What is distributed learning? -its practical and coherent objectives for implementing variety into learning activities and materials and technologies
-involves individual and collaborative learning provision of academic theory alongwith practical although this can vary from topic to topic.
but is it flexible?
what would make a learning design plan flexible.
For now a scenario could be teaching an music on-line music theory, collaboration and composition.
My first strategy could be to design some content for a range of distributed audio delivery ( streaming downloading and posting DVD/CD) based on some projections and determined by the location of participants, their access to computers and the differences in dial up and broadband access. i.e.
a) low-end platforms eg. television, telephone, radio, low fi audio players and offline computers.
b) a computer-network platform with access to an internet/ intranet.
c) high-end broadband width platforms: live interviews concerts presentations video streaming, podcasting, realtime collaboration.
Some of these considerations along with the level of instruction, musical genres, instumentation and background/ previous experience, skill and training in music composition and software technologies, I will fine tune once I know who wants to participate. Now doesn’t this present a chicken and egg question; which comes first the course or the participants.
Who is it that really wants it ! the employers, their designers and facilitators or the participants.
in the course reading (Collis and Moonen 2001) “the key idea of flexibility is learner choice in different aspects of the learning experience.” So a component of my practice of Flexible design for music learning could be an incremental continuous movement over reviewing and reshaping the content etc. away from key decisions by the instructor and institution about a range learning dimensions (which were made in advance in order to design a course) towards student choice and student contribution to specify content to course providers.
April 5, 2008 at 6:33 am
Susan you have some interesting ideas about distributed learning and flexible learning options for introducing learning about music to students. I agree it is necessary to know who is likely to participate – ie. know your learners.
You have listed some great strategies and a diverse range of technologies – live concerts and podcasts – I am sitting up already!
Do you think there is a place to use music per se for learning in any subject rather than just having to teach music to music students? How could it be used to help students engage more fully with some of the dry and boring subjects?
May 30, 2008 at 11:31 am
[...] via student evaluation and including evaluation of course assessment, as discussed in a previous post for both learner profiles and in order to determine the future shape the content and the delivery. [...]