Too often student convenience or institutional profitability drives the decisions regarding what courses become part of the online curriculum and what prerequisites, if any, prepare students for the experience rather than goals for student learning. The notion that students emerging from the K-12 system today, the generation dubbed the millenials, have such technologically savvy that they can handle the rigors of fully online learning is unfounded. Admittedly, today's students are, as Julie Evans of the Project Tomorrow Speak Up Survey on education and technology puts it, digitally "native" while their teachers, parents, and the rest of us appear to them as "immigrants" in their technology- rich world. She writes that students are functioning as a "digital advance team for the rest of us, adopting and adapting new technologies for increasing productivity beyond our expectations" (5). She calls on K-12 educators to rethink their hesitancy to embrace technology because of its potential as a means of promoting cheating, and to begin to consider new forms of learning and assessment in this digital era.
Evans' views are based on data collected over the past six years reporting on the responses of over 1.5 million students, teachers, parents, and administrators about their use of technology. The interesting question that this raises, however, in relation to online learning is why it is, then, that adult learners, the "immigrants" of the technological world, tend to perform better in fully online learning environments than their younger, "native" counterparts?
Tweet, Yes, But Think?
We posit that readiness for online learning has less to do with students' knowledge of technology and digital dexterity and more to do with their knowledge of how to learn and their motivation to engage fully in the process. Therefore, we submit that the introduction of online experiences for students should be consciously engineered to best capitalize on their readiness for independent learning, and that the progression into the online learning environment be intentionally built into the undergraduate curriculum rather than simply offering students an open menu of face-to-face, hybrid, or fully online courses.
The model of curriculum revision we envision is based on types of learning rather than on units of knowledge, with the goal being to integrate different types of learning as appropriate to the readiness of the learner. Placing types of learning at the center of curriculum review rather than types of knowledge (for example, hours of general education as opposed to hours in the major) provides new insight to the task of revising curricula. A variety of learning opportunities enriches any curriculum by accommodating individual learners and approaching learning outcomes from multiple perspectives.
Miller & Seller (1990) define three types of learning according to the role of the learner. The first istransmissive, sometimes called assimilative learning, which assumes knowledge is content, a transferrable commodity to be gained by demonstration, telling, and modeling. Transmissive learning is the hallmark of the instructional paradigm. The second type, transactional learning, assumes knowledge is constructed by learners and is characterized by experiential activities, student-to- student collaboration, and acts of discovery through active learning and team-based projects. In this learner-centered approach, the educator is designer, one who facilitates learning. The third type, transformative learning, asks the learner to assess new knowledge in relation to existing knowledge, requiring considerable reflection upon the assumptions and biases that the learner has accepted as part of his or her existing knowledge.
Building Toward Androgogy
While these three types of learning cannot be fully integrated as they arise from opposing philosophies of learning, it is possible to build a curriculum that progressively shifts from transmissive or instructional-based pedagogy to the transactive and transformational learning that characterizes the active learning pedagogy of the learner-centered paradigm. This conception is consistent with the shift that Knowles (1984) identified between teaching children (pedagogy) and teaching adults (androgogy), defining pedagogy as the art and science of teaching and androgogy as the art and science of helping others learn. Androgogy assumes that adults are self-directed learners and that their life experiences affect their learning both in regard to preconceptions as well as resources for future learning. Adults also have a strong sense of immediacy and require relevance to motivate their learning. Traditional-aged college students are in a transitional phase between pedagogy and androgogy, for while in some respects they can be considered adult learners, unlike the adult learner who has a wealth of life experience and workplace knowledge to draw upon, traditional-aged students emerging from high school do not have a substantial network of previous knowledge from which to draw (Harris & Cullen, 2009). In other words, there is still a need for some transmissive learning opportunities, particularly in light of the fact that less mature students tend to favor surface learning and memorization.
New Scaffolding
We propose a model of curriculum review that attempts to infuse the three learning types, progressively reducing the opportunities for transmissive learning in favor of transactive and transformational experiences. In this more holistic approach, curricula are organized according to broad concepts and types of learning opportunities as opposed to a sequence of units of knowledge. Redefining curriculum in terms of depth of knowledge as opposed to information transfer holds the promise of transforming the undergraduate curriculum into an educational experience that focuses on the student's self-conscious attention to the process of learning, a curriculum that is intentional and learner-centered.
Can online learning support this kind of learning? A considerable body of research suggests that it can. Teaching online, whether web supported, hybrid, or fully online supports a learner-centered approach for the teacher. The teacher in the learner-centered class is a designer of learning opportunities, one who sets the stage and then steps aside while the students engage in knowledge constructing activities. Particularly in asynchronous fully online delivery, the teacher has to assume the role of designer and create the avenues for students to actively engage with course material and their peers in order to learn, because there is no single point of contact between students and teacher that allows for the teacher to remain front and center, so to speak. Weigel's 2002 book, Deep Learning for a Digital Age, offers a thorough examination of how online tools can be used to foster constructivist pedagogy and learner- centered teaching, though he does not advocate fully online courses for most institutions.
New Tools
The tools available for online learning lend themselves to community building, sharing information, seeking information outside the confines of the course. Simulations, group research projects, discussion forums, chat and group functions, and wikis are the kinds of activities that foster deep learning and transactive learning experiences. Online learning by its very nature requires active participation on the part of the student and a great degree of learner discipline, motivation, and control. All of these facets of the online experience foster engagement, reflection, and create an environment where deep learning is possible.
But we must also acknowledge that online learning, whether fully online or blended/hybrid, presents challenges and even barriers for learners. While, of course, the online venue itself does not preclude courses designed around the memorization and regurgitation of facts, the tools that are available for online teaching are just that: tools. It is their use that makes a course learner-centered. For example, the assessment function can be used in a traditional manner or it can be used to automatically generate self tests for students in order for them to begin to regulate their own learning. Discussions can fall flat face-to-face or online, but in the online environment it is much easier for the teacher to get full participation because of the ease of tracking and also the ease of privately encouraging individuals who need help, which is not always easy in the face-to-face format. Tools like wikis are great for collaboration and the individual webpages for students foster self-expression and engagement in the online community. The online environment also makes it very easy for students to contribute material in addition to that provided by the teacher, which presents opportunities to examine the quality of information that is so readily available to them. Some suggest that teachers in the online environment resist the temptation to create a multitude of links for students and instead encourage students to discover the information outside the course as an active learning strategy.
If we are to revise curricula based on types of learning rather than types of knowledge, the issue of online learning must be addressed as part of that discussion, for the opportunities that online learning in its various formats can offer the learning environments are too robust to be left to chance. We need to keep in mind that not all students are ready for many learner-centered practices, so learner-centered strategies need to be introduced incrementally so that students are prepared for them. The same holds true for online learning. We need to prepare our students to engage in their learning using these tools, keeping in mind that independent learning is a learned behavior that develops over time. Reviewing curriculum comprehensively with a focus on types of learning holds the promise of creating an undergraduate experience that is transformational and prepares students for the challenges of today's workforce as well as a life of continuous
learning.
Contact
Roxanne Cullen, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Prakken 120
Ferris State University
Big Rapids, MI 49307
Telephone: (231) 591-2713
E-mail: Roxanne_Cullen (at) ferris.edu
References
* Evans, Julie. 2009. "High-Tech Cheating? Students See It Differently."
* Harris, Michael & Cullen, Roxanne. 2009. "A Model for Curricular Revision: The Case of Engineering." Innovative Higher Education 34/1:51-63.
* Knowles, Malcolm S. 1984. Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Miller, John P. & Seller, Wayne. 1990. Curriculum: Perspectives and Practice. Toronto: CoppClark Pitman.
* Weigel, Van B. 2002. Deep Learning for a Digital Age: Technology's Untapped Potential to Enrich Higher Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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