A Current Trend in Adult Education: Online Learning

Hi Folks,

For my blog post on a current trend in adult education, I am using Faculty Focus website to find articles on online classrooms and online learning.  I am keen to learn more about this topic because I'm doing an online course for the first time and am thinking about the possibility of being an ASL teacher online.

This article "What We Can Learn from Unsuccessful Online Students" caught my eye as if I do become an online teacher - I would at the very least for me to not be the cause of them not succeeding.

My take away from this article is to design the online course in a way that has the students being active learners and remain connected to their instructor & peers throughout the course.  It is the instructor's role to facilitate this experience for the students - not just assign a whole lot of reading and a multiple choice test at end of each chapter.

One thing that may be beyond the instructor's control is a student's technology competency. It's recommended a student assess their suitability for an online course as they would really struggle if they didn't know how to do email, google how to do blogs, and navigate the online course module.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/can-learn-unsuccessful-online-students/

In imagining the possibility of being an online ASL teacher - I would not want the students to just watch videos of sign language vocabulary then submit videos of them signing for grading.  I would want to create a community somehow so they can interact with each other in small groups   I need to think how to make  "field trips" possible.

Hand Waves!  Adrian