Combining older adult students with younger students
I teach a couple of courses where it is apparent there are older online students and young (fresh out of high school) online students. In the training it suggests small cross-age teams to help integrate. I wonder if anyone has had success in organizing online teams to achieve this goal in a class?
Gordon
I am absolutely convinced that the generation gap is a real challange in adult education but if from start you try to fill it up by motivating both legions to provide each other the good things they have to offer,soon you get everyone engaged and willing to take part in the process, mature poeple rely more on their professional experience and young learners focus more on their internet and recent academic success,if you give a call for cooperation and interchange from day one that will become positive.
Hi Gina,
Great to hear about the success you had with mixing the different groups of students you have in class. Keep up the good work. Your efforts are really helping your students to see how they can work with other individuals which is what they are going to have to do once they are out of school.
Gary
I too have begun using some of the tools learned here. I just finished teaching a class that had 1/2 the students under 21 and the other 1/2 30 and above. I realized there was a clear divide on the first day just based on where they sat in the room. I conducted many group activites in which I would reandomly select the groups, combining the two age groups together and by the end of class they seemed to be friendlier and more courteous with one another.
Hi Victor,
Great to hear about your results. Thank you for sharing it with us. This is good information that can be used by instructors to develop their own instructional strategies.
Gary
Hi John,
Good suggestions for reducing the barriers between different age learners. If you can keep them focused on the content and working together then learning becomes much easier to achieve.
Gary
After reading the material presented here, I applied the conceptsin my class and obtained tremendous feedback.
I would like to motivate other intructors to combine older and young students to work together to experience a great learning experience.
Victor
This is a really good technique that I use in classes as well. We generally have a great mix of career changers to high school graduates. Since,
most of the students that come to our school are visual learners it is a bit easily to address. If my instructors provide a very detailed demonstration and consistent repetition of fact terms, we usually can break down the barrier of age.
In the speedbuilding class having older students mixed with the younger students becomes a bit of a challenge. From my experience, older students have a much more difficult time translating the dictation through their fingers. This comes much easier to the younger students. Having the age range with the students, I find they both have their strengths and are willing to share computer knowledge, etc. with each one another.
One thing I find is helpful is to take a few minutes of class to ask the students if they know the different types of learners. And then have them identify who in the class is what type. It seems that the younger students now fit into very auditory,which seems to the older students who seem more visual that they are not paying attention, which isn't the case. It helps all of them understand each other better.
