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Framework for flexible learning in higher education

This framework* has been designed by the HEA to support you in offering students choices in how what when and where they learn: the pace place and mode of delivery. 

There are multiple benefits of flexible learning.  It can empower students to become independent and autonomous and can help foster graduate attributes that will enable individuals to manage the complexities of 21st century life.  When well supported flexible learning can positively impact upon student recruitment retention and progression as well as widening participation.

The framework can support a wide ranging audience in higher education whether at an institutional faculty or school departmental or programme level.  It can specifically help those with responsibility for  strategic planning programme development administrative systems and structures technology relating to learning and teaching and employer engagement.

Adaptable and flexible to meet your needs

This framework aligned to the UK Professional Standards Framework can be used in different ways and adapted to your particular context

We provide a complementary toolkit to help you apply it into policy and/or practice. 

We also provide consultancy to support you to embed this or any of our other frameworks across your institution faculty department programme.

*Thanks are due to authors of successive HEA publications on aspects of flexible learning whose work informed this framework; to participants of the HEA’s Flexible Learning Strategic Enhancement Programme and to the expert practitioners who offered valuable feedback on draft versions.

The materials published on this page were originally created by the Higher Education Academy.