CHAPTER 13: Crossover Pedagogy and the Online Experience

If you are an adult pursuing an undergraduate degree, it is a fair assumption that something big got in your way when you were 17- or 18-years-old and kept you from matriculating into college along with the other two-thirds of your peer group. It could have been money. It might have been having a child. It may have been a belief that yours would be a different path. But beneath each of these reasons often lies the same deep-seated conviction: you believe you simply cannot do it. You likely struggle to find the faith that you have the ability to take on a goal as big as a baccalaureate degree, and the idea that you can achieve it may feel like a pipe dream. The adults who are returning to the online programs for which I am responsible are no different. They are scared. They’re anxious. They are filled with doubt as to whether or not this goal they think they want is even attainable. My job, as dean of one of this country’s major online programs, is to create an environment where our adult students can accomplish whatever they set out to do. I can’t emphasize this enough though: the task is a big one.