Isolation and Sustainability

Before I review Fred Lockwood's paper I feel the need to talk about my own experiences of workload and self-paced learning.
As an extra-mural student at Massey University I found it both isolating being self-directed/self paced and un-sustainable in regards to the workload. The course materials were wordy, all involving theoretical, educational text-books with little to no interaction with anyone - other than a bit of written feedback on assignments. Sustainability for me was a problem as I tried to juggle part-time work; 2 pre-schoolers (at that time); husband and house-hold. It was obviously my choice to undertake the study; but feel that the workload and nature of course material really impacted on my motivation and desire to complete the course.
Since then, I have done my own elearning - a completely self-directed, totally on-line, (very low level) computer skills course. This was Aoraki's first foray into elearning and from feedback from other students (mainly other staff at Aoraki) most people found even this level of course too time consuming; they perceived the workload as too much; even though most of them didn't even attempt to complete the course -through lack of motivation and need; I believe. (My husband being one of them!)
So, back to Lockwood's paper - useful points - well there are many in this paper - what I see as useful may not be useful to others - and is that a question we need to ask - especially when he talks about
"Staff are in danger of working too hard in generating teaching materials, and students are in danger of having to work too hard to study it – if in fact they study all of it. This is likely to be more pronounced as students are directed to an array of web sites and to the growing amount of published literature, and as expectations are raised"
How do we decide what is necessary course material; what is extra course material; and how do we make a decision on what it is we need to read/watch/learn?
Time is another key point in sustainability - my own students are all working part-time; some with more hours than others and nearly all in industry related jobs - most of them increase their workload during the "holidays" - and we still expect them to be putting in their self-paced/directed home study to complete the "full time" hours.
The next key point for me is "over-length materials" - and I am sure that we are all culprits of this - but - how do we decide what is over-length? what do we keep and what do we omit?
I'm sure if you asked the majority of students to honestly answer how much of their course material they have studied cover to cover as it were - there wouldn;t be many with 100%.
Well, I will add another post after Friday's meeting - if I need to - still not sure what my flexible learning plan is going to be. Have hit a bit of a hurdle with the "moodle' option - have to go through enormous hoops to get access and use - applying to commitees and filling in forms - may prove a bit of a stumbling block - am on a mission now to see why it has to be this way.
My smile for today - some classic mis-communication!