Flexible delivery: creative environments

In the contemporary university, the advent of online capacities for teaching have shifted our perceptions away from sage-on-the-stage delivery of face-to-face lecture/tutorial formats into more flexible pedagogical practices. With the rapid global expansion of open and distance learning and the accompanying proliferation of high quality learning materials, a tremendous resource base has been developing within the tertiary sector. Most universities with external and internal cohorts use a dual-mode style of delivery that provides quite separate experiences for both student categories. In programs that adopt a converged mode of delivery, students are not corralled into either internal or external mode, rather, all students become flexible learners, with access by choice to a variety of resources and interactive events, each designed and timed to maximise quality learning. The reflexive nature of creative writing makes it ideally situated to offer fully flexible delivery, but, moving to a fully converged model is a complex process, requiring considerable planning. This paper follows on from one delivered at the 2006 AAWP conference when we were just about to embark on a pilot project using a converged mode of delivery in the writing program at Southern Cross University. Now having conducted the pilot we will discuss the experiences we have had of flexible delivery and show the ways in which creative writing is suited to a fully convergent mode of delivery and at the same time pointing to ways in which we need to be aware of the dangers of using it, while demonstrating how we have sought to maintain a safe and creative writing environment for all students.