meet the needs of first time as well as advanced user groups.

Having provided appropriate future proofed equipment into Innovation Centres which have been identified @ local level, this bid has the ability to deliver tailored open flexible training to ensure that the Innovation Centres both CAN be used and then ARE used by customers.

Through it, the partnership seeks to minimise & ultimately overcome many of the traditional problems of social exclusion people living the South West experience through;

• The decline in traditional industries of fishing, agriculture, mining and MOD employment
• The restrictive road & rail infrastructure
• A lack of appropriate training opportunities for individuals living remote rural areas

Our mission:

Major research teams at the Open University, working in related areas of learning applications of new technologies, joined forces in mid-1995 to create the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi). We share a belief that our future depends on understanding and sharing knowledge, and we therefore aim to define the future of life-long learning by harnessing and shaping the technologies which underpin it.

Our interests include knowledge systems, multimedia enabling technologies for disabled people, advanced telematics, virtual classrooms, customisable authoring tools, virtual science laboratories, intelligent agents, and 'training on demand'.

Our broad ambition is to gain some insights into what it means to share knowledge; how knowledge can be captured and conveyed; how to exploit new technologies to satisfy the ever-increasing appetite for communication bandwidth; how to meet the needs of mobile students; what radical new methods are needed to assist disabled students; how to work in groups with students scattered around the globe; how to harness software in the service of human understanding.

Our research agenda is large and exciting. We are as interested in corporate knowledge management and intelligent agents as we are in the needs of students in the wired society. We want to foster life-long learning, but to do that we need to evolve new media, harness them appropriately, and ensure that they are firmly rooted in a rich representation of knowledge.

While KMi is largely about front-line research, we also place a strong emphasis on the needs of the Open University's current and future student population. KMi is committed to a throughput of ideas and developments to course teams at the Open University.

The OU itself is finding that the very nature of everyone's roles is changing: academics, editors, designers, producers and software developers are increasingly involved in one another's work, and KMi is exploring creative ways of intermingling these evolving roles.

We are seeking significant external funding to enable KMi to serve as a major focus of activity in other relevant arenas. There has been talk recently of the `Education Superhighway', and we are therefore forging partnerships with both educational establishments and industrial concerns in order to ensure that we help empower the average citizen with tools relevant to everyday needs.

We cannot stress too strongly that just the wiring of homes and the creation of `content' is too simplistic a view of how things ought to proceed. The interlinked processes of accessing, sharing, and creating knowledge require significant research and development. Re-skilling society is a major agenda item for all of us, and we fondly trust that the next generation of life-long learners will grow up in an environment that uses knowledge media to radically improve their lives.

Oxford University - UK
http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/

The Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning programme at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education:

TALL is working towards a broad programme in which the need to be self-sustaining is balanced by the need to create new learning opportunities for disadvantaged learners. TALL has adopted the following aims, the third being the most substantive.

TALL aims...
to create a financially self-sustaining programme within five years that meets the needs of a wide range of adult learners by:

1. reviewing and identifying effective forms of technology-assisted lifelong learning;
2. conducting applied research into technology-assisted lifelong learning;
3. developing course frameworks, courses and educational services that exploit technology in support of lifelong learning;
4. evaluating all work undertaken and disseminating the results and insights gained to local, national and international audiences.

5. Decision-Making Model

The choice of open learning/flexible delivery options should be based on four decision-making considerations:

5.1 Assess the needs of the participants/clients and practitioners:

• Personal needs: age, gender, abilities, learning styles, nature of employment and work patterns, home responsibilities, nature of isolation, other special personal needs;
• Professional needs: program relevance, experience and qualifications, present knowledge level;
• Access needs: location, distribution (geographic), disability, number of participants/practitioners; and
• Choice: types of programs/courses/services available, place, pace, time, timing, duration, individual or cohort preference.

5.2 Clarify the objectives of the program, nature of the processes and the relevance of the content:

• Interaction and participation needs: level and type of interaction required among the participants such as live (ie synchronous, immediate/real time) versus delayed (asynchronous) interaction, level and type of supervision required, number of participants/practitioners;
• Teaching/learning strategies most appropriate for the content and objectives; and
• Content demands: need for audio, need for visual component (eg still graphics, colour and motion), type of knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to be acquired and/or demonstrated.

5.3 Consider the choice and skills of the practitioners:

• Confidence and skills in particular mode of delivery;
• Program strategies chosen as most appropriate; and
• Support available.

5.4 Determine the feasibility of the program:

• Access to equipment and systems for production and delivery, by participants/practitioners;
• Costs and availability of funds;
• Local support for participants (eg local site co-ordinator, training in the use of the technology, learning centres, information); and
• Institutional support (e.g. library services, production services,
• administration services).

6. Future issues, trends and unanswered questions

Future predictions usually fall short of reality both in terms of actual developments and the pace of change. The major areas that will impact on flexible delivery of professional development are associated with:

• changing role of the provider,
• globalisation,
• deregulated climate for advanced education and telecommunications,
• compulsory continuing professional development,
• increased technological options, and
• virtual learning.

With regard to globalisation, in addition to institutional consortia mentioned above, it is increasingly possible for providers to transmit both synchronous and asynchronous education/training programs anywhere in the world. For example, the National Technological University provides masters degrees to several countries via satellite television and electronic mail interaction; Duke University provides a 20 month Masters in Business Administration online for US$19,500. The globalisation of the virtual university or the international virtual higher education market place has some exciting potential, but there are also several issues to be considered in putting it all together. Questions that may be asked include:

• How will learners determine the quality and authenticity of such programs?
• How will credit be obtained for subjects taken from another country?
• Who will the teaching staff belong to if they are teaching through another institution?
• Who will the students belong to?
• What are the regulatory and cultural implications of the globalisation of education?

Due to the move to 'open learning' options in advanced education, the rise in private providers who are being encouraged, the corporatisation of government services, deregulation of telecommunications, cuts in government funding for education leading to a user pays system, and a general devolution of authority in education systems, we are entering a deregulated climate in which future developments are very difficult to predict. This type of catch-as-catch-can competitive environment may cause concern if it leads to lower quality of programs and a fragmentation of the curriculum for professions. Attempts to overcome this are evident in terms of the setting of national and international standards for learning outcomes, as well as requiring providers to become registered in the country in which they are operating.

Increased technological options, especially through the convergence of modes of communication onto the Internet, indicate that all of the above areas of development will expand exponentially. This, plus the increased miniaturisation of computer technology, the increased flexibility of computer use, the personalisation of communication contacts and the personalisation of search engines, will make it possible for adults to tap learning just-in-time from sources anywhere in the world to meet life and work needs as they arise. This type of virtual or 'feral' learning will not necessarily have any overall sequence or plan and educational institutions will be challenged in terms of learners fronting up for recognition of prior learning. The learner, whether professional adult or young child will be able to say: 'I am my school' or 'I am my university'.

References:

Australian Senate Employment, Education and Training References Committee (1994) Inquiry into Open Learning. Canberra: The Senate
Daniel, J.S. (1996) Megauniversities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education. London: Kogan Page.
EIOL 5, 1991, p. 38
Moore, M.G. (1992) Teleconferencing in the Theory and Practice of Transactional Distance. In Distance Education for the Twenty-First Century: Conference Abstracts. Nonthaburi, Thailand: International Council for Distance Education.
Queensland Access to Higher Education: On the Road to Open Learning. (1989) Brisbane: Queensland Board of Advanced Education
Flexible Delivery. (1992) The Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) National Flexible Delivery Working Party. Brisbane: Open Learning Institute