The historical case made for distance education relied heavily on the major differences of the adult learner. Older, more self-reliant, already working full time, juggling and balancing work, family, and study, unhappy with classroom seat time and commuting, impatient often with the abstract and the theoretical, et cetera. We are also now familiar with the demographics of the adult learner built on what we knew earlier of continuing education students and buttressed by later theory, guidelines, and findings of cognitive psychologists. But in the process of presenting such a solid and persuasive argument for the differences of the adult learner and designing curricula accordingly, we may have stopped too soon and believed that our task was over. As long as we value retention and degree completion, we may have to go the extra mile.
Recent surveys and exit interviews of graduates may provide a clue as to the direction to go. Typically learners, especially those with extensive middle level professional work experience, ask that their courses provide them with less theory and more real-world applications. But now there are some new criticisms and expectations:
Critical new aspects of subject matter already operative in the workplace are missing or slighted in curricula.
The futuristic projections of current trends are generally unaddressed.
Learners are willing and able to identify and list all the above sins of omission.
Many would volunteer to close the gaps.
They prefer not just being receivers but imparters of knowledge—a role increasingly required of professionals.
They value a team approach that ensures 360° coverage and resembles again more closely their work environment.
They welcome postings but they find them hit-and-miss, unstructured, self-advertising, and unfocused.
Case postings and chat rooms do not satisfy their desire for more engaged input.
A little arrogant, perhaps presumptuous? Maybe. But if we step back for a moment to consider how far we—and they—have come, we may discover how much more is left to do and where else we should be going.
Online learning solved the critical prob-lem of access for working adults. Subsequent developments took the form of enhancements ranging from greater interaction with other learners to technological linkages to sources and archives. In some instances real-time classrooms were created or simulated.
Although welcome and enriching, they all fell short in an organized way of tapping the incredible range and depth of professional work experience of our learners. In other words, contrast young undergraduates and working adults. The former bring little to the table and the curriculum represents nearly 100% of the knowledge they acquire. The latter bring such substantial knowledge and savvy to the course that it may add only 50 percent or less to their knowledge base. In other words, we have solved the problem of access but we have not made it into a two-way street.
We have failed to acknowledge that there is an extensive and diverse source of input in the professional experience of our learners that is untapped. We also have failed to create and to structure an outlet for that knowledge to coexist with and enhance curricula and to generate in effect two parallel curricula threads—the official academic one and supplemental learner-created stream.
What should be made clear is that the learner-created parallel is supplementary and never replaces the official one. Indeed, unlike the original, the supplement is not only different from course to course, but also different each time. Each one is a unique version of the original—as if it were a second original and unless archived would be lost. The issue then is how this could be implemented and evaluated.
As an educational consultant to a number of universities, especially abroad, I often am asked what is next and what is ahead. Too many overseas online universities are anxious to sever their dependence on the ubiquitous American MBA. In any case, one outstanding Swiss online business graduate program was willing to be a guinea pig. We scheduled two sections of a graduate course on the same subject: leadership. One followed the standard format. The other experimented with the following variations:
A virtual team was assigned to each topic beforehand.
There were eight topics spanning the quarter.
Each learner would have at least two team assignments, one as team leader.
Each team was asked to coteach.
They were asked to supplement the course by their experiential take on the essentials of the topic.
Thus, from a workplace point of view they had to identify the principal operative theories, pinpoint the gaps in the research, and asked the class to address these gaps in their postings.
The team also accepted the responsibility of responding to those postings.
The official instructor continued to play the traditional role of monitoring and responding to postings and monitoring chat rooms but in terms of presentation and initial responses the team ruled.
But faculty gave the team its grades.
The team was also asked to critique the bibliography provided and to offer a supplemental annotated bibliography beyond the one provided.
The result was a deliverable takeaway that was a unique creation of the class.
In effect, there were two versions of the course. There was the given version of the curriculum—the course version—produced by the university. And then there was the created or collaborative version or amplification produced by the learners and the university. It became the additional task of the instructor to integrate— to straddle and mediate between the two versions, to point out what they had common, where they deviated, and in the latter case to invite bridging ideas.
The experimental section was found to be a total success: richer, more multidimen-sional, more unfinished, more applied, more magical—summed up by one enthu-siast as one plus one equals three. The only complaint is that learners had to work harder.
There were six recommendations to the University especially how the training of learners might be improved or enhanced:
More attention to mastery of virtual teaming.
Preserving and tapping team diversity and outcomes.
Including within leadership framework, development of the collaborative relationships between team leaders and members.
Developing a new rubric for evaluating and measuring coteaching.
Adopting and applying leader-follower metrics to a virtual team and developing a multiple-level grading system to reflect different competencies displayed.
Appointing coteaching learners to the faculty or, failing that, granting them the title of course imputers. In the original proposal they were dubbed trou-blemakers and disturbers of the peace.
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