Is Online Learning Right for... ?

A company called Online Schools asked me to share their new video about students' experiences with online learning, specifically higher education. Obviously, this blog supports distance ed, but I have to admit that I've got my doubts about online credentialing. Preparation, yes, but at some point, you should probably have to present yourself in-person for some portion of the experience, at least the assessments. If you want to watch the video, check it out here and then come back to this site to share your thoughts.

The Online Schools company specializes in infographics (if it's in an infographic, it must be true, right?), so I posted one of theirs here that resonates with me and the theme of this blog.

Your 2014 Curriculum Blueprint

Even though my company focuses on innovative web-based instructional tools, one of the biggest impacts we've ever made on the field of adult education has been the publication of a little free resource book for teachers preparing to teach toward the 2014 GED test.  At Essential Education, we're excited to share edtech products that will help the field of adult education make the switch to computer-based testing.  But what this 2014 Curriculum Blueprint focuses on is less about the medium and format of the test, but the actual shift in content, whether it's for online or classroom instruction.   

Your Free Copy: Shoot me a message at jason (at) essentialed (dot) com along with your mailing address and I'll get you a sample copy. If you've already got one, leave a comment here with your thoughts on the usefulness of the Blueprint.

The instruction required for the GED test needs to adapt from procedural knowledge to reasoning skills. Your students won't be able to get by memorizing a bunch of mnemonic devices for solving problems. Instead, they'll have to understand how the elements within a procedure relate to one another. The 2014 Curriculum Blueprint features an alignment of the new GED Assessment Targets to the Common Core State Standards as well as Webb's Depth of Knowledge, which helps teachers determine their approach to each skill and topic. Naturally, we include GED Academy's lessons in that alignment, but we also added Khan Academy's math lessons, since those are free and full of great explanations of mathematical reasoning (and Khan isn't providing his own GED alignment, for whatever reason).

Once you've got your copy of our 2014 Curriculum Blueprint, I hope you'll let your local Essential Education representative tell you about all of our innovative updates for the new test and maybe give you a tour of our computer-adaptive online learning system.  Again, just shoot me a message at jason (at) essentialed (dot) com so you can start adapting your classroom instruction for next year.

Teachers: It's All About YOU

In the Why the Tech Not post, I promised to go through a laundry list of barriers to successful tech integration in adult ed and give each issue their own blog post.  I still will, but many of the comments that followed seemed to add another item to the list: teacher training, expertise, and motivation.

Okay, you got me. I'd left it off because I didn't want to point the finger directly at YOU, my readers or adult educators as a group (except for that snarky PICNIC graphic).  And yet, I know from my own experience that many many people, learners and teachers, were given a chance to realize the opportunity of information technology in education because I stepped up and chose to prioritize it.  The power to dictate the success of technology initiatives in adult ed very much rests in the hands of individual teachers and bureaucrats.  Take my origin story, for instance: 

Back in 2001, I was answering the statewide GED Helpline in Virginia helping loads of people find their local adult education programs (that phone continued to ring on my desk for over a decade).  I could have seen the job as a simple switch-board operator gig, but I didn't. My position at the state's professional development organization, and physically my spot in front of a web-connected computer all day long, exposed me to a wealth of information about online GED resources, helpful TV shows on PBS, and periodic initiatives with incentives built-in.  I wanted to put these tools in people's hands and find ways to help people who were far way from right where I was sitting. 

The Future > The Present

In my job promoting and training teachers to use a computer-adaptive GED prep program, I encounter a lot of anxiety about the changes and uncertainty as the free market shakes up the high school equivalency (HSE) playing field. It reminds me of something that I'm going through with my family.  Basically, our 10 week old Matilda Clementine is often inconsolably upset.  Day in and day out our colicky baby makes me think I'm not going to survive this parenting thing with its incredible decibel levels, demanding schedule, and unsustainable workload.  She's got me wearing earplugs, looking for escape routes, and occasionally drowning my sorrows.

We're both a little upset here. Not pictured: earplugs, large glass of extra-strength beer.

We've been down this road before with our two boys, but it's easy to forget how we managed, or even the simple fact that we did get through it.  Eventually, the kids got more capable and started to gradually reveal their personalities. Similarly, adult education programs are survivors that weather stormy political climates, budgetary neglect, and occasional bouts of homelessness. The new HSE tests will just be more bumps in a road that isn't really changing direction, if you ask me.

With Change Comes Opportunity

Disruption Eruption. What's Your Function?

Right now, I'm reading Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, by Clayton Christensen.  I don't want to tell you that you should read it too, because I've just started, but also because I'll bet your list of books to read is probably a mile long, just like mine. Instead, I want you to read this little article that serves as a pretty good overview of the key concepts in the book:

• Sustaining innovation
• Disruptive innovation
• Hybrid/blended teaching models
• Flex, A La Carte, Enriched Virtual, and Individual Rotation

The article is K12-focused (something we're used to in adult ed), but the current tumultuousness in our field will make it pretty easy to see paralells when it comes to competing teaching models vying for learners attention (or maybe that should be: competing learning models vying for teachers' attention!).

That's it.  No lecture from me. We'll talk after you've read it. The comments section is where you do that. See you there.

Why the Tech Not, Adult Ed?

When technology initiatives launch in adult ed, they inevitably run into road-blocks, seemingly at every turn.  The institutional barriers to 'edtech' implementation in adult ed undermine ambition and innovation on so many levels, our field sometimes feels like a virtual time-machine, as anachronistic as a paper-pencil standardized test (just kidding, high school equivalency credentialing bodies... sorta).   Obviously, funding is always an issue in our field, and any non-monetary issues can nonetheless be overcome if price were no object.

That's 'the man' in the chair, not you, of course.

But, more often than not, it's the political will (and personal will) to break the mold and see a new idea through that makes the biggest difference (we touched on this idea before).  Too often, that's where an edtech initiative most often stalls out and is ushered off to the sidelines to make way for tried and true tradition by way of standard operating procedures.

So, what are the true barriers to effective and edtech integration in adult Ed?  Whether it's a matter of 'us' or 'them,' let's make a list.  Add your biggest pet-peeve stumbling block with a comment, or 'second' one of those listed here and I'll delve into it deeper (with the help of your thoughts) in future blog posts where I hope we can come up with some solutions.

A Late Adopter of Mobile Learning

I have to admit that many of my clients are ahead of me in the tablet department.  Mobile learning never seemed like something that was applicable to online GED practice, my forte.  At conferences, I just walked right by the sessions about "mlearning," smartphones for studying and 'bring your own device' in the classroom.  iPads in adult ed programs? Sounds like science fiction.

Back when I ran the statewide distance learning program for Virginia, one of the publishers we purchased from said their program was now accessible via XYandZ mobile devices. Yeah, right, I thought.  Then I pulled it up on my phone and my prejudices were completely confirmed. The little screen only showed a small quartile of the display you'd see on a computer screen. I had to zoom in, back out, pan over, down, zoom in again, and then try to click the right button without much confidence. That's how I clicked on the lesson I wanted to open, or the answer to a question, anything that needed doing required that long string of manipulations. Mobile learning felt more like paralyzed learning. 

As seen on my iPHone through the Puffin app

Today, I get the question about whether GED Academy works on iPads and the answer is YES. Our flash-based program works on all manner of tablets, and the apps like Puffin allow it to run on iPads and iPhone (even though the iOS operating system doesn't allow Flash).  So now that we've got that out of the way, it's time I started giving mobile learning for adult ed some serious consideration.  But, it's not just the technology making mobile learning possible, it's the tenacity of the learners.

Let's get some issues out there and then rebut them with anecdotes from the field (that's you).