Applying theories of adult learning in developing online programs in gerontology

Abstract

The Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine has established online education programs to provide healthcare professionals with advanced training in the field of gerontology to establish proficiency in providing quality care to older individuals. A major barrier to creating our online education programs was the challenge of transitioning our faculty from a traditional face-to-face learning environment to an online platform. A current trend in this type of professional development is to treat the faculty themselves as adult learners. Meyer has made several recommendations for professional faculty development specific to online education based on an extensive literature review. Here we present a reflection on how we addressed these various recommendations in the professional development of our faculty. We focus on our team’s ability to mentor the faculty through the course creation process by piloting an adult learning/transformative theory approach to instruct the faculty to think as online educators. Our intent is to inform other educators creating similar programs so they may learn from our experiences and use our methods for creating their own online education programs, especially with a “lean team.”

Keywords

Online learning gerontology andragogy transformative theory instructional design

Introduction

The Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine has established two fully online education programs: a Graduate Certificate in Aging and Geriatric Practice and a Masters of Gerontology. The overarching goal of these programs is to provide working healthcare professionals with advanced training in the field of gerontology from a comprehensive (clinical, physiological, epidemiological, sociological, and psychological) perspective so that they may become proficient in understanding and providing quality care to an older population.

A major barrier to creating our online education programs was the challenge of transitioning our faculty from a traditional face-to-face learning environment to an online platform. This is not an uncommon theme and one that has been extensively reviewed elsewhere in the literature (McQuiggan, 2012); thus it was not surprising to our program development team that our faculty embraced deeply held beliefs in an instructivist approach to education, whereby the teacher directs student learning primarily through lecture (Brookfield, 2006). Initially, the faculty resisted in releasing instructional control in favor of a facilitator role, the more common role for faculty teaching in an online setting (Brookfield, 2006; Kearsley & Moore, 2012; Picciano, 2009). We sought to provide proper faculty development regarding the usefulness of online education pedagogy to ensure the creation of successful courses and an overall engaging program for our target learners.

A current trend in this type of professional development is to treat the faculty members as adult learners (Knowles, 1973, 1980). Meyer (2014) has made several recommendations for professional faculty development specific to online education based on an extensive literature review. These include considering the importance of theory (using adult learning and transformative theories), defining models of practice, disentangling treatments, rigorous evaluation, and the development of outcome measures. Here we present our team’s model in mentoring the faculty through the course creation process by piloting an adult learning/transformative theory approach to instruct the faculty to think as online educators. Our intent is to inform other educators creating similar programs so they may learn from our experiences and use our methods for creating their own online education programs, especially with a “lean team” (Kearsley & Moore, 2012).

Theoretical framework

Meyer (2014) has extensively reviewed the literature on professional development for faculty in online education. This review included an analysis of 68 articles and five books, specific to this type of faculty development, from which Meyer produced seven insights that are features of a successful training program. Chief among these was lack of a theoretical framework; she noted that only 15% of all papers reviewed mentioned any particular theory at all. Thus, if the goal of professional development is to change practice, then using a solid theoretical framework is critical to making this change.

The focus on pedagogy is essential to obtaining the buy-in or support of the course faculty to shift from a traditional classroom setting to the online education environment. Indeed, our Department’s mission is to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older adults by means of creating interaction among interprofessional teams in the areas of research, education, and healthcare. The diverse expertise of the faculty reflects this mission and provides an interdisciplinary education experience to our target learners. The required courses in the programs are consistent with this mission.

However, faculty-teaching models traditionally reflect an instructivist approach and are usually based on their own graduate education experiences and mentorship from their advisors (Anderson, 2004). Most of the Department faculty were unfamiliar with educational pedagogy, even in the face-to-face learning environments, and were unfamiliar with designing courses for an online learning platform. Thus, the faculty needed to adapt to offer a new educational experience to a new learner population.

The development team did so by adopting the principles of transformative learning theory. This theory describes adult learners and is defined as “a process of examining, questioning, validating and revising our perspectives” (Mezirow, 1991, 2000). This theory emphasizes the importance of changing “habits of mind” in our faculty with regard to what an educational experience should involve outside of the face-to-face learning environment that is intended for a population of students with very different needs from the traditional graduate student (described in “Barriers” section).

Faculty members typically reject the notion of changing their instructive styles given that they have been successful in the past when applying their own assumptions, beliefs, values, and expectations in constructing a learning experience (Lawler & King, 2000; McQuiggan, 2012; Mezirow, 1991, 2000). This complex sociological and psychological challenge must be overcome by identifying the barriers inherent in keeping faculty from changing such “habits of mind” and creating a new perspective on learning through their own professional development and reflection.

Breaking down barriers for professional development

Beyond a faculty member’s own personal experience teaching in the classroom, former mentorship, and their own lifelong educational experience are a number of additional professional, philosophical, and personal barriers. In meetings with the Department faculty regarding the new online education programs and before implementing any professional development, we sought to identify any potential barriers to faculty creating successful online education courses appropriate for our target learners. We incorporated this attitude in overcoming other barriers described below and believe it was a successful approach in creating a professional development program for faculty to achieve “buy in.”

Barriers

Using instructional design. As described above, our faculty typically learned to teach “on the job” and did not necessarily implement formal instructional design techniques. Therefore, there was a need to convince them to take time out of their own busy schedules to understand, apply, and design new courses based on online education theory to address the needs of a new target learner—a nontraditional, postgraduate working in many diverse healthcare settings. Adjusting faculty expectation of students’ performance and their needs constituted a major challenge.

Shifting from instructor-centered learning to student-centered learning. As described above, most of our faculty have experience with a face-to-face learning environment in which they lectured for a set time and then used traditional assessments such as tests to evaluate learning. The focus on pedagogy is important for any learning experience. In the case of online education, it is essential to provide proper structure (Kearsley & Moore, 2012) and create a dialog (Moore, 1993) for the students to create a shared discourse (Vygotsky, 1978). Effective online learning involves the creation of what Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2003) refer to as a “Community of Inquiry” (Anderson, 2004; Dewey, 1916; Dziuban, Hartman, & Moskal, 2004).

This instructive approach is less effective in an online learning environment because it does not create this interactivity among the faculty and learners, nor does it create a community of inquiry among the students enrolled in the course (Anderson, 2004; Garrison et al., 2003). Based on our adoption of transactional distance and andragogy theory, our challenge was to convince faculty to create new content and assessments based on a more constructivist approach whereby learning shifts from teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction (Piccano, 2009). Here andragogy refers to the teaching of adult learners, who are characteristically self-directed and motivated as they are interested in career development and progression (Knowles, 1973, 1980). Transactional Distance Theory addresses how to bridge the gap of the actual physical distance of a target audience (Moore, 1993) and to balance the interaction between student dialog and student autonomy (Bouchard & Kalman, 1998).

Using this constructivist approach, we designed our courses to allow learners to engage in dialog with their classmates through discussion boards, group projects, and self/peer evaluation of these products. Our students are diverse in terms of their professions and educational background and bring a particular level of expertise to share with their peers. This creates an interprofessional educational setting where students share expertise to enhance each other’s practice of caring for or serving older individuals (Morrison, Ross, Kemp, & Kalman, 2010). The course instructor facilitates and encourages interaction through content development that is engaging and interactive.

Use of technology. Most of our faculty were unfamiliar with the technological tools available for providing interactive experiences for students. This includes expertise in the CANVAS LMS and other Web 2.0 tools available for facilitating such interactivity. Our challenge was to educate faculty to apply these tools in their course design.

Professional development

As described above, we approached our professional development program from a transformative theory framework. We did so by using the rubric stemming from Mezirow’s (1991, 2000) work and established by Lawler and King (2000), and in response to the perceived barriers outlined above to help our faculty become online educators, which requires that they accept:

Principles of autonomy;

Active participation;

A community of inquiry; and

Diversity of teaching styles and variability of teaching experience of the faculty.

Although the process was at times difficult, in the end we were successful in helping our faculty to adopt online education pedagogy to successfully develop their courses and to embrace a new way of educating a new target learner who may better serve or care for our growing older adult population.

Creating a community of inquiry. Given that most of the faculty in their past educational experiences as instructors worked in their own personal spaces, we endeavored to create our own community of inquiry whereby we encouraged interactive education of the faculty at large. We initially provided a seminar to the Department faculty addressing the principles, pedagogy, and methodology of online learning; however, the amount of interactive discourse was minimal. Notably there was much discourse and bonding over their feeling that the approach we advocated would be time consuming and not in line with their experience as educators. Thus, we created a community by allowing the faculty to express their concern for a new perceived time-consuming endeavor. Developing the community was an important step even if the faculty did not realize that they joined one during this initial meeting. This was important for the program development team to hear and allowed us to readjust our approach. Further building of the community occurred with smaller, more individualized meetings with the program development team and two to three faculty members in face-to-face discussions and group development sessions.

Principles of autonomy. Each faculty member is an individual learner with his or her own assumptions, beliefs, and “habits of mind” (Samuelowicz & Bain, 2001). Thus, rather than simply provide “group-based” education, the program development team established weekly meetings with individual faculty members or in small groups to discuss how to adopt a new instructional approach to developing their individual courses, whether on the clinical, sociological, psychological, or ethical aspects of aging. We reiterated the information provided in the presentation and appealed to their scientific perspective by providing the faculty with published research on instructional pedagogy. In doing so, we were able, on an individual basis, to help faculty embrace developing their course with the target learner in mind and with an eye toward using scientific theory to create a valuable learning experience. In doing so, we created a sense of autonomy and control in each individual faculty. This was the point in the instructional design where we were able to show the value in the process of using the template (see Appendix) to create course content.

Diversity and active participation. Once the team created a sense of autonomy in individual faculty, we realized that each individual faculty, based on their own personal experiences and “habits of mind,” embraced a perspective that was a point of departure for coaxing them into adopting a more global opinion regarding instructional design. For example, some faculty had many years of teaching experience while others had much less experience as educators. Some faculty initially were more receptive to the idea of distance education than others, and some had more available time than others to devote to course creation. At this point, the program development team recognized that listening was key to achieve faculty “buy in.” Therefore, we focused less on uniformity and instead focused more on what each faculty member had to offer with his or her particular skills and perspectives. Finally, the team provided input to assimilate and provide cohesiveness across program courses to ensure that there was symmetry in message and objectives. The course template ensured all necessary information would be included for course building within the LMS; however, faculty had discretion to convey this information in their courses in a manner of their choosing that was consistent with online education pedagogy.

Conclusions

The focus of this paper was to describe our development team’s ability to mentor our faculty through the course creation process by piloting an adult learning/transformative theory approach to instruct the faculty to think as online educators.

At first glance, it may appear that this is simply another paper describing a model for faculty development. However, our development team actually derived our model from the application of theory. As suggested by Meyer (2014) there are several elements to creating rigor around creating professional development programs and one of these is applying a theoretical framework around the experience. Without such an approach, programmatic and course development is destined to be a half-hazard approach with disregard to changing practice, in this case the educational practice of our faculty.

We identified barriers, applied transformative theory along with a validated rubric via Lawler and King (2000) to derive our model of training. In the end, treating the faculty as adult learners in this way allowed us to achieve our ultimate outcome, which was to create a series of courses to establish our educational programs for adult working healthcare professionals, based on adult learning theories.

However, this is only the first phase and it is clear that there are other objective outcomes that must be addressed. Subsequent phases address additional recommendations including qualitative evaluation of the faculty’s experience/acceptance of the process and in developing outcome measures to assess students’ perception of our pedagogical approach.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: University of Florida Older Americans Independence Center P30AG028740.

Appendix

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