ANALYSIS OF THE ONLINE LEARNERS' WORK LIFE LEARNING BALANCE (WLLB)

Adults report a high level of time scarcity, also referred to as time famine or time pressure. The adults perception of not having enough time to do all their professional, family and social activities increases in the case of the adults that enrols in a distance learning program. The time limitations and perception of scarcity force the adult students to choose the way they invest their time. Time spent in academic processes could be a source of conflicts for long life learners because of the introduction of a third time to the work-life balance - the academic or learning time-added to the professional and social/family temporal patterns. For this reason, we introduce the concept of work-life learning balance (WLLB) to refer to the balance of the professional, family and academic activities. We introduce in this paper the implications of the WLLB for students' enrolled in distance education that implies the relationship between individual/social temporalities and the external/internal regulation factors. We observe that in distance learning situations, the temporal flexibility implies a higher requirement of students' time regulation competencies, concerning both the planning and regulation of the academic time-on-task and the ability to maintain the activity focus in a context of increasing temporal permeability between work, family/social life, academic activities and multitasking.