Content and activities that you can access on a tablet or a phone, courses you can do from anywhere… Is it really so flexible…?

Stranded in Kathmandu.

April 2010 and the Iceland ash cloud grounded flights into Europe. I’d squeezed in a short Easter climbing trip in Nepal and now I was stuck in Kathmandu with teaching commitments pending and no quick way of getting home. The one little glimmer of hope was that much of the student support stuff for the Research Methods module and the Dissertation modules was by e-learning, and you are supposed to be able to do that sort of thing from anywhere… aren’t you..?

So a backpackers hotel at $8 a night that had an internet café on the ground floor, and a block booking on the nice-quiet-machine-in-the-corner-please.

– Contacted the University Line Managers – they went “REALLY…???…” and laughed.

– Contacted the PGT course co-ordinators… they went “OMG…!!!.”.. and laughed.

– Contacted the University IT guys saying I’d be accessing stuff (very) remotely… they said “yeah, whatever…”

So how did it work:

The students though it was “cool” (their words). No change in support ‘though a few did comment that its supposed to be the students that bunk-off in a backpacker dive on the hippy trail, not the staff.

IT was fine. As support is mostly text based (mostly email) it was seamless; the resources really do what they are supposed to.

What did it cost..? Eating in the Thamel district and $8 a night for the best room in the place was actually cheaper than being at home. I kept all the receipts for internet access; little paper flimsies, stamped and triple-signed for an average of 200 Nepali rupees a day (about £2) which made a better souvenir than an expenses claim. Only really expensive bit was the jewellery. With the delay I’d missed my wife’s birthday…. and out wedding anniversary …. Q: Have you any idea how much a really BIG Topaz costs…?

Modern distance learning is seriously flexible – its all the other bits of life that  are still in the slow lane.