Everyday Learning via Multiple Media

How often do you learn from YouTube?  You have a curiosity, or you need a quick tutorial, maybe a product review, and you YouTube it. Me? Maybe twice a week.  This is technology-assisted adult education in everyday life.  Case in point:

My son Jasper and I are playing Lego Harry Potter, Years 1-4 on the Wii. Jasper is almost five and he loves Legos. I'm an overgrown kid who loves Harry Potter (though, not really in video game form).  He can't figure out how to find all the ingredients for the cauldron that will give us some special ability so we can open a door and move on to the next stage (and he's a little challenged by two controllers with all their buttons), so I'm basically playing the game for him and impressing the heck out of my son (he takes over during fights - his favorite part).

Jasper playing World of Goo, an endlessly fascinating game.

When I get stuck in these video games, and I can't walk my son through the valuable reasoning lessons that make video games such immersive learning experiences, I then model my researching skills. Yes. I YouTube it and find that several people have uploaded screen-casts of their quick run-thrus of the video game stages that give me fits.

Digital Literacy is a Civil Right

21st Century citizenship. This is the topic of the new era in adult education.  It's also pressing on my mind as I write this, today being Martin Luther King's birthday.  Where to start? This is huge.  Let's go back in time a bit before we look at integrating technology, not just into instruction, but into our learners' daily lives.

Adult education has always been a civil rights issue.  Literacy instruction in America's most dis-empowered populations (slaves, indentured servants, women and immigrants) gave rise to gainful employment and civic participation. Workers rights initiatives helped establish the industrial unions that built the middle class, made American manufacturing a driver of the global economy and gave us basic standards like the weekend and the eight hour work-day.

A New Frontier of Basic Skills  
Don't get complacent as you reflect on the accomplishments of adult education's legacy.  On balance, there is arguably more unfinished business and progress lost at this point.  Now, we need to add more literacies to the mix, namely digital literacy.  Oh goody, more work to be done.  Job security for adult educators (aka: an overwhelming underfunded mandate with insurmountable odds).

2013: The Year of the Blended Learner

If a clear division still exists between the traditional classroom and online distance learning, then a hybrid model like blended instruction seeks to muddy those waters.  Another grey area to explore and master may not sound like an appealing prospect for the new year, but those two low-tech vs. high-tech scenarios are polarizing over-simplifications that I believe hold us back as educators.  That's one of many reasons why blended learning is such an exciting prospect for 2013.  It's about giving teachers and learners more options to meet our challenges and more opportunities to speed up or slow down the pace of instruction.

My prediction for the field of adult education in 2013 is the widespread adoption of blended learning.  We will get over the fad diet of 'flipping the classroom' (sorry, Khan), and we'll get serious about immersing our learners in technology-rich learning experiences inside and outside the classroom.  We will go further than simply 'integrating technology' in our classroom instruction, and we'll make computer-based instruction a standard component of every learners' ABE/GED/ESOL experience.

I'm not exaggerating or being sensational about this. 

The Two Most Important Weeks In Distance Ed

It's December 21st and most adult education programs are closed for Christmas, through the middle of next week, or for a longer winter break until after New Years.  Classes ended a week ago or longer.  Classes won't start until the second week in January. This is the most important two weeks the adult education calendar.

There will be a big spike in GED class enrollments in early January. New Year's resolutions, presumably.  The focus of services shifts to intake, assessment, placement, and orientation.  The momentum of last year's progress has collected some dust.  Higher level or self-directed learners encounter the irony of 'hurry up and wait.'  Think highway miles on your car versus start and stop city miles.  Adults' relationship with continuing education is already intermittent, and then you factor in the wear and tear of starting and stopping in accordance with class terms and schedules.  

Learning is 365
Despite the cyclical nature of public programs and traditional classroom services, the needs of adult learners can be served every day of the year.  We're not going to put a dent in the 40 million people needing GEDs without removing barriers to participation, like summer break and winter break. 

All I want for Xmas are Ed-tech Books

What can you get for Christmas that would most help you with facilitating distance/blended learning?  How about some books about educational technology?  There is some great reading to be done about the wave of innovation that is shaking up instruction.  Here are a few that I'm hoping to tear into soon. Have you read them?   If not, let me know if you picked one up based on seeing it here. Care to add a book to this reading list?

 

I've been following this Will Richardson guy on twitter, admire his prolific blog, and speeches at various conferences.  And now we have a book, an ebook, rather.  His book on personal learning networks looks good too.  

The business of education is a powerful thing with federal government-backed initiatives, giant publishing companies, and long-standing traditions firmly in place.  Once the machinery gets going, it's hard to stop and turn it in any direction.  Nonetheless, innovative change comes out of left field, usually from the sector with the most important needs and the least power in the whole equation: the learners.  Solutions to adult education's problems may not mesh with the agendas of any of those larger entities.  We may not even recognize them as relevant and viable until we're woefully behind, because our orientation is fixed on the things we see as static and/or top-priority.  Disruptive forces can be harnessed to meet your needs if you reorient to integrate them. This is very much the story of my company, GED Academy's, development parallel to the field of adult education (and now intersecting with it).  I'm hoping this book will help me understand the phenomenon that I'm very much a part of.   

What can be said about Khan Academy that hasn't been said before?  As an adult educator, my imagination was captured by Khan's infrastructure of the flipped classroom.  But, integrating his tools into adult ed requires more time and effort than many teachers or learners can afford.  I'm curious to see how this book relates to adult education.  Anybody read it yet and care to comment? 

  

The title of this book says it all.  Look for my book report on the topic coming soon.  And yes, it will come with game recommendations. 

Have you asked for education-focused books for Xmas? What's on your reading list? Have you read any of these? Drop a comment and let's grow this list. 

How to Accelerate Learning

Emerson raises a cup of hot chocolate to his lips and immediately spits it out thinking that it's too hot. Then the sharp and earthy dark chocolate hits his taste buds and he decides to go back in for another sip.  He'd never had a hot drink before (this one was just above warm) and he'd never had chocolate milk made with Belgian dark chocolate.  Taken separately, he probably wouldn't have gone for either: drinking warm milk or barely sweet chocolate.  But together, the combination gave him pause.  It was soothing, stimulating, contemplative.  Even a two-year old can register some deep thoughts when a good beverage brings the thunder to your core.

"This beverage has transformed my consciousness."

We didn't hear from him for several minutes (except some discussion he seemed to be having with the cup in his hands).This was an accelerated learning moment in Emerson's development. Warm complex flavors on a cool autumn day. One factor acted as a catalyst for making my son receptive to another and opened the flood-gates to new information and better understanding. Combining concepts isn't about overwhelming the learner, it's about raising expectations, about the sum being greater than their parts, about enriching the content with layers of considerations.  Like drinking from a fire-hydrant, you're not going to take it all in, just come back for more. And, like a food and wine pairing, the pieces make more sense when taken together.

Accelerating the Adult Education Process

If there is one thing that prevents people from taking on a new skill, training for a trade, or going back to school, it's TIME. Who's got the patience much less the space in their schedule to dedicate to scholastic endeavors?  In adult ed, the approaching 2014 GED test is creating an imperative: ACCELERATE LEARNING NOW.

But, how do you expedite the learning process as an instructor?  I'm mostly interested in techniques for online learning, but identifying the appropriate media is an important consideration.

1. Identify higher level learners: Some call it creaming.  People who've got the aptitude and the attitude to take action tend to yield higher success rates. So, where do we find them? No, not screening or intake counseling. That's step two. The people you're looking for may not be those who're already responding to your promotional efforts. Step one is targeted marketing toward the audience with the needs and competencies you can most easily work with.  Specifically, micro-targeting, if you don't mind borrowing a lesson from Barack Obama's impressive campaign strategy.   
2. Shift gears quickly: Be ready to try different tools to serve different learning styles, abilities and preferences.  Go from worksheets, to videos to books and back to keep the learner from getting bored or too passive to retain new skills. GED Academy does this seamlessly, all in one learning ecosystem. 
3. Deliver condensed/targeted materials: In Virginia, back in 2005's Race to GED, we used KET's Fast Track books and videos.  We tried Steck-Vaughn's GEDi (21st Century) for OPT style drill and practice (though the program was hamstrung with plug-in issues). And we trained loads of teachers in the most frequently missed problems on the GED test, based on the GED Testing Service's publicly available Powerpoint slides.   
4. Computer-adaptive programs: One way that you shift gears is to assess, diagnose, and refer to appropriate materials.  The more you assess, the quicker you can shift gears. That's why computer-adaptive instruction (yes, like GED Academy) is always assessing the learner while they work and adjusting its recommendations of lessons accordingly.   The result is targeted instruction without the dependence on a teacher doing the customization.
5. Study between classes: Blended or hybrid learning keeps the momentum going between classes.  However, it also provides teachers an opportunity to 'flip the classroom' or otherwise divide the labor appropriately between class-time and time outside of class. If learners can put in gobs of work independently (the software needs to be designed to support this), then the teacher can focus on the learners trouble areas during class time. 
6. Light a FIRE under them! As discussed exhaustively here in three parts, MOTIVATION is the key element to acceleration.  There are so many ways to accomplish it, but without self-determination accelerated learning can result in increased dependency.  If we have to push our learners across the GED finish line, where will they go when they're under their own power?  
7. Combine concepts: Educators are nervous about this, but the new GED test is going to require multiple reasoning skills in a single problem. Instruction will need to do the same. Computer-based instruction is often nearly one dimensional. We need to find ways to layer our content with multiple concepts so that the learner won't just get one lesson, they'll get several, in a single teaching exercise.  That lesson can even intersect with multiple educational goals: GED, college transitioning, career pathways, technology fluency.  

This is my idea of accelerated learning.  How do YOU put a rush order on student achievement?    

Swish... swish... "Aerate the liquid to reveal more layers of flavor.  Mmmm..."

 

Motivating eLearners, Pt. 3: An Inspiring Experience

Selecting computer-based teaching tools can be paralyzing for educators. Is it aligned to my pre and post assessment and my endpoint credential?  Is it approved on my state's list of reportable curricula?  Clock time model? Auto log-off?  Who else is using it? Where are the effectiveness studies?  Does it work on tablets? Who has time to evaluate all the products and all the variables?  

Unfortunately, the criteria that we turn to usually reflects our own priorities as educators, administrators, and bureaucrats.  What about our learners? More important that whether a program aligns to your assessments is whether it aligns to your learners.  Is it compelling, helpful, supportive and does it motivate?  The most important aspect of any distance education program are the activities, or online learning programs, that you're asking learners to spend their time using.  Better learning outcomes are possible once we get away from K-12 content repackaged for the adult ed market. 

In the past two installments on motivating eLearners, we looked at the teacher's role as facilitator and the organization's approach to administering services. Now, let's talk about how adult learner focused computer-based instruction can motivate eLearners.  

7) Curating your learning gallery: When facilitating online learning, certain roles that we play become more important than traditional teaching (like advising on study habits, as previously discussed).  Another is curating a gallery of instructional tools and learning opportunities that will hold our learners' attention and facilitate their progress.  I can't keep my inner partisan sales-man in check, because the learning platform matters. This is where I'm going to talk about some of the unique features of GED Academy, but as always, I'd love my readers input on this.  What features of your online learning programs are motivating learners?  To get the ball rolling, I'll go first.   

8) Real-time feedback: After a problem or a lesson is completed, there should be feedback on the spot, while the topic is fresh, whether you got it right or wrong.  It's ideal to go over an item in detail, which is the primary function of GED Academy's virtual teacher, Leonard Williams. But you also need to see where your performance fits into the larger picture of your goal. So,  qualitative and quantitative feedback should be offered. 

9) Visual progress indicators: Also known as progress meters... this kind of feedback loop is powerful and satisfying a it responds to the learners' input.  It not only register incremental movement as each lesson is completed, it shows the learner their proximity to the finish line, and that's where the big-time motivation comes in: the goal of completing.   You don't have to ask them to visualize their goal, it's right there. You don't have to constantly field the question about when they're going to be ready to test, the answer is always right in front of them.
  
 
10) An organized toolbox:  Too often, the teacher is the keeper of the tools. We give them out to learners as needed, as we deem it necessary or appropriate.  But the gatekeeper role must be slowly phased out if your learner is going to be self-directed and and eventually self-sufficient in their continuing education.  The image above shows some of the GED Academy's HomeRoom tabs, which give learners multiple ways to study, to connect to other learners, to find their testing center, and to get their concerns addressed through open questioning or searching archives.

11) An invisible guiding hand: The experience of studying online should not be cold and impersonal as you work through a generic prescription of lessons.  It's not enough to start off with a prescriptive pretest, the program should act like a personal tutor and customize its recommendations between lessons.  The program should be constantly assessing the learner and redirecting them appropriately.  Practice tests or post-test assessments should be offered only after the learner has earned the need to have a new learning plan prescribed (or their readiness to test certified).  This kind of computer-adaptive approach is crucial to making the process of learning feel relevant and important to a self-directed learner.  

12) Change the setting, virtually: When an online learning program puts all of these motivational techniques into play and surrounds the learner with mechanisms that direct and support, we call that a 'learning ecosystem.'  When the US Secretary of Education called for the phasing out of textbooks, he called for more "immersive, online learning experiences that engage students in a way a textbook never could." The learner becomes part of it as it responds to their needs.  You identify with the process.  It's not separate, something that can be discarded and left-behind as we see with so many adult learners.  A learning ecosystem takes adult students out of the frame of mind where they don't believe they can succeed.  

I didn't even broach the topic of the learning activities themselves, which should be relatable to adults with a range of learning styles and content-rich to reward multiple run-throughs, and with enough nuance and personality to really draw the learner in.  Besides the teacher's counseling and special tools for organizing time, I think time management is also addressed by the learning program itself actually holding their attention, rewarding their success and keeping them busy with resources. GED Academy (also often used for ABE/Pre-GED/ESOL) is an accelerated learning program, so the learners see the progress they're making right before their eyes.  That's motivating.  

Take a peek at this 2 minute intro to the GED Academy program and you'll see how it individualizes instruction and provides some of the one-on-one support that many learners crave.  If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at jason (at) passged (dot) com. 

If you've got examples you'd like to share, please contribute a comment.