Back to the Future - Reflections of an Adult Learner

I recently completed two summer school courses at our local community college. I took one online course in Excel and one face-to-face class in Programming Logic at the local campus. I never dreamed I'd be going back to school at age 60 - well, not unless it was to follow in my parents' footsteps and pursue a Ph.D. But last year, I lost my job. I figured, like many other experienced and educated workers probably did, that certifications would prove the most efficient way to update my skills in the newer technologies that my programming degree did not cover or that I had not had opportunity to use in the work place. Specifically I was interested in graphics, all things web, and newer programming languages as they applied to design, which seems to be my passion. In addition to my IT background, I also have a masters degree in Educational Technology with a concentration in Instructional Design. So naturally, I can't resist reflecting on my current situation as an adult learner and have already written a couple of blog posts about my summer school experience. One of the posts includes an analysis of the online Excel course. In this post I'd like to consider the F2F Programming Logic Course.


My local community college allows people to attend for free after they turn sixty which I did this May.

On GPS's and Online Courses - Reflections of an Adult Learner

I took an online course in Excel 2007 at our local community college this summer and thoroughly enjoyed it, but now that it's over, I realize that not all the insights I gained concerned Excel. Granted there were some pretty cool Excel moments - I've been using spreadsheets since the early 80's, but I have to admit to being WOWed and amazed with this newer version of Excel. And, yes, sometimes a bit annoyed by what it still did not do.

Even though I was a seasoned Excel user (as were many of my classmates, most of whom fell into the broad category of adult learners), I had wanted to add some certifications to my resume. I thought an MCAS/MOS certification in Excel 2007 would be a good way to break the ice. Although I'd had some formal introduction to spreadsheets early on in my IT career, so much of how we learned at the inception of the desktop revolution (before the certifications, degree programs, and the standardization that exists today)  involved 90% intuition and exposure on the job, and 10% (re)reading the manual. ;)  None of which I regret for even a minute - for me it was a fabulous way to learn. But intuition is right-brained and as such does not conveniently lend itself to words, which are how we communicate, teach, and convey concepts. (My grandmother must have been extremely right-brained because she would often say, "It's just easier for me to do it myself than to try to show you how to do it." This applied to cooking, housework, and most things, and was why I ended up being such a bookworm.  But I digress.) While I probably intuitively knew 80% of what the Mastering Excel 2007 course would teach, I didn't know the new Excel interface or if there were far better ways to do what I already knew. (And I was really curious about pivot tables and how they were used!)

Our local community college offered the summer school class in Excel over distance through the program of Office Administration. While I signed on primarily to upgrade my skills and obtain certification, most of my classmates took the class as part of their various degree objectives. So what I would like to do in this article is consider the challenges of effectively teaching an online course in Excel to users of varied experience and motivation.

We purchased our textbooks, obtained our weekly assignments each Monday via Blackboard, and handed them in each Sunday before midnight. Each week usually included working through a unit in the textbook, completing chapter and unit exercises in a programmed instruction sort of fashion, taking a unit exam, and participating in a weekly discussion board topic. The instructor was available via email but we relied primarily on ourselves in true correspondence course fashion, and upon one another's advice on a Discussion Board reserved for help topics. I learned lots, but I don't know that I'd do an intensive eight-week Summer School online course again to prepare for a certification exam. Well, not without more roadmaps along the way.

Let me explain by telling a little story. This summer at a family reunion, we were discussing GPS systems. My cousin Barb, who is a seasoned teacher, said flatly, "They make you stupid."

Back to School at 60 ... Reflections from an Adult Learner

God bless our local community college for being there, for being where they are, and for letting us go for free after we turn 60! And God bless my friend Julie for letting me know!

Twelve years ago I made the decision to follow the traditional route of educational progress and pursue a master's degree - for two reasons mainly. First, I had already earned two undergraduate degrees (a B.S. in Speech Education and an A.A.S. in Computer Programming Technology) and being from a family-full of postgraduates as well as having worked eight years in a research lab, I was very curious about the postgraduate experience. And second, I wanted to find a way to tie my two undergraduate degrees together. So I enrolled in a masters program in Educational Technology with a concentration in Instructional Design. I figured it was all win-win. I would wed two fields together and opportunity would follow.

But I suspected even then that I was merely postponing the inevitable - that the rapid pace of technological change had reversed the course of traditional educational progress - that until such time as society recognized and acknowledged this dilemma and came up with some viable and affordable solutions, many of us were destined to keep going back to ground zero at our local or online universities and colleges as the most practical way to keep up with our field, when for one reason or another our work began more and more to not afford us that opportunity (and employers more and more came to discard us like yesterday's trash -  or should I say desktop).

I have to wonder  how many of the women who went through school in computer programming technology in the 1990's are still in that field (I know some who aren't).  But, personally I am a technology die-hard. So I have accepted that I need to keep going back to school, to take courses that were primarily designed for degree programs I had already been through, that were building the basic infrastructure I already intimately knew for the uninitiated. Not that a periodic review hurts  - at all! And don't get me wrong - I LOVE learning about and using cool new stuff and participating in the evolution of the desktop revolution. I have certainly bought books and gone through tutorials to self-educate since I finished my last degree -sometimes inbetween inspections whilst sitting on a factory line! I'm just saying that it was confusing twelve years ago at age 50 to have to make the choice between taking yet more undergraduate courses or pursuing an advanced degree at institutions who had courted me to do so.

All this leads up to this spring when after a year of being unemployed once again, I finally stopped postponing the inevitable and turned to my local community college where I'd heard that individuals 60 and over could attend for free. I had celebrated my 60th birthday in May. I have to say the college's advisors were remarkably and wonderfully understanding, encouraging, supportive, welcoming, and most of all, helpful. I talked to one generalist who then directed me to two department heads, one in Information Technology and the other in Graphics Technology - and after speaking with each of them I walked away with a clear sense of direction and purpose. See, it didn't make sense to pursue yet another undergraduate degree in the technology field. However, back when I did my degree work, certifications weren't that common. Now every employer is asking for a list of certifications, and many of the courses in the various programs prepare students to take certification exams. Ivy Tech's advisors helped me lay out a clear plan of action for pursuing certifications in my various areas of interest - whilst obtaining training with current and in-demand products previous jobs had not afforded me opportunity to use or learn.

Not that this entirely eliminates the tug of opportunity costs - my various areas of interest in the technology field are numerous. They include design, programming, graphics, and web-based technologies - and I'm not afraid to branch out to networking and technical writing and support. So the narrowing down process will continue as I wend my way through these certification strategies.

Although I was itching to get started and to take advantage of the extra time I had available for who-knew-only-how-long, many of  the courses I wanted weren't offered til the fall semester. So I jumped into a programming logic course in summer school, mainly to review, and to hopefully get into some newer topics that would not have been covered in previous formal coursework. I also hopped programs and took an online course from the Office Administration Program because it offered an opportunity for MCAS/MOS certification in Excel 2007. So at the end of the summer, I could walk away with at least one certification.

Now it is August and I am finished - and I have one certification down - Yea!

 Of course I can't help but reflect back over my summer school experience in light of my Instructional Design training and I will probably offer some thoughtful analysis and observations, probably in a series of articles. So, as they say, stay tuned ...

JuneBug

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Back to the Future - Reflections of an Adult Learner

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