The Journey into Higher Education

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The Journey into Higher Education

• Liz Hoult
• National Teaching Fellow

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Supporting the Transition into Higher Education
for Mature Learners

• Non-traditional learners
• Non-traditional backgrounds
• Non-traditional routes

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Who are the non-traditional students?

• Class
• Age
• Gender
• Defined by lack dis-identification

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Mature Learners

• Those aged 40 and over made up just 1.9 of the
  students accepted on undergraduate courses in
  2004 (7,251 of 377,544 students)
• The student complaints ombudsman (the Office of
  the Independent Adjudicator) revealed (June,
  2005) that students over 40 are by far the most
  likely to turn to the watchdog with a grievance

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Educational Capital

• Bourdieu (1989) sees class as being based on a
  model of capital
• Economic capital
• Cultural capital
• Social capital
• Symbolic capital

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Challenges Facing Mature Learners

• Practical concerns (access and support)
• Transitions
• Local to regional
• Internal to external
• Domestic or professional to academic
• Caring position to a critical one
• School-aged learner to adult learner

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Educating Rita

• Transition to HE
• Why is Rita successful?
• Her own resilience and resourcefulness
• Her relationship with Frank
• The institution

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How might the e- portfolio help Rita?

• Internal resourcefulness and strength (provides a
  space for the student to articulate her
  resilience)
• Her intrinsic motivation (a writing space to
  consider and record motivation)
• Her relationship with Frank (informal, personal
  on-line support)
• Both teacher and learner share an optimistic
  approach to her learning (action plans and clear
  path of learning)

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How might an e-portfolio help Rita?

• Her understanding of meta-learning (provides
  learning styles and skills analysis tools)
• She finds herself through learning (audits
  validate identity and previous knowledge)
• Secure learning environment (secure,
  collaborative environment in which to practise)

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What are the challenges facing e-learning
specialists?

• Perception that e-learning is an exclusive,
  expert interest because of
• Technical discourse
• Perceived associations with youth
• Perceived associations with masculinity
• Uncertainty about the boundaries between public
  and private spheres

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Inter-generational experiences of higher education

• Who are the new students?
• Who are the traditional students?

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Youth, Age and e-learning

• What is information technology for?
• Who uses it most?
• Who could most benefit from it?

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The generation gap

• In UK and US the trend is towards more
  non-traditional students
• The implication is that campus populations today
  are quite different from those in the days when
  college and university decision makers were
  students.
• Oblinger, D., (2003)

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Generations

• Boomers key experiences Vietnam, Watergate,
  space race, civil rights movement
• Generation X Chernobyl, fall of Berlin Wall,
  emergence of AIDs, Tiananmen Square
• Millennials born in or after 1982 new
  technologies intrinsic to their life experiences

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Information-age mind-set

• Computers arent technology (To them the
  computer is not a technology it is an assumed
  part of life)
• Internet is better than television
• Reality is no longer real
• Doing is more important than knowing
• Typing is preferred to handwriting
• Zero tolerance of delay
• Consumer and creator are blurring
• (Frand, J., 2000)

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Implications for non-traditional learners

• Patience supports deep level learning
• Writing by hand slows down use of technology
• Knowledge is privileged and can be accessed in
  stages
• This is much closer to the pedagogical/andragogica
  l processes embedded in universities

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Building Capital

• Mature learners bring with them enormous amounts
  of experience
• Challenge is to harness that experience
• Audit is a tool to do that
• PETAL personal information (including
  interests)
• Education
• Work history (paid and unpaid)
• Action plans
• Skills (including managing ones own learning)

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Conclusions and Suggestions for Today

1. E-learning resources can be enormously liberating
   for mature students.
2. We need to consider the implications of the
   meanings that learners and potential learners
   will have constructed concerning e-learning.
3. The chain of audits can help learners construct a
   learning identity that can convert life
   experience into capital

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References

• Bourdieu, P., (1989) Social Space and Symbolic
  Power Sociological Theory, 7, 14-25
• Frand, J., 2000)The Information Age Mindset
  Changes in Students an Implications for Higher
  Education, EDUCASE Review 35 no.5
  (September/October) 15 24
• Oblinger, D. (2003) Boomers, Gen-Exers,
  Millennials EDUCASE Review, July/August 37-47