Tag: Distance Education

Trends in Adult Education – Implications

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Part two of this assignment involves discussing the implications of these trends on our own instructional styles and techniques.

When it comes to the article Making Multiple-Choice Exams Better, I feel that I have already started making strides to achieve this. Throughout the last course that I was teaching I consistently went back to the tests and added questions that I felt better challenged the students’ knowledge. I then uploaded all the tests into Brightspace and had the students write them on a LockDown browser. I now have data and statistics on all my tests that I administered, both the older questions and the new ones that I have written. From these statistics I can see which questions are too easy (95% of the class answered correctly) which ones are potentially worded poorly (the majority of the class answered incorrectly) and which answers are not good enough distractors or are not plausible. As time goes by and I start changing all the questions to be of a higher level of thinking, I will start to see a more accurate picture of how students are actually doing. As of right now my only chance to see that is when my students come down into the shop. Some may have done well on the older recall/memory based exams but once in a shop environment they cannot diagnose the vehicle systems that we just discussed. It becomes apparent that their understanding has stopped at the “Knowledge” section of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

With the trend of Adaptive Learning this may be a bit harder to implement in the classroom for me at this time. At least to the full extent that the article Adaptive Learning: An Innovative Method for Online Teaching and Learning describes. The article talks about using pretests and depending on the students answers, it tailors a learning path for them based on their knowledge. This would be a fairly expensive method to get up and running but once it is then I think that it’s a great idea. One thing that I am going to try based off this trend is the idea of pretests at the beginning of every new section. While not Adaptive Learning, I think it will give me a better idea of where my students are at with their knowledge. Ideally it will encourage them to pre-read the modules before classes to gain some base knowledge of the material too. That way they’ll be able to ask more direct questions when we have face-to-face time and I can either expand on subject matter or help reinforce the foundations depending on the student.

Trends in Adult Education – Trends

On By HBIn Trends in Adult EducationLeave a comment

For this assignment we were asked to find an article related to some trends within adult education. Once we’d found an article that interested us we were paired up with a learning partner to share the articles with each other and discuss our insights to these trends.  My learning partner is Dazy, an Instructor and Faller Blaster from beautiful Vancouver Island. I’ve placed a link to Dazy’s blog in the Links section. Both of the articles that we’ve chosen can be found in the Resources section or just by scrolling further down to see some older posts.

My article was titled Making Multiple-Choice Exams Better. This article talks about some pros and cons to multiple-choice tests, from the standpoints of the students saying that they prefer them, to the issues of the majority of exam questions being fairly low on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The article talks about how changing questions to be geared towards critical thinking can show the students progress more accurately. Most multiple-choice questions, especially ones from exam banks rely too heavily on memory recall. This is why students seem to prefer them. They’ve become accustomed to study strategies like flashcards and memorizing definitions without truly understanding them. If the exam questions where more analytical or diagnosis based then we would truly get a better understanding on whether or not the student grasps the material.  Another thing the author talks about is getting rid of answers that are obviously wrong. Tracking the data from tests over a period of time and throwing out any answers that less than 5% of students chose. This helps strengthen the exam. If say two out of the 4 answers are obviously wrong, then the question just became a 50/50 guess for the student. It makes it difficult to really see if the student has a good handle on the subject matter or if they are just getting by because of easy exams.

Dazy’s article is titled Adaptive Learning: An Innovative Method for Online Teaching and Learning. His article discusses a method of instruction called Adaptive Learning. Adaptive Learning doesn’t follow a traditional, linear path for the course. Using an algorithm, software determines individual learners needs based on their past knowledge and experience. This style of teaching can be an excellent way to personalize lessons and avoid “teaching to the middle” as well as identifying which students need more support or help. Students seem to enjoy the course structure too, only learning about new exciting materials and not going over old facts or knowledge that they’ve already logged into their long term memory.