Flex-Ed - workflow enabled flexible learning

In addition to the rather limited ways of how technology is used, another problem of flexible delivery is related to technology itself. In spite of the Internet based multimedia applications, educational technology is still lingering behind current developments in the IT (Information Technology) industry and is still task oriented rather than process oriented. The emphasis is on support of the learning tasks rather than the study process. Thus, there is no integration of technologies that support various aspects of the study process: eg. student administration and enrolment by the university administration, course and subject management by the department and subject related learning tasks as designed by an individual lecturer. We argue that integration enabled by process oriented technology would provide more flexibility, including relaxation of various time constraints such as beginning and end of an academic semester, set exam dates etc. as well as more flexible learning including individual learning pathways.

One of the latest process oriented information technologies is workflow technology. Workflows are considered to be one of the currently most influential information technologies, next only to the Internet. They are process oriented business information systems that offer the right tasks at the right point of time to the right person along with resources needed to perform these tasks. Workflow technologies are capable of supporting control and enforcement of business processes enabling collaboration between business processes, effective time management and monitoring at various levels for various categories of users, automatic support for dynamic modification of the existing processes and relatively seamless integration of various tools and applications.

The main objective of this paper is to present a concept of the flexible, fully integrated, learning environment called Flex-Ed that is enabled by workflow technology. Furthermore, we will illustrate why web based educational packages for online delivery have to be process oriented in order to provide more flexibility and we will illustrate our points by analysing currently available, popular commercial web based educational packages. We will also describe the most important objectives of the Flex-Ed project which is currently undertaken at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland in close collaboration with DSTC Pty Ltd. Thus, we will illustrate how Flex-Ed could be used to provide flexible access to high quality course/subject content, to provide individual time management by relaxing enrolment time constraints and removing the concept of a academic semester, to integrate individual components of the study process such as enrolment, learning and assessment, to support individually tailored learning pathways, to enable pedagogically sound, innovative learning methods that encourage true collaboration and work in groups, and to provide better management of support services and subject related resources including better access to personal teaching assistance.