What I Learned About Teaching Adult Learners OnLine

By Denise A. Blake, Shenandoah University

The Reality of Online Instructors

Experts tell us that to be effective at online instruction, a professor needs to establish a student-centered learning environment. Students need to feel as if they are connected to others by establishing dialogue and interacting with other students and the professor. By interacting with others, adult learners become more collaborative, judgmental, reflective, and integrative (Spellman, 2007).

Student-centered instruction also acknowledges the real-life experiences and knowledge adult learners bring to class. Using more methods of learning, such as teamwork, group discussions, skills practices, technologies, and case studies, allows adult learners to benefit from active engagement in learning because these methods draw on their experiences from work and life (Chao et al., 2007).

Most online instructors have learned by trial and error. To improve, instructors have to put themselves in the role of the learner. An instructor needs to focus on connecting with the students and creating a learning environment that helps them overcome any worries they might have. Read entire post ...

Teacherless Classrooms: Can We?

In CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY an article by Trent Batson -11/18/09 states that Web 2.0 demonstrates conclusively, once again, that people love to talk to each other and that social connections are at our core. Humans, we educators must remind ourselves again and again, are social creatures. Learning is social; it is conversation. From conversation, comes knowledge and learning. We all seem to know this deeply and instinctively when we raise our children because we talk to our children all the time and our children try desperately to talk back, constantly improving their own conversational sophistication. Children learn all about the world by talking and listening, that is, through conversation. Read rest of article ...

How People Learn

I am always looking and studying how people learn. Here is a You Tube post with some thoughts of who the learner may be today.

Powerpoint Bad for Learning?

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on research done at The University of NSW suggests the use of Microsoft PowerPoint (and similar products) in lectures and meetings actually makes it harder to absorb facts, rather than being a reinforcement of key points."