Reflection on the Online Teaching for Adult Learners Course

I created a concept map on the dimensions of online learning leading to persistence earlier in this course. Now I have updated that concept map to include the critical features of the online learning environment. I started by searching for a quote that would summarize my learning and my thoughts on the topic: “Knowledge is constructed actively by learners within a socio-cultural context.” (Bose, 2010). With that belief in mind, I tried to relate it to some of the things we have learned this semester

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about what makes for good online instruction. The real difference between the two sides of this concept map is the move from the theoretical to the practical. For me, the right side represents some of the ways in which online instructors can activate what they know about andragogy, contextualization, and self-directed learning. Online (and blended) instructors need to be even more purposeful than face-to-face instructors when it comes to creating an environment that values the experience that adult learners bring to the class, respects the adult learners' need for choice and control, and plays to adult learners' need to connect and to see the relevance of what they are doing in the class.

For part two of this blog reflection, we were asked to explain how this course has impacted our current or future work. I feel fortunate in that this course has directly affected two large projects under my direction. The first is one that I was going to have to do anyway. The "Social Media in the Common Core" online course I developed for an earlier assignment was the subject of my previous post (see below). The second project that has a direct relationship with this course came as a surprise. I was in a meeting recently with some people from my office and from a large school district in our county. The discussion turned to the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program. An issue that some students were having with the AVID elective courses was finding time in their schedule without losing opportunities for taking courses which will help them meet college entrance requirements in California. I asked about the possibility of an online alternative to these face-to-face elective courses. By the end of the meeting I had a new project in my lap! So I am now leading a small consortium of school districts in the creation of online AVID courses. This is a great project with a lot of potential to impact students in Riverside County and beyond. I do not believe this would have come about if this course had not raised my confidence in being able to put together a quality online learning experience.

Bose, S. (2010). Learning Collaboratively with Web 2.0 Technologies: Putting into Action Social Constructivism. Online Submission.

Reflection on Online Lesson Creation

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For me, getting this assignment to create an online lesson was a blessing in disguise. In my regular job I was going to have to take a face-to-face workshop about social media in the Common Core that I had done a few times and turn it into an online min-course anyway. So this assignment gave me the kickstart I needed to get that work done that I was going to have to do anyway. So I started transforming the content of my day-long face-to-face workshop into a three-week online professional development experience.

One of the concepts that I struggled quite a bit with from the beginning was trying to decide how much content was the right amount for this short online course. I had a full day's worth (7 hours) of content for the face-to-face course ready to go. But not all of that content translates well into an online course. So I decided to chink the content into three sections, or modules, and prepare approximately two hours worth of content for each module. Not that I care so much about the seat time. I am more interested in the mastery of the content. But having an approximate target helped me organize the content.

I have some experience creating online courses for adults. But I had never created one that was going to be reviewed by my peers and evaluated my my instructor. I found the readings and the evaluation criteria posted by Dr. Ching to be of great value as references for the mini course I was creating. More than once, I thought I was ready to submit this assignment only to review the criteria again and realize that I had not addressed something important. In the end, there turned out to be two great benefits of doing this assignment at this time. First, as I already mentioned, I was going to have to do this anyway to have this online course ready to go in September. Second, it was a great opportunity to actually put to use immediately all of the things we had been learning during this summer course. It is always important for my learning to have some timely, practical application for something I have been studying.

Online Learning Tools: The Power of Reflective Blogs

I have been blogging for a while now. However, my main blog, Ed Tech Matters, exists mostly as a function of my job. In this blog I try to highlight different educational technology projects and implementations from districts around my county. While this is important work in communicating with

the educational technology community around Riverside County, it is definitely not a reflective blog. I had been resistant to the idea of a reflective blog until going through the reading this week.

Stavredes (2011) asserts that the practice of self-reflection supports the growth of self-directed, independent learners. I can see how a reflective blog, for students and/or the instructor, can be an important piece of that self-reflection. The reading by Stavredes (2011) also indicates the importance of social presence, instructor presence, and cognitive presence in an online course. Blogs can contribute to social and instructor presence when an instructor shares his/her thoughts on a topic and invites interaction from the learners. Cognitive presence can be facilitated through the use of reflective blogs by having students engage in interactive blogs to construct knowledge. "Blogs are an excellent reflective tool for learners to communicate about their learning experiences in the form of an online jo
urnal" (Stavredes, 2011, p.176).

Some adult learners use reflective blogs to learn course content, to foster reflection, to monitor and assess their learning process (Kidd & Keengwe, 2010). The last item in that list, monitoring and assessing their own learning process, is where I think a reflective blog would be good for my own professional practice. I could take a lesson from my wife. She keeps up a professional reflective blog called Balancing on the Leading Edge. It has been her experience that this practice of reflecting through her blog helps her internalize her learning as well as share it our with others in our profession.

I have some concerns about my ability to keep up two professional blogs - one that is part of my job function, and one that is a reflective blog. But I can see the benefits and I do hope that I can make a reflective blog part of my regular professional practice.


References

Kidd, T. T., & Keengwe, J. (2010). Adult Learning in the Digital Age: Perspectives on Online Technologies and Outcomes (pp. 1-293). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-60566- 828-4

Stavredes, T. (2011). Effective online teaching: Foundations and strategies for student success. John Wiley & Sons.

Persistence and Online Learners

My assignment for this post was to discuss the challenges that affect learners' persistence in online courses and relate those challenges to my own online teaching or learning experiences. Stavredes (2011) defined persistence as referring to the actions of learner as they continue their education from first enrollment through degree attainment. That is a broad definition that would include variables from inside and outside of the educational institution.

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Researchers have created many models to provide frameworks for understanding the factors of persistence and attrition of learners at traditional higher education institutions. Those models tend to have three things in common. First, they all describe lack of persistence as occurring over time and affected by a learner's ability to create a relationship with the school. Second, the models all describe both social and academic factors that affect a learner's persistence. Third, the models are complex with each having multiple variables.

For online learners, the factors affecting their persistence can be very different from those of the learners at traditional face-to-face institutions. The biggest difference is that many of the factors of the social environment that affect so many face-to-face students do not exist online. So online learners do not typically have the extra support structure of a social environment available to most traditional learners. Also, online students tend to be older (over 24) than traditional students (Stavredes, 2011). These older students tend to have more family and work obligations and more life crises to deal with than younger students.

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I created these two infographics to illustrate the variables affecting the persistence of adult online learners. The concept map depicts the dimensions of adult online learning that lead to persistence in
learning in an online setting include the ability to contextualize, the degree to which the learner is self-directed, and the dimensions of andragogy. The Venn diagram shows the variables listed come from two different models of persistence. What I find interesting (as with any Venn diagram) is the section in the middle. The variables that are found in both of these models include: ethnicity, academic performance, finances, hours of employment, family responsibilities, and outside encouragement. Where the two models really diverge is in the post-admission to the institution variables of the Rovai model. That model includes external and internal factors that may not have been present prior to enrolling in the institution. Those factors include: life crises, opportunities to transfer, academic integration, social integration, goal commitment, institutional commitment, learning community, study habits, absenteeism, course availability, accessibility of support, and teaching and learning styles.

In my own experience with online learning, I can report that I had a very difficult time with my first online class. It was about six years ago that I first took an online course at a university. I had a difficult time with the lack of a social group. I was used to having a group of students that I would talk with before and after class, and form study groups with, and generally commiserate with. I eventually got past that and adjusted my learning style for further online learning experiences. However, last year I had another very difficult experience with online learning. I tried taking a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and that was a complete failure. I ended up dropping out of the course three weeks into the eight week course. I did not end up feeling connected to the course, the instructor, or any classmates in any way. I've learned that those social connections are important to me, even in an online course. That realization has also affected the way that I teach online. I try to give plenty of opportunities and options for creating a social environment within the courses that I teach.

References:

Stavredes, T. (2011). Effective online teaching: Foundations and strategies for student success. John Wiley & Sons.