A reflective note

Technologies have been integrated into instructional practices to help learners learn more deeply. For better integration, the use of technology is inseparable from the subject matter being taught and instructional strategies (pedagogy) applied to achieve learning goals. In other words, the three components-content, pedagogy, and technology-must align with one another or the so-called Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK). Research findings have revealed the benefits of such technology integration in the classrooms, but in some cases these findings could not be implemented due to several factors, such as availability of facilities, knowledge and skills of teachers to use such technologies for better learning. This lack of knowledge and skills was the underlying background for our professional development program designed for 30 natural science teachers from ten schools at Pekanbaru, Indonesia.

The process of designing professional development as an educational designer: Some critical aspects

Two choices were available and we chose professional development program for our design project. This professional development for in-service teachers was designed by our group consisting of three members. Since designing TPACK professional development is not an easy job, working in a group was really helpful. For me, a good designer is the one who can work collaboratively. It means that two heads are better than one in which a designer needs to function collaboratively.

When we first began working with the design of teachers’ TPACK professional development I was anxious to find out as much as possible about the field of in-service teacher education. Perhaps the article and the book that most impressed me at that time was Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A new framework for teacher knowledge by Mishra and Koehler (2006) and  Desinging professional development for teachers of science and mathematics by Loucks-Horsley, et al (2010). We then decided to design TPACK PD for natural science teachers in Pekanbaru-Riau, Indonesia. This choice was made based on our agreement because in designing a PD program, we should know the context. However, it was impossible for us to conduct such analysis because it would have taken time and a lot of money, and we finally based our analysis upon our experiences, especially my own experience when I was participating professional development in Pekanbaru. We tried to describe the context as real as possible.

With regard to this context, the success of education can be measured by its effectiveness and efficiency. According Davies (1984) as cited by Tessmer and Harris (1990), effective is when students learn right things, while efficient is when students learn things right. To achieve those two components, many people are involved and contribute to the success of education, such as teachers, principal, supervisors, parents, and community at large. Among all, teachers are central in this issue. Fullan (2007) states that “educational change depends on what teachers think and do”. This statement indicates teacher prominent role in bettering education. Therefore, their professional development must be maintained.  For this purpose, the most common professional development in our context is conducted through training. Unfortunately, I often found teachers complaint with the training they attended because the training was not based on their real needs in the classrooms, or the so called solutions-seeking-a-problem syndrome. This phenomenon really challenged us in order that we could design a TPACK PD on the basis of performance problem encountered by the teachers. Since finding problems for the basis of our TPACK professional development was crucial, this aspect became the starting point for our design. Without problem, PD would be useless either for the teachers or designers. The problem must be real and the TPACK PD should be aimed at solving it. At this stage, we discussed a lot to find out the real problem faced by the teachers, and found many problems, but we could not work with those problems and finally agreed to focus on lesson material problem.

The analysis was done and problem was found. What did we do with the problem? This is also another challenge for us. I read several literatures about professional development and then I shared with the other group members. Determining the best strategy to solve the problem took some time for us. In this stage, we wanted a strategy that best engage teachers in learning. We did not want to give a fish to the teachers, but to teach them how fish. Constructivist approach was adopted for our TPACK PD. The idea is that they already have prior knowledge particularly in content and pedagogy, and the spoon-feeding approach that has always been implemented in our context was unsuccessful for teacher development. The only aspect with which teachers have low knowledge and skills in the integration of technology for their instruction. Finally, we decided to organize a two-day workshop and lesson study for the real implementation in the classrooms. The most difficult part was to integrate TPACK into our professional development design. When we thought and worked in isolated part, say for example when we only focused on the technology, we failed to address the others, pedagogy and content or vise versa. Aligning content, pedagogy, and technology was totally difficult, and it was even worse when we worked with difficult content with limited technology available. At first, we tried it, but we failed because it was only the use of technology, not the integration. We did this several times while the time was approaching the deadline at the time. However, this difficult time has made me aware of the important view of a holistic approach when designing TPACK in general. We should not focus on one aspect, but the three aspect. What I could say is that if we want to work serially, then we have to think content first, then pedagogy, and technology. But, what I have noticed is that technology approach did not work. It means that when we first started with the technology for the design, we failed to address content and pedagogy. Relevant with this issue, Mayer (2001, p. 8-10) argues that technology-centred approach focuses on how we can use technology in our design. The focus is generally on the cutting-edge technologies. Learner-centred approach, on the other hand, begins with an understanding of how human mind works by asking how we can adapt it to enhance human learning. The focus is on using technology as an aid to human cognition. Mayer does not agree with the former, but the latter. In this case, I fully agree with Mayer and we in the group have already experienced it when we started with technology and then failed to address the other important parts. Gooden also (1996) suggests that the most effective way to benefit from technology is to integrate it into the curriculum as opposed to integrating curriculum into the technology.

What I thought we failed to address in our design is budgetting. It’s not really difficult since I have experiences in budgetting. Because the time allocated for the TPACK professional development was short, we forgot to include the budget estimation. I first remembered about it and had an estimation about 4 to 4,5 thousand euros. Unfortunetely, it was not mentioned and detailed in our report.

The last but not the least, the success of design is not ultimately measured from how systematically we undertook the design process, but how well we can also convince stakeholders about the design and then participate during design and implementation process to establish the external consistency (Kessels & Plomp, 1999). Having a good design for teachers’ TPACK professional development is not enough; unless it is implementable. Implementable here means both the design is logical for real implementation and the money to conduct such program. Therefore, it is highly necessary to engage stakeholders, especially the local government, in allocating some amount of money to run the program. This would happen as long as we can convince them, and I am sure we can do it. Another involvement of stakeholders, such as principals and other teachers, is shown in our implementation phase of the professional development program. Principals and other teachers are invited to see the program, and they can also give suggestions for better implementation.

In conclusion, designing a TPACK PD is complicated for me. We have to provide time to do it. We also have to find problem, formulate goals, and at the same time select the best strategy and materials. We need to adapt into teachers’ needs and level of their proficiency and design activities and tasks that are workable to the teachers. We had to answer a sort of questions, such as: Is the design effective and useful for the teachers? Do we formulate clear aims and make good stages in the program? How do we measure it? How do you implement it? And some other questions...

Working with TPACK

At first impression, I assumed that TPACK framework was just about how to include technology in classroom, but it’s not so; it’s not just a matter of putting the three domains in one lesson. It’s about integration. A fully integrated technology combines the three domains (Content, Pedagogy, and Technology) in a synergistic manner that makes the knowledge of one domain inseparable from that of another domain. Thus, Harris and Hofer (2009) indicate that planning for students’ curriculum-based learning that integrates appropriate and pedagogically powerful use of the full range of educational technologies is challenging, my experience with it gives me a lot of insights: the road for understanding from inclusion to integration. I have refined my understanding about TPACK.

Furthermore,designing a TPACK PD poses particular challenges, particularly when integration the three domains and when addressing TPACK for schools with limited technology and teachers with low knowledge and skills about technology. At the end we made it. For teachers with cutting-edge technologies available in their schools, our program might be simple, but in our context it’s profound. Context makes a difference. In other words, what is good in a certain place may not be good at the others. Moreover, a good working-relationship with stakeholders is essential and the ability to take on board feedback and criticism. A design product without support from stakeholders would probably be difficult in its implementation. In order to minimize the possibilities of failure, we had to design a TPACK PD carefully, obtaining input from the context, and making sure that the concerns of teachers and students have been addressed as the aims of the program.

 Overall, I enjoyed the opportunities for designing a TPACK professional development for science teachers. With other two members in our group working with TPACK professional development for natural primary school science teachers we shared and worked together to design a good TPACK PD program based on several perspectives. I was actively involved as were the others in the discussion, design process, and writing the report. To conclude my remark, I never heard the term “TPACK” before the course on ‘Pedagogies for flexible learning supported by technology’, but currently I know it and has experienced it in a real practice for the design of TPACK PD.

How to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education 

Talking about how to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education is inseparable from teacher change, and it is crucial in the field of teacher education. In my opinion, there are two approaches to stimulate teachers for technology integration: bottom-up approach and top-down approach. Through bottom-up approach, schools or designers should focus on teachers as the main actors of the change, focusing on knowledge and technical competence, beliefs, attitudes, understanding, self-awareness, and teaching practices. In other words, teachers should be introduced to the benefits of educational technology and involve them in real practices in order that they understand more deeply about it. As I have noticed in our context for TPACK PD, the teachers possess technology such as laptops, but they have never been taught how to effectively use it for instruction. Consequently, technology is not integrated into science lesson. In this regard, Hew and Brush (2007) said that the lack of technology knowledge and skills would be a major barrier to technology integration. Furthermore, teachers should be involved in school vision planning. When teachers are not included, change fails to happen (Hopkins, 2005) because teachers only make use of contents that they think useful for learning.

For the top-down approach, schools should provide relevant technology with which teachers can get advantages of such technology in their classroom practice. If there are no technologies, what can teachers integrate into their lesson? Therefore, it’s the responsibility of the government, schools, and other stakeholders to facilitate it. Moreover, technology integration is difficult to establish in which people work individually; it must be in partnership with all school members where teachers can share, discuss, and determine their success. Therefore, it is necessary to create a mechanism which could better facilitate communication between teachers and stakeholders, and to establish school learning community where teachers can share, learn from each other, and reflect on their TPACK practices.

In conclusion, the abovementioned examples are not the only examples for the two approaches. There are more examples...

References:

Fullan, M. (2007). The new meaning of educational change (4th ed.). New York: Teachers College Press,.

Gooden, A. (1996). Computers in the classroom: How teachers and students are using technology to transform learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Instructional planning activity types as vehicles for curriculum-based TPACK development. Chesapeake, VA: Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE).

Hew, K. F., & Brush, T. (2007). Integrating technology into K-12 teaching and learning: current knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research. Education Tech Research Dev, 55, 223–252. doi: 10.1007/s11423-006-9022-5

Hopkins, D. (2005). Tensions in and prospects for school improvement. In D. Hopkins (Ed.), The practice and theory of school improvement: International handbook of educational change (pp. 1-21). Dordrecht: Springer.

Kessels, J., & Plomp, T. (1999). A systematic and relational approach to obtaining curriculum consistency in corporate education. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(6), 679 - 709.

Loucks-Horsley, S., Stiles, K. E., Mundry, S., Love, N., & Hewson, P. W. (2010). Desinging professional development for teachers of science and mathematics (3rd ed.). California: Corwin.

Mayer, R. E. (2001). The promise of multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

Tessmer, M., & Harris, D. (1990). Beyond instructional effectiveness: Key environmental decisions for instructional designers and change agents. Educational Technology, 30(7), 16-20.

TPACK and its added values for teachers

In this section I would like to discuss the core components of teachers knowledge and after which try to reflect on some advantages of TPACK based on my personal experience as a teacher. The first part will address a general description of teachers’ knowledge on the basis of Mishra and Koehler’s work: each individual component of the knowledge, paired components of the knowledge and the combination of the three bodies of knowledge. The second part will deal with reflective discussion on the added values of TPACK.

The three domains of teachers’ knowledge: TPACK

It is undeniable that teachers’ knowledge of pedagogy and content is essentially important, but as technological advance is playing increasingly important roles in our educational practices in which technology - such as chalks, blackboards, and markers in more traditional innovations or computers, PDAs, and smart phones in more advanced innovations – has come to our classrooms. This reality requires teachers to integrate or adopt technology into their classrooms for better educational practices as an additional capacity to their knowledge in pedagogy and content knowledge. Therefore, being a teacher should have a sort of required knowledge: three domains of teachers’ knowledge.

The three domains of knowledge include technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge, or the so-called TPACK for they become the core components of teacher knowledge, and are fundamental for effective instructional practices. First is content knowledge. It is teachers’ knowledge and understanding of the subject matter or course being taught to students, e.g., Math, Natural Science, English, etc. Without this, teachers would teach nothing to students. Second is pedagogical knowledge. Having a great deal of content knowledge is not enough for effective instruction. If content knowledge answers the question of what teachers teach, then pedagogical knowledge answers the question of how teachers teach the content. This knowledge is teachers’ understanding of instructional approaches, methods, and classroom techniques with which teachers would be able to provide powerful learning environment.  Third is technological knowledge. It refers to teachers’ capacity to appropriately select and use technology that best support and promote effective instruction. This capacity allows teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms in which teachers can benefit technology for their own classroom practices. This knowledge also requires teachers’ skills to operate technology they use, for example teachers may have to be able to operate a computer and other technology devices.

These bodies of teachers’ knowledge can be connected in pairs as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological content knowledge (TCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). Pedagogical Content Knowledge refers to how teachers teach particular content-based material to students, Technological Content Knowledge is how teachers select and then use technologies to communicate particular content knowledge, and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge mainly addresses how teachers use particular technologies when they are teaching (Harris & Hofer, 2009). These all three pairs form as Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) as illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1. TPACK Framework

As seen in the figure, the intersection of the three circles forms a combination of three knowledge domains, the so-called TPACK. This model of teachers’ knowledge is inseparable with the work of  Mishra and Koehler (2006).

What advantages can teachers take from TPACK?

In this part, I will discuss some advantages of TPACK which I mostly reflect from my experience as a teacher.  I have been teaching since 2003 in that time Information and Communication Technology (ICT) especially the introduction of internet was booming in my region. I firstly didn’t know at all if such innovation would affect educational practices around the world. I was really curious about it and tried to learn from some expert friends. With little knowledge triggered me to learn more about it especially how ICT would be possibly integrated into my classrooms. I then participated in seminars as well as international conferences to enrich my pedagogical knowledge as well as technological knowledge; at the time I was not familiar with the latter term. I realized afterwards that technology is important to support my teaching practices; I read some literatures on how to use technology in teaching, and practised it in my classroom. There are some advantages of what I could learn from such experience in which I combined the three knowledge domains in my teaching practices.

Cost-effectiveness is the first added value. In teaching I used to copy materials and students also did the same; students handed in assignment in paper-based copies in which they had to print them out. It meant we had to spend money for that. But, with technology lesson materials should not always be printed due to the availability of digitals like e-books and so on. I posted materials online on a virtual classroom I created for free and gave my students the class key I gave to them and then they created their own account to join the class; I also asked my students to send their assignment via e-mail to me without necessarily printing it anymore. I realized that having knowledge and skills on technology could save my money and students also experienced the same thing. Another advantage is that teaching and learning process becomes easy. The ease of teaching would be in terms of delivery. If teachers know how to effectively disseminate information and transfer materials to students, then they find it easy to do so with technological skill. Previously, I always got difficulties in communicating with students. Calling by phones or cell phones to every student is impossible because it took times and charged me a lot of money. By e-mail and other messengers communication becomes easy and cheap.

Having good content knowledge, using effective teaching strategies, and knowing what and how to integrate technology would increase students’ motivation and behaviour to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation in learning. For example, when I taught general English to fresh university students, I invited them to learn in a multimedia language laboratory instead of learning in a normal classroom. Students were very enthusiastic; they were happy because they wanted to learn language with computer applications. For me I was trained by the lab supplier on how to operate the lab; it’s a kind of technological knowledge for me. What I found with students was that most students were motivated and we didn’t realized at the time that class time was over. It is important to note that language lab itself is a thing and would not give any advantages, unless I knew how to use it for my teaching purposes.

I also personally believe that TPAK would be able to create a student-centred learning and low-structure situations where students are provided with numerous options and a great deal of autonomy. In the context of a student-centred learning, I just introduced students how they could operate the computers in the lab to learn language. The applications in each computer allowed students to focus on the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) they wanted to learn. My role at the time was only facilitating students and gave support when they got troubles. Learning was steered by the students. It was amazing for me; technology as well as knowledge about technology did help me a lot in shaping students’ learning. In foreign language teaching, therefore, it is necessary for teachers to be familiarized with CALL or Computer-assisted Language Learning, CMC or Computer-mediated Communication, CALI or Computer-assisted Language Instruction and so forth because in the context of foreign language teaching those learning models are able to facilitate students with spoken or written native English. With regard to a low-structure situation, options in my opinion represent flexibility. With technology, several learning options could be offered. For instance, as was stated, learning should not always take place in normal classrooms. Learning in a lab or at distance from home would offer a new situation, and learning can be enhanced through computers with some educational applications. Students could also choose what they wanted to learn first. They could start with listening part or they wanted to begin with reading part. It’s flexible and learning is self-directed!

Figure 2. Language Laboratory

It is important to note here that the added values of TPACK are not limited on the above-mention advantages. It depends on the tools we use, the context where we use the technology, and other contributing factors. What I want to say is that TPACK would enable teachers to create a powerful, productive learning environment. With content knowledge, I know what to teach; with pedagogical knowledge, I know how to teach; with technological knowledge, I know what technology best suits and how to use it to support my instruction; and with TPACK, I understand what and how to teach effectively with technology support.

References:

Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Instructional planning activity types as vehicles for curriculum-based TPACK development. Chesapeake, VA: Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE).

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

Cooltoolsforschools is really cool.

Last lecture in ‘Pedagogy for flexible learning’ concerning more technology and education was absolutely inspiring for me. What made this lecture so special is that it’s just like opening windows to the world: opening my mind to the richness of technology for educational purposes. On the lecture my teacher introduced us what a wonderful website I have ever known for technology in education. It’s http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/.

This website is really informative on a number of tools which are beneficial for educational practices. It ranges from presentation tools, writing tools to file storage & web pages. I would say, all tools attached to this website are definitely useful either for teachers or students.  During the lecture our teacher asked us to explore one of the available tools, and I was even confused with selecting one because all tools are title-catching for me. But, with other group members we decided to get to know more about file storage and web pages and presented to the class. Wow...it’s a lot. I am only familiar with few of them: most are new to me. There are 16 for free storages, 18 for free websites and 7 for website builders. We then selected dropbox and webs.

Dropbox is a network-based application and it is a free service with which people can share documents, photos or the like easily. With dropbox people should not email documents as attachments to their friends, colleges, or family anymore. If you want to use it, just install it to your PC or laptop and then you can invite people you want to share your documents with. Visit http://www.dropbox.com/ for more information concerning installation and other information. Next, if you want to create your own web page, you can use webs or freewebs. You can either use the free one or upgrade to the premium one. I had some experiences with webs or previously called freewebs. For me it’s nice because it provides many templates and other interesting components. 

simSchool as a pedagogical and technological application to support novice teachers

simSchool is a network-based classroom simulation. It is just like a flight-simulator. It is also called the game of teaching (Zibit and Gibson, 2005). This simulation helps us practice classroom management before entering real classrooms. It is aimed in analyzing student differences, adapting instruction to individual learner needs, gathering data about the impacts of instruction, and seeing the results of their teaching (http://simschool.org/). For you, to be able to use this simulation, you have to register. Further information about it, just visit http://simschool.org/. That’s at least short information about simSchool.

With this simSchool, I tried to learn how it works and how beneficial it is for real classroom practices. I firstly wanted to learn about classroom management, and I worked out with ‘Everly’s Bad Day’. First of all, I tried it with one student and understood his personality and academic record in the simulated class. The student has a good academic record. He likes working either in group or individually, but he has low self-esteem. That’s what I know about the student from the record available in the simSchool. Then, I started the class by assigning him a task on level 1, that is “go over last week’s lessons”. Afterwards, I continued the lesson on level 3, and assigned him a new task, namely “take notes during lecture”. And the class ended with level 1 task, which is “take an oral quiz”. The results of these classroom activities are not really bad not good, a little bit neutral; there is no great improvement in terms of openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. However, His academic aspect decreased. The results are illustrated below:

Upon the completion of some practices with simSchool, I now try to reflect on it. In this discussion, I shall focus on what I found very useful from simSchool as well as what I saw some weak points of it, and finally try to relate it to the pedagogical concept.

Overall, I found simSchool very helpful for me in shaping classrooms. It helps me understand students’ personality, preferences which are the bases for effective instruction as well as types of possible learning activities in the classroom. simSchool simulation has also simple components in it. The interface is not so complicated that I can easily search and do the practice.  To my opinion, this simulation is better for my learning since it gives a picture of how real classrooms look like. What I found most interesting with simSchool simulation is that it can improve my confidence and self-efficacy.   Most importantly, I really want to practice it in a real classroom situation and see what is going to happen. This real experience would enable me to appraise this simulation or the other way around. In addition, simSchool simulation could develop some components of my knowledge as a teacher, such as my practical knowledge or the repertoire of classroom techniques and strategies, contextual knowledge or my familiarity with classroom context and phenomena, my pedagogical knowledge or my ability to plan, adapt, and improvise, my personal knowledge or the personal beliefs, principles and approach to teaching, and indeed my reflective knowledge with which I am capable of reflecting on and assessing my own virtual practices before entering real classrooms.

On the other hand, it took me some time to understand the rationale and the concept of simSchool simulation although I have already got some information from the professor. The simulation represents only a small classroom setting and certain cultural philosophy; I doubt if this simulation would benefit a lot to teachers with a large number of students and with students from multicultural backgrounds. Managing small classrooms is, to my understanding, easier than organizing large classes. In my country particularly in primary and secondary education, teachers are overwhelmed with a large number of students in one classroom.

Instruction is sometimes difficult for some instructors. It has evidently been true because instructors have to search for a lot of information about students’ characteristics and background and think of how they can best explain things. As technology could improve the transfer and transmission of knowledge in education, instructors today can easily teach materials; one of which is through simulation. According to Ruskin, Fanning and Gaba (2009) simulation is “an imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process and consists of techniques that provide a teaching tool that is particularly well suited to dynamic and challenging environments (p, 476)”. simSchool is a kind of simulation-based training with technology. It is known that computer simulations are pedagogical and technological applications. In this regard, Summers (2004) stated that simulations allow training to occur almost anywhere and anytime, and this flexibility can be used to reduce or eliminate many of the variable costs associated with traditional training, such as classrooms and instructors (as cited byBell, Kanar, & Kozlowski, 2008). It is clear that simulation, like what simSchool provides, could benefits people around the world, and learning become enriched.  

References:

http://simschool.org/

Bell, B. S., Kanar, A. M., & Kozlowski, S. W. J. (2008). Current issues and future directions in simulation-based training in North America. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(8), 1416-1434. doi: 10.1080/09585190802200173.

Stonemetz, J., Ruskin, K., Fanning, R., & Gaba, D. (2009). Simulation-based learning as an educational tool anesthesia informatics (pp. 459-479): Springer New York.

Zibit, M., and D. Gibson. 2005. simSchool: The game of teaching. Innovate 1 (6). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=173

What should be flexible in learning?

The nature of what is meant by flexibility could mean different things to different people, and the term used for it suggests that there is no universal agreement among theoreticians and scholars about its definition. However, a nice definition given by Khan (2007, p. 1) could better serve flexibility in learning:

Flexible learning can be defined as an innovative approach for delivering well-designed, learner-centered, and interactive learning environments to anyone, anyplace, anytime by utilizing the attributes and resources of the Internet, digital technologies, and other modes of learning in concert with instructional design principles. Can we do what learners want?

With regard to this flexibility, Khan further maintains that a well-designed flexible learning course allows learners to become actively involved in their learning processes (p. 4). Furthermore, as flexible learning is not only necessarily related to distance education, several flexibilities could be offered in the light of learners (Collis & Moonen, 2001):

1. Learning modes: Offering learners with options such as on-campus or off-campus learning modes characterizes flexibility in learning. These alternatives are provided for learners to fit their needs in order that they can learn more flexibly. Rapidly evolving information technology dramatically influences the way educational institutions (e.g., universities) serve their students; distance learning becomes possible for those who want to learn at distance. Learners can learn from any places with this kind of learning mode through Learning Management Systems (LMS).
2. Social organization of learning:  Understanding learners’ learning styles is important for it is basic information for learning organization. Some learners prefer working individually and some others collaboratively. Offering inappropriate learning organization would hinder learning. This social learning organization could be in the forms of individual, group, or the combination of both types.
3. Content: Flexibility in learning content might be offering choices to learners what they want to learn. In this case, learners are involved in selecting course contents.
4. Learning materials: Learning materials are not only limited on textbooks. Learners are provided with various learning sources, such as journal articles, web-based materials, videos or audios, and other authentic materials.
5. Interactivity: As learning is an active process, interactivity becomes a basis to engage learners. Providing learners with several methods of acquiring information, knowledge and skill would make learning more flexible, for examples, human-to-human interaction, human-to-computer-interaction, and so on.
6. Media to support learning (technology): A variety of media can be offered to learners with which learning is supported and flexibly done, such as computers, PDAs, smart phones, etc.
7. Language: Some learners are better at certain language, and the others prefer another certain language to use for their learning effectively; therefore language is also another component that can make learning more flexible by offering some language choices for learning (e.g., English, Indonesian, and Dutch).

http://www.nicenet.org/

An example of a website supporting flexibility in learning related to learning modes is Nicenet Internet Classroom Assistant. This is a non-profit organization. The website allows teachers around the world to create a virtual classroom for free.

References: 

Collis, B., & Moonen, J. (2001). Flexible learning in a digital world: Experiences and expectation. London: Kogan Page

Khan, B. H. (2007). Flexible learning in an open and distributed environment. In B. H. Khan (Ed.), Flexible learning in an information society (pp. 1-17). Hershey: Idea Group Inc.

Liberating education

The course, Pedagogy for flexible learning supported by technology, is inspiring for me because in some cases on traditional classrooms in my country, the teacher is the king and the students are the people; therefore, students learn under restrictions created by the teacher (dehumanization). This phenomenon reminds me of a philosopher, Paulo Freire, who wrote a book in 1971 entitled "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Thus, through the above-mentioned course, I do hope such phenomenon could be overcome.

See: Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.