Objective Three: Promoting flexible learning, and liberating it from conventional

All courses in the KFU‟s online education programme are supported with various technologies (e.g., virtual classrooms and Blackboard). This is especially true if we consider that all the learning materials and applications can be used and accessed at any time and from any location. Students can use their own PCs, laptops or smart phones to stay connected to lesson activities. All the online services offered to distance learners can be accessed via mobile devices. The KFU is rated as the first university in the KSA to offer and support Mobile Learning (“The deanship of e-learning and distance education”, 2012). This flexibility makes an online learning environment available for both students and lecturers at any time and place. More specifically, the students and lecturers interviewed clearly illustrated how this programme offered them flexible learning and teaching opportunities which helped them to overcome barriers such as family responsibilities and social obligations. This was demonstrated by the quantitative data that showed nearly 70% of the students were working either full-time or part-time (as mentioned earlier in Table 6). Further, the interviewed students agreed that this online programme was flexible and manageable with respect to their responsibilities. STU-5 asserted this point stating “I‟m working nine hours and I have two kids in addition to many other responsibilities, even though I managed to perform very well over the last semesters.” Students appreciated the way the programme was organized, in particular having regular internal assessment during the year. Students in this programme are not asked to attend the University campus for any reason except sitting the final exams. However, unlike other online education programmes being offered in the KSA, students in this programme have the advantage of choosing from more than 100 exam centres, distributed both inside and outside the country. Such arrangements cut down the need to travel from place to place. This is especially critical in the context of the KSA, which is a sprawling country. In fact, this point was raised and acknowledged frequently among all the interviewed students. STU-1 mentioned, “the KFU programme is more suitable for me than other programmes in Saudi … it has many exams centres so I do not have to travel to sit the exams.” In addition, the participating female students appreciated having separate exam venues that offered them privacy and convenience.

70

More fundamentally, the collected data revealed that learners in this programme appeared to have the ability to study at their own pace and manage their work independently. Table 8 represents the mean and standard deviation of the scale that measured Student Autonomy in the student questionnaire. Most of the students‟ responses to the items included in this scale ranged from 1 to 2 on a 5-point scale indicating a high satisfaction with the level of autonomy offered in this programme. The calculated mean was 1.7 and standard deviation was 0.67.

Table 8

The Mean and Standard deviation of the measure of Student Autonomy

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation

Student Autonomy 551 1.00 5.00 1.67 0.67

Interestingly, findings from the semi-structured interviews concurred with the analysis of the quantitative data. The interviewed students reported a high level of satisfaction, particularly about having more control over their learning. Students in this programme could make the decision of when and where to study. STU-1 offered this comment: “This type of education makes me feel free and self-organized … I can set out my own time and study independently.” LEC-5 articulated that because of this flexibility, students are able to complete their higher education, develop work-related skills and expand their knowledge regardless of gender, remote location or responsibilities.

Previous researchers have reported similar results about the flexibility of online education and how it could overcome very wide obstacles to education. The findings of Al-Shehri (2010) and Hamdan (2011) suggest that issues of accessibility including family responsibilities and distance from campus could be overcome with online education. Online education in the KSA could also accommodate the religious and cultural constraints of segregating male and female students and thus provide the latter with more flexible educational opportunities (Al-Sharhan, 2000; Al-Shehri, 2010).

The discussion of this objective can be taken one step further by examining faculty members‟ points of view about student autonomy in this programme. Their perspectives on this were neutral. The calculated mean of the item “There is a focus on activities that provide degrees of freedom, decision-making reflection and self-regulation” was almost 2

71

(sometimes) and the standard deviation 0.64 (see Table 9). This indicated that lecturers perceived the learning environment to offer a relative but not total degree of freedom and reflection to the learners.

Table 9

The Mean and Standard Deviation of the item Learner-centred environments

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Learner-centred

environments 32 1 3 1.91 0.64

This attitude was further clarified by the online teaching staff who were interviewed. They mentioned that students‟ responsibilities to some extent hindered them from following up lesson activities. Students appeared to be overwhelmed by their different roles within a learner-centered environment. LEC-3 stated that although students in this programme were able to access the learning materials at any time and from different places, few of them benefited from this flexibility. Students mainly visit Blackboard during the examination days to download the needed resources or to contact their teacher. This result echoes the findings of Alsunbul (2002), Abdelraheem (2006) and Sultan et al. (2012) who propose that the concept of distance education in the Arab region is alien and requires a new culture that has a long way to go in order to be properly developed and disseminated.

In short, course flexibility is found to be an essential element in offering online education. As noted by Cohen (2003), “a key difference in online learning is the choice students have in determining when, where, and how to learn” (p. 108). Students in continuing education normally have family obligations or work-related constraints, and hence they need educational opportunities that do not conflict with such responsibilities (Sun et al., 2008). Thus, the KFU needs to familiarize students with their different roles in online education in order to make them more committed, active and self-disciplined. As Wheeler (2003) states, “Flexibility can be measured not only in terms of the student‟s choice of where to study and when to study, but also by personal control over the study regime” (p. 179).

72

4.1.4 Objective Four: Reducing the cost of education and making it accessible to every