The Construction of Flexibility in a Virtual Program at a Public Colombian Distance Education University

Flexibility in an online program of higher education, refers a concept formulated by international organisms and reproduced by diverse institutions. This notion proposes that students have multiple options in time, space, and methodologies to realize course activities. However, there are few studies that focus on the ways or forms in which this concept is construed by students in online programs. This qualitative study describes some of these ways and analyzes students' participations in an online forum used to develop learning activities within the context of a course being taken online on a Moodle platform. Our results show some of the ways that flexibility plays out in practice in two groups of students as they interact in online classrooms practices.