ABSTRACT
SUMMARY Back in 1988, Chris Bell did me the singular honour of asking me to give the opening keynote address. He has invited me back to give a further keynote address. This time, he has asked me to follow the ‘interactive keynote’ that opened the conference by presenting a broad overview of what flexible learning is all about. I will do this by attempting to answer the following three questions:
what is flexible learning?
what different forms can it take?
what are the benefits?
I will begin by showing how the term ‘flexible learning’ has evolved over the years, and how it is now gaining widespread acceptance as a generic term covering virtually all situations where the learner has some control over the way in which learning occurs. I will then try to give you an idea of the wide diversity of forms that flexible learning can take. I will do this by looking at some of the ways in which my colleagues and I at The Robert Gordon University have adopted a more flexible approach to teaching. As you will see, this is helping us to make our teaching more user-friendly and more effective in preparing our students to cope with the challenges that they will face in the outside world.
