With over 40 million adult learners across the country enrolled each year, understanding the motivational factors behind adults returning to higher education is critical for both students and facilitators. An adult's learning experience is different from a child's, what motivational factors and benefits bring adults back to the classroom and then keep them there. How adults have different learning styles and instructors have to address various factors in their class to support adult learning, their life experience should be taken into consideration and integrated into the learning curriculum.
Adult learners find that the biggest motivational factor to success in returning to higher education. Without understanding why a particular reading assignment or essay needs to be completed, an adult learner is not invested in actually learning and retaining the information. Unlike children and teenagers, adult learners have many responsibilities that they must balance against the demands of learning. Because of these responsibilities, adults can have barriers against them participating in learning. Some of these barriers include transportation, finances, and confidence. Adults have a strong need to be able to apply the new knowledge immediately to their daily lives. Adult learners also have different outcomes for their learning and require active participation instead of passively receiving the information from a teacher. Adults find themselves internally motivated through confidence building and satisfaction rather than externally motivated by peers and they’re usually motivated by a sense of value they place on something and by the way they are valued.
Another large piece of the motivational puzzle belongs to the life experience that adults bring to their classrooms and assignments. Adult learners are interested in outcomes that are problem centered where they can draw on their greater life experience and apply it to the situation. Adults are also goal oriented and wish to see how they can apply what they are learning to their daily lives immediately. Due to their greater life experience, adults have been found to be more self-directed in their learning and require a teacher who is more of a facilitator who works with them.
Citations
Thomas, Dr. K. J. ( n.d.). They're Not Just Big Kids: Motivating Adult Learners. St. Cloud State
University. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/22.html
Cyber-Bullying: Schools role in parenting
"but I know if I had been challenged, I would have lost." These are the words of Principle Donn Harris in the article “Minding MySpace: Balancing the Benefits and Risks of Students’ Online Social networks” when discussing the risk he took when suspending a student at his school for posting negative opinions of other students at the school. This article bring to light a huge question: Is it the schools job to police the activity of students online or not when they are not in school? After reading the story of yet another cyber-bullying case I can certainly empathize with Mr. Harris, but was it really his place to punish the student? In my opinion, NO!
Maybe it’s just me, but I come from the though process that parents should be given an opportunity to parent. This means that when out of school the school administrators butt out. Now certainly if the posting was made at school then they have every right to suspend students, but when an online posting is made after school hours then let the parent’s parent. In my mind the way cyber bullying should be handled is in this order: a teacher/administrator finds an improper posting or another student lets the teacher/administrator know of an incident that took place after school hours, the teacher/administrator now armed with this knowledge calls the parent and gives them the information and the parent in response deals with the child in a way that their family values seem fit. This is the end. Now let’s say the bullying continues. Now you take it to the next level, file a criminal complaint for slander or any other number of defamation laws. The point that I am trying to make is that free speech exists to let us voice our opinions, and the law exists to punish those whom push free speech to the extent of verbal assault. If we don’t respect these barriers then we have teachers that are basically parenting our children with their values instead of the child’s parents.
Works Cited
Brydolf, C. (2007). Minding MySpace: Balancing the Benefits and Risks of Students' Online Social Networks. Education Digest , 73, issue 2, 4-8.
Why Use Avatars at Work?
“Outside the office, online role-playing games already count tens of millions of “inhabitants” of persistent virtual worlds” (Avatars, pg 126). Having the ability to live and interact through avatars exactly how one chooses in the virtual world, the making of avatars in the workplace may be the most efficient and convenient way of communication with one another. It seems that many businesses are starting to utilize this type of virtual space catering to employees who cannot work together physically. “Cisco, for example, has employees who use Second Life both for internal communication and for customer education and training” (Avatars, pg 126).
Who doesn’t want to save time and money? All businesses do. From clients to co-workers, employees can choose how and where they want to work. There is no need to fly out to a different state or even drive to a different city to meet with someone. Meetings can be done using an avatar in the virtual world with the ability to view files and share documents where as you would not be able to do in person without a computer or over the phone.
Furthermore benefits include employees excelling in areas they would not normally in person. Some employees for social or personality reasons are not comfortable fully expressing thoughts and feelings when working in person causing group projects to be less of what it could be. Using an avatar can eliminate that and will boost an employees’ confidence level since the avatar is created in the way that the employee feels most comfortable in.
All in all, the way we interact and collaborate with one another is constantly changing. From phone calls to emails to online web trainings, using an avatar in the virtual space will become one of the best sources of communication for it can replace physical meetings.
Reference:
Avatars in the Workplace. New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society. Retrieved From EBSCO on August 4, 2010.
What are the best methods a person can use to protect himself/herself from identity theft?
I decided to search for identity theft and found numerous articles and books on it, the one that really caught my eye is: “Identity Theft and the Challenges of Caring for Your Virtual Self” by Jenifer Whitson. I was shocked by what I found out.
We’ve all heard that everyone should try to make themselves a hard target, especially online. Don’t give out personnel information over unsecure media, don’t reply to and give out credit card information via e-mail, etc. What I didn’t know until after reading this article is that if you are a victim of identity theft it seems that you are basically guilty until proven innocent unlike other crimes. “Victims are often treated with suspicion and must do considerable work to prove their innocence.”
It’s really scary to think that your whole life can change in no time yet it can take years to recover from something like this. I hope I never have to experience that and I’ve learned some good tips from reading this article to help better protect myself, tips like “ lock your mailbox, shred everything from bills to magazines with mailing address on them, and getting credit reports every 6 months to keep an eye on your credit score.”
Works Cited
Whitson, J. (2009). Identity Theft and The Challenges of Caring for Your Virtual Self.
Workplace Conflict CAN end in a Win-Win Situation
Chances are, we have all been there; a workplace with some type of conflict between employees. Being able, as a manager, to settle these types of disputes is almost an art form. According to Dr. Tony Fiore, workplace conflicts "as indicated by three serious studies, shows that 23 - 60% of management time and energy is spent dealing with anger." (Fiore, 2010). Fiore also states that there is a simple four-step plan to turning workplace conflicts into a win-win situation for the employees and the employer.
Step one, evaluate communication skills. The author talks about two very important factors when trying to improve communication. First, you must look at how you communicate, and how you teach your subordinates to communicate with each other. It is very important that a manager uses "I" language instead of "you" language. Second, you must master the art of listening. Try to understand the facts surrounding the issues.
Step two, establish healthy boundaries between the tiers of the workplace. The issue that often causes problems is the crossing the line of manager to friend.
Step three, have emotional intelligence. This is best thought of as understanding how to combine both "intelligence and emotions" in your handling of others. (Fiore, 2010).
Step four, establishing behavioral consequences for the worst case scenarios. Sometimes you have an employee that just cannot work with the team you have setup. If this person cannot be changed, there must be final consequences, that everyone knows exist, that can be brought into play to end the situation.
With these four steps, a competent manager should be able to turn sticky situations into win-win situations for both the employees, the company, and management. The author closed with a story, and I would like to share that with you as well, as it demonstrates that the most important thing is how we perceive situations and our own actions.
The story of a "janitor at Carnegie Hall who had been there for 20 years. He's 45 years old. He was cleaning up the restroom, and a guy in a business suit went up to him and said, You seem to be an intelligent fellow...Why don't you do something with your life and get another job? And the janitor said, What? And leave show business?" (Fiore, 2010).
References:
Fiore, T, DR. (2010). Resolving Workplace Conflicts: 4 Ways to a Win-Win Solution.
Step one, evaluate communication skills. The author talks about two very important factors when trying to improve communication. First, you must look at how you communicate, and how you teach your subordinates to communicate with each other. It is very important that a manager uses "I" language instead of "you" language. Second, you must master the art of listening. Try to understand the facts surrounding the issues.
Step two, establish healthy boundaries between the tiers of the workplace. The issue that often causes problems is the crossing the line of manager to friend.
Step three, have emotional intelligence. This is best thought of as understanding how to combine both "intelligence and emotions" in your handling of others. (Fiore, 2010).
Step four, establishing behavioral consequences for the worst case scenarios. Sometimes you have an employee that just cannot work with the team you have setup. If this person cannot be changed, there must be final consequences, that everyone knows exist, that can be brought into play to end the situation.
With these four steps, a competent manager should be able to turn sticky situations into win-win situations for both the employees, the company, and management. The author closed with a story, and I would like to share that with you as well, as it demonstrates that the most important thing is how we perceive situations and our own actions.
The story of a "janitor at Carnegie Hall who had been there for 20 years. He's 45 years old. He was cleaning up the restroom, and a guy in a business suit went up to him and said, You seem to be an intelligent fellow...Why don't you do something with your life and get another job? And the janitor said, What? And leave show business?" (Fiore, 2010).
References:
Fiore, T, DR. (2010). Resolving Workplace Conflicts: 4 Ways to a Win-Win Solution.
Freedom of speech on the internet, who controls it...
There are many different issues that can arise when discussing freedom of speech and the use of the internet to express one’s thoughts and ideas. In the article I reviewed titled, “The Academy and Cyberspace Ethics” discusses this topic in detail.
“One of the great problems with the atmosphere of free expression now tolerated on the Net is the fragility of communities and their susceptibility to disruption. The only alternative to imposing potentially dangerous restrictions on freedom of expression is to develop norms, folklore, ways of acceptable behavior that are widely modeled, taught and valued”.(Kittross, J., 2003)
This quote outlines the ethical dilemma of freedom of speech that is presented when communicating in cyberspace. It refers to open lines of communication that exists and that there are no real rules or laws to dictate what can be said in cyberspace by who, which can leave a lot up to the interpretation of readers. Cyberspace can be referred to as an electronic community; as some are linked together and other are isolated. This is a key factor in the lack of regulations that governor the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents and then allowing the information to be linked together. Sir Tim Berners helped to develop the Web in 1990, the Web is unique in that no one person’s owns or controls it. “I think IT projects are about supporting social systems-about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues”. (Berners, T.,n.d.) This quote is the perfect example as to how cyberspace can affect the way we live our lives. Sir Berners-Lee believes that the World Wide Web is exactly what you make of it, if you intend to use it for bad things than that is exactly what you will get out of it. However, his main goal for the Web was to create an independent universal platform for communicating with others and not to restrict the freedom of speech. I think that this means that individuals should be able to use the Web as a form of communication, but should be held responsible for their words.
References:
Berners-Lee, T. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved July 10, 2010, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tim_bernerslee.html
Kittross, J., & Gordon, A. (2003). The Academy and Cyberspace Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 18(3/4), 286-307. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
“One of the great problems with the atmosphere of free expression now tolerated on the Net is the fragility of communities and their susceptibility to disruption. The only alternative to imposing potentially dangerous restrictions on freedom of expression is to develop norms, folklore, ways of acceptable behavior that are widely modeled, taught and valued”.(Kittross, J., 2003)
This quote outlines the ethical dilemma of freedom of speech that is presented when communicating in cyberspace. It refers to open lines of communication that exists and that there are no real rules or laws to dictate what can be said in cyberspace by who, which can leave a lot up to the interpretation of readers. Cyberspace can be referred to as an electronic community; as some are linked together and other are isolated. This is a key factor in the lack of regulations that governor the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents and then allowing the information to be linked together. Sir Tim Berners helped to develop the Web in 1990, the Web is unique in that no one person’s owns or controls it. “I think IT projects are about supporting social systems-about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues”. (Berners, T.,n.d.) This quote is the perfect example as to how cyberspace can affect the way we live our lives. Sir Berners-Lee believes that the World Wide Web is exactly what you make of it, if you intend to use it for bad things than that is exactly what you will get out of it. However, his main goal for the Web was to create an independent universal platform for communicating with others and not to restrict the freedom of speech. I think that this means that individuals should be able to use the Web as a form of communication, but should be held responsible for their words.
References:
Berners-Lee, T. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved July 10, 2010, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tim_bernerslee.html
Kittross, J., & Gordon, A. (2003). The Academy and Cyberspace Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 18(3/4), 286-307. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Distance Learning – Is it as effective as traditional classroom learning?
Almost everyone has participated in some sort of e-learning program, whether it be corporately mandated or for personal education. This begs to say that it is more effective in some ways than traditional brick-and-mortar classroom training.
Distance learning is rather self-descriptive. It is a means to satisfy an educational end without the need to step into a classroom. For that very reason, distance learning is becoming more popular in this day and age where time is becoming our most valuable asset. Distance learning allows working-class individuals to continue their job that is so necessary to maintain their lifestyle while also pursuing a path of higher education. Not only is distance learning valuable in its own way to the student, but also to the institution offering it. Distance learning requires far less staff than a traditional brick-and-mortar classroom setting. Educational institutions won't require faculty to be present for the duration of the class since the class is held on the students time in the place of their choosing. Not only does it cut back on the staff requirements, but it allows unique subjects to be taught regardless of having the experienced personnel. For example if you wanted to learn a foreign language, but the class isn't offered locally because no one speaks it well enough to instruct. Distance learning can solve that problem.
Distance learning isn’t so perfect that it trumps the traditional classroom setting in every way. Because of its very nature, distance learning cuts out almost all of the social benefits from physical classrooms. The instructors are harder to reach and in some cases they don’t even exist, you have little to no camaraderie with fellow classmates as they are usually no more than just a block of text to you if you even have classmates, and you’ll miss out on many of the real-world scenarios that inevitably get introduced in a traditional classroom environment. For younger students, down in the high school and lower level, these are potentially serious developmental factors as many states are employing e-learning schools to facilitate more rural or less desirable districts. Young people rely on the interaction found in classrooms to develop successful social skills in real world environments.
Is distance learning more effective than traditional classroom learning? I believe it would be more effective a student 50 miles from the nearest community college campus with only limited classes, but all the time in the world on their hands. For the budding intelligent young person to choose e-learning over a 5 minute bus ride to their zoned high school, I believe it would be detrimental to their development and could potentially stunt their budding intellect due to poor social skills. The effectiveness of distance learning is going to be situational, but more often than not, I believe it will prevail over standard learning in a physical environment.
References:
Grubbs, Linda. "Get Smart: The Pluses and Minuses of E-Learning." PC World Nov. 2000: 116-23. EBSCO. Web. 4 Aug. 2010.
Silverman, Fran. "The Pros and Cons of Distance Learning." District Administrators. N.p., Dec. 2001. EBSCO. Web. 4 Aug. 2010.
"Is Online Learning Here to Stay?" Consulting-Specifying Engineer Mar. 2004: 11-12. EBSCO. Web. 4 Aug. 2010.
Mashups and Me (and You…and Business too!)
In the music industry, a “mashup” refers to a song which is created by combining elements from two or more songs into something new. I’m sure you have heard this type of music before and I have as well. When I initially saw the term mashup in a textbook about Web 2.0 tools, however, I thought “what on earth does a mashup have to do with communication and technology?” Little did I know that mashups can be a powerful enterprise application, or that many of the tools I use every day are defined as mashups.
Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0 did an excellent job describing what a mashup is and provided some examples. Simply put, a mashup is a “web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated web page.” It does not change the original components, but instead blends the data elements from a variety of sources to provide a tailored application that provides a great deal of information in one location. In my own career, I have used SharePoint 2007 in the past to unknowingly create mashups that blend data from web services on our customers, Really Simple Syndications (RSS) feeds about our competitors, and other add-ins (such as Excel) to view our financials. You have probably seen a mashup in action when you view a Google Map on the directions page of a restaurant’s website.
Unfortunately, while this textbook did provide some instructions for creating mashups, they were a bit complicated for a novice. Fortunately, there are a number of vendors that specialize in helping individuals and enterprises alike create mashups. Some of these companies include Kapow Technologies (http://www.kapowtech.com/), Serena Software (http://www.serena.com/), Oracle WebCenter (http://webcenter.oracle.com/), and ProgrammableWeb (http://www.programmableweb.com/).
If you’re interested in incorporating mashups into your profession or for personal use, I encourage you to learn more. You really might be surprised at what can be created. Whether you are looking for stock data, news feeds, mapping technologies, business data (as in my SharePoint example), or any other items to be displayed in one central location, a mashup may just be the tool you need to save time and increase productivity.
-Melissa McWilliams
References:
Casarez, V., Cripe, B., Sini, J., & Weckerle, P. (2009). Reshaping your business with Web 2.0: Using the new collaborative technologies to lead business transformation. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies.
Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0 did an excellent job describing what a mashup is and provided some examples. Simply put, a mashup is a “web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated web page.” It does not change the original components, but instead blends the data elements from a variety of sources to provide a tailored application that provides a great deal of information in one location. In my own career, I have used SharePoint 2007 in the past to unknowingly create mashups that blend data from web services on our customers, Really Simple Syndications (RSS) feeds about our competitors, and other add-ins (such as Excel) to view our financials. You have probably seen a mashup in action when you view a Google Map on the directions page of a restaurant’s website.
Unfortunately, while this textbook did provide some instructions for creating mashups, they were a bit complicated for a novice. Fortunately, there are a number of vendors that specialize in helping individuals and enterprises alike create mashups. Some of these companies include Kapow Technologies (http://www.kapowtech.com/), Serena Software (http://www.serena.com/), Oracle WebCenter (http://webcenter.oracle.com/), and ProgrammableWeb (http://www.programmableweb.com/).
If you’re interested in incorporating mashups into your profession or for personal use, I encourage you to learn more. You really might be surprised at what can be created. Whether you are looking for stock data, news feeds, mapping technologies, business data (as in my SharePoint example), or any other items to be displayed in one central location, a mashup may just be the tool you need to save time and increase productivity.
-Melissa McWilliams
References:
Casarez, V., Cripe, B., Sini, J., & Weckerle, P. (2009). Reshaping your business with Web 2.0: Using the new collaborative technologies to lead business transformation. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies.
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