Increasingly it is becoming clear that mobile devices (smart phones, androids, tablets, etc.) need to be incorporated into education. In adult education, the proliferation of mobile devices allows for the development of Classes Without Walls or Distance Learning / Home Study – Correspondence Courses.
The role of the teacher will change to that of a guide.
Information on any subject can be found on the Internet, especially YouTube. Facebook can be used to promote study groups.
So if a teacher announces that there is to be test on the Gettysburg Address, for example, it makes no difference what the source of information is to the students. All that really matters is that they learn the material. Or, if the subject is the past tense of regular verbs in an ESL class, again, it does not matter what the source of the lesson is. The issue for the teacher should be to find material on the Internet to assist the students’ learning.
The term “Flipped Classes” is used to describe the above scenario.
The actual classroom can be turned into a Drop-In center, where attendance is not required. Adults who work and have families would then be able to enroll in a class knowing that they can study anytime, anywhere, and in any manner they choose, with the guidance or help of the teacher. Under this condition, more and more people would probably be interested in attending classes and remain enrolled if allowed to participate at their own speed and inclination.
From Wikipedia:
“Flipped classroom is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning that reverses the traditional educational arrangement by delivering instructional content, often online, outside of the classroom. It moves activities, including those that may have traditionally been considered homework, into the classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch online lectures, collaborate in online discussions, or carry out research at home and engage in concepts in the classroom with the guidance of the instructor.[1]”
Paul
Comments
Paul, flipped classrooms need to be carefully and expertly implemented. Talking to the mother (a psychologist) of a very bright, autistic but mainstreamed middle-school student in Texas, she really reacted to my comments praising flipped classroom. In her case, she said that her son was coming home with long lists of assignments to watch videos and explore other resources to be covered each day before the next class. She and her son were being consumed with such assignments and had no time for anything else during non-school hours. The idea is valid, especially in adult ed, but the application needs to be sensitive to students and their families. Leecy
Leecy, I agree 100% and we need to work toward reform in the educational system in order to meet the needs of the students. We need to become more student centered versus teacher centered, which I feel mobile learning can lead to.
In looking over the text cited below, I found the following which sums up an approach needed for adult education (andragogy) versus ‘normal’ practices found in childhood education (pedagogy).
PEDAGOGY VERSUS ANDRAGOGY
A: The Learner
Dependent. Teacher directs what, when, and how a subject is learned and tests that it has been learned.
VERSUS
Moves towards independence and is self-directing. Teacher encourages and nurtures this movement.
B: The Learner’s Experience
Of little worth. Hence teaching methods are didactic.
VERSUS
A rich resource for learning. Hence teaching methods include discussion, problem solving, etc.
C: Readiness to Learn
People learn what society expects them to. So that the curriculum is standardized.
VERSUS
People learn what they need to know. Learning programs are organized around life applications.
D: Orientation to Learn
Acquisition of subject matter. Curriculum is organized by subjects.
VERSUS
Learning experiences should be based on experiences. Because people are performance-centered in their learning.
From “How to Build Bridge Programs that Fit into a Career Pathway: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on the Carreras en Salud Program in Chicago”• https://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-249
I can agree that any learning activity or strategy needs to be crafted with the learner in mind. This may include the person's personality, learning styles, challenges, career aspirations and many other metrics. I question how our time-based system may distract us from some very fundamental elements of learning. Isn't it strange that it is perfectly acceptable for all of us as toddlers to learn how to tie our shoes in different ways, at different paces and even accomplishing the task years apart from our peers at the time. The focus is on what is needed to be demonstrated, what steps or markers of progress we might see, and where the learner is on that track. Time is irrelevant in almost all learning we engage in before we get to school. Ironically, our educational system seems to believe that marching individuals through some sequence of bells with very few options is going to not only educate everyone, it is going to ensure that all can find success in that same time period. In short, I refuse to discuss time with my learners other than when my learners are sharing short and long term goals. In those instances they share their expectations and we work together to evaluate how reasonable those time frames are. Every week we revisit those goals and revise accordingly. The learners share they gain so much insight into their habits, their management and feel they have a much better handle of what is realistic in terms of time they need to accomplish something academic.
With adult learners, we can all acknowledge a majority are quite crammed for time. Some may have a few hours at home to do activities for school and some may consider it a miracle that they were even able to get time away to get to our classes. Why, then do we push such finite timelines? I have heard arguments about some jobs need set times, but I wonder how much that really matters in our near future. Speed used to be an asset and requirement before computers and technology took over manufacturing jobs. I welcome comments from others on what jobs today, that our learners would realistically engage in, would require some restriction on how long it takes to learn a new skill or procedure. I propose that most of the jobs our learners aspire to involve many repetitive actions that, once learned, do not need to be modified often or in some artificial time construct. Heck, even our major innovative companies, like Google, have found that the 40 hour work week is not needed. Every week, employees set their goals and propose their plan to meet those goals within a time frame that is discussed between supervisor and employee. As long as those goals are being met, these companies don't care how many hours a person is working, or even where they are doing that work in many cases. How prepared are our learners going to be in these goal managed environments that are starting to gain more traction? Our industrial model of education can not keep up with the current working environment any more.
With all of this in mind, I would propose that the flipped classroom is wonderful when used in an independent learning lab type classroom in which goal setting and review of goals is the measure of progress and not the time some butts are in a seat. Students come into class to constantly be working with different groups that are at the particular stage the student is at. So if it takes me a week to get through that flipped assignment, and it takes you only a day, it does not matter because you and I will just not be working on the in-class components of that assignment together at the same time. We may both be working with others that came in ready for that activity that day.
This of course requires a much different classroom structure. Classes need to be broken down into lists of activities that will be performed, learning that will be demonstrated, and products/options for learners to demonstrate the learning accomplished within the activities. As success is observed and recorded, items get checked off the list until the list is done and, poof! the student has completed that course. This model fits in face to face, distance, asynchronous and flipped environments with almost no modification needed other than the communication the learner has with their coach/teacher. In case you are visual and want a look at what this might look like, I offer a sample document that I helped one adult education program develop. Every curriculum we created includes these same components, Activities, Outcomes, Chunking the work in to 3 blocks of about 5 weeks, and a graphic organizer of sorts to help with goal setting. We developed one of these goal oriented documents for every credit class we might offer and these are intentionally left open to modification. Our teachers would take all the intake info we have on a learner together with the learner's college and career expectations and every activity the learner engages in is modified to best fit those elements. Students love talking with each other about how a specific academic topic applies to their different career goals. It gives them a much rounder perspective of what the learning really is good for.
If you are still reading this (sorry I am passionately against time-based education models), I would love to hear your thoughts on time as it relates to our work with adult education. We all know we can't make more time and we also know our learners often struggle to manage the many demands on their time. What might you do to work around time with learners or what might you wish were in place?
And then there’s Ben Franklin’s observation, “Haste makes waste.”
Manual, repetitive jobs lend themselves to set time frames. After you’ve learned them, you hardly need to think about what you’re doing, and performing them becomes automatic. Complex processes can be broken up into small, easily-managed steps (e.g., an assembly line), deadlines and timeframes can be determined by observing and analyzing how long each step takes, and quality assurance can ensure that each small step is done correctly.
Knowledge work, on the other hand, is not so neat and tidy. It involves insights and intuitive leaps, both of which usually do not occur during the typical 9-5, M-F work week. It involves spinning your wheels and doing unanticipated research when something just doesn’t click right away. It involves taking risks and sometimes a lot of trial and error. Depending on the nature of the work, there may be many such variables that are neither easy to measure nor nor amenable to rigid time frames for completion. As with manual processes, each step in a knowledge-work process must be completed correctly before the next can begin. But it’s one thing to replace the occasional defective radio, another to face a massive lawsuit and loss of company reputation because a rushed design process caused them to electrocute a large number if its users.
Learning is a form of knowledge work that can help develop habits of mind needed to perform other kinds of knowledge work. In the past, when the economy was primarily based on agriculture and then manufacturing, there were places in the economy for those who fell behind in or out of the educational system. Only a relatively small number of knowledge workers were needed anyway, and the line supervisor was there to compensate for any worker’s lack of time management skills. Now that globalization and automation are having unprecedented effects, the need for those with knowledge-work skills is great and small for those without. With that in mind, I think strict adherence to rigid time frames in educational systems actually mis-prepares learners for the world that awaits them outside the traditional classroom instead of preparing them.
Threaders Here, your comments are right on. What do you and others reading this exchange think about implementing Time Management training in adult ed? Does such practice improve behavior at all? Leecy
Hello Robert,
Thanks for your interesting reflections on what work requires now and will require in the future.
Your contrast of manual repetitive work with knowledge work is a useful distinction as long as it is clear that you are contrasting repetitive, assembly line work, not manual work in general. Mike Rose in The Mind at Work, makes a compelling argument that many kinds of manual work are also knowledge work. He provides detailed ethnographic descriptions of the knowledge and sometimes rapid and effective decision-making required by waitresses and waiters, cabinet makers, hair dressers, plumbers, electricians and others who work with their hands. Ask a repair person, for example auto or motor cycle mechanics, if their work is done entirely with their hands. Of course, it requires mechanical and electrical systems knowledge and logic, and problem solving skills. In an economy where assembly line manufacturing jobs of the kind you describe have rapidly disappeared, both through job migration to low-wage economies and through automation, especially robotization, the new manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are increasingly knowledge jobs, performed by people with engineering or advanced maintenance degrees who can design, program, or maintain machines.
This is not to disagree with your distinction between old economy repetitive jobs and new economy thinking, problem-solving and -- I would add -- teamwork jobs, but to underscore the importance of what you describe as knowledge work.
In his compelling Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford, distinguishes kinds of knowledge work, and argues that many current U.S. knowledge work jobs can also be made repetitive and can be robotiized, and that many jobs we thought were safe from automation may not be. He also points out that the manufacturing jobs that went overseas to China may not be migrating to even lower-wage economies, but that Chinese manufacturers are robotizing those jobs!
So, as we think about an education system that prepares adult learners for the future, what kinds of learning will count? It looks like those who are good thinkers and problem solvers, who are able to learn new things quickly, who can work well with others, and/or who do the kind of maintenance jobs that cannot be shipped overseas -- plumbers, carpenters, and other tradespeople, and oh yes, doctors and other hands-on (manual) health care workers, may have a good employment future in the U.S. Some think that teachers should fear robotization, and perhaps those who see their work as repetitive, entirely skills-based, may have something to worry about; however, "teachers who can help develop good habits of mind needed to perform other kinds of knowledge work", as you so aptly described them, should be fine.
Regarding the artificial and anachronistic limits of time, I wholeheartedly agree that our education system should move as rapidly as possible to be based on mastery learning of learning outcomes -- however little or much time it takes learners to acquire them -- not based on semesters or terms of study, seat time or norm-referenced grades. This also implies to me a shift from "years in school" to lifelong learning, including new knowledge, skills, habits of mind, and perhaps attitudes, as the world around us all rapidly changes. Learning-to-learn skills, language learning skills, and problem-solving and teamwork skills in work, family and community contexts seem to me among the most important and, incidentally, these skills are not tested on HSE exams.
David J. Rosen
djrosen123@gmail.com