EJEL Volume 6 Issue 1
March 2008

Bridging the Gap - Taking the Distance out of e-Learning

Peter Karlsudd and Yael Tågerud
University of Kalmar, Sweden

The status of distance and flexible learning within the University of Kalmar has shifted in recent years and the university’s leadership has articulated a vision emphasizing flexible learning as a strategic issue. The capability of the educational system to adapt to more flexible education is, therefore, the focus of several programs for staff development as part of the Teaching & Learning strategies.

However, there still exist two academic environments which are often separate and engage different educators, namely on-campus and distance learning. In order to promote closer relations between these two academic environments, a pedagogical intervention was made in the form of an academic course based on collaborative learning and cross-institutional cooperation. This activity was part of the Flexible learning project (FL-project) that also addressed issues of organization, structure and administration of flexible learning. In this paper, however, only the pedagogical intervention is described.

The intervention combined, in fact, three objectives. First, it aimed to raise the competence of the colleagues taking part in the development activities. Second, it aimed to try out and apply the support functions that had been established as part of the FL-project, e.g. a production team. The third objective – which was the most strategic one – was to help bridge the gap between distance learning and on-campus educational environments.

The intervention was a process-oriented pedagogical effort whereby teacher teams worked to enhance flexible learning in either new or existing courses. A central concept was a close link between theory and practice and a reflective approach to teaching.

The intervention resulted in more teachers getting involved in flexible learning, understanding the opportunities and challenges involved. At the same time several problems surfaced indicating the need for further competence development efforts and the need to address structural and organizational matters in order to further promote flexible learning environments.

Keywords: distance learning, flexible learning, higher education, ICT, information and communication technology, pedagogical development

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