Anytime, anywhere, anyplace

Anytime, anywhere, anyplace: Articulating the meaning of

flexible delivery in built environment education_1138 904..915

Richard Tucker and Gayle Morris (2011)

This research elaborated the process for negotiating aspects of flexible learning by listening to teachers, students, and institutional perspectives on the “flexibility.” The negotiation is defined as “something to bridge the gap between student expectations of flexibility and the teachers.”  In this context, the research needs to define what the flexibility meant. The study suggested that two types of flexibility which are planning flexibility and interpersonal flexibility. The planning flexibility means “how to maintain largely the same teaching and learning program but offers more delivery flexibility,” and the interpersonal flexibility implies “pedagogical change to more student centered contributions.”

Students’ interpretation for the five delivery dimensions such as the time and place, content, pedagogy, delivery channels, types of support was straightforward. Students asked flexibility in delivery for both lecture/theory and studio/design modules, which was consistent with previous research results.

I personally thought it was interesting to test flexibility because the matching process as an analytical tool for measuring and implementing the flexibility cannot be easy. However, the study was well-organized based on the interview,  and the results of this study concluded that the change to interpersonal flexibility is more difficult since instructors are asked to redesign course activities and their assessments. According to the results of the study, they showed that students demanded the categories of flexibility are “pedagogy and delivery.”