Adult students and new technologies?

Do we need to incorporate new technologies (such as Web 2.0 tools) for adult students?

For those of us who primarily teach adult, non-traditional students, we might not think we need to pay attention to things like social networking or other Web 2.0 technologies. I was recently presenting on new technologies to a school that primarily serves adult non-traditional learners, and they asked how this related to them, and why their students would care.

We tend to think that many of these tools are already being used by younger students, and so that means we don’t need to teach about them. However, Will Richardson has the following thoughts about why it is still important to teach young students how to appropriately use these technologies (from the article “Footprints in the Digital Age”): “This may be the first large technological shift in history that's being driven by children. Picture a bus. Your students are standing in the front; most teachers (maybe even you) are in the back, hanging on to the seat straps as the bus careens down the road under the guidance of kids who have never been taught to steer and who are figuring it out as they go. In short, for a host of reasons, we're failing to empower kids to use one of the most important technologies for learning that we've ever had.”

If it is important to provide guidance for younger students who are already engaged with these technologies, then why wouldn’t it be important for adult students who might not otherwise use these tools? Today’s younger students will grow up to become tomorrow’s higher education students… whether they enter at a traditional timeframe or non-traditional timeframe.

These tools are powerful. We need to teach about them not just because students are playing with them, but because they will shape our world in the future. Are we doing our adult students a disservice if we don’t also teach them to use some of “the most important technologies for learning that we’ve ever had?”

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Senior Academic Trainer & Consultant, Pearson eCollege