Standardization.  Make everything the same and it's easier to manage. It's a conundrum that has faced front-line instructors since the inception of standardized curriculum and tests.  Online development, especially at an institutional level, is undergoing the same issues.  Balancing administrative and instructional needs can be an awkward balance. 

At the adult level, assumptions are made that standardization and even research around online design applies to all levels of learners.  Yet, a basic education student doesn't manage information in the same way a student in a post-secondary college program does.  It's not about being an adult, common sense, or a weird assumption that smart phones and computer literacy are the same thing.   It's about the level that a person is at with their prior knowledge, skills and abilities.  Self-efficacy and confidence plays a part, as well as prior learning experiences, learning deficits and digital and critical literacy.    

When it comes to ideas like Universal Design, you wouldn't say I'm not making that doorway bigger to ensure wheelchair access because it doesn't fit with the design elements of our hallway. Or,  I am not painting that door so that my residents with dementia won't get confused.  In my opinion, someone who has never met with a person who is in a wheelchair should probably not be designing their accessible kitchen. 

Universal design for learning takes the idea of design into the virtual world in wonderful ways.   It is even incorporated into checklists when it comes to online design. Yet, when it becomes a matter of aesthetics and checklists, unfortunately the level and reality of a learner isn't always taken into consideration. 

Design elements and decisions such as monochromatic, small print, and nothing flashy in order to make courses institutionally the same are the norm.  But it should be recognized that these decisions are often being made by individuals with a much different worldview and understanding than our adult basic education students. As a result, the creative is abolished. And it is the creative that is most needed to bring in those learners who exist on the margins, in order to better facilitate their online experience.  Ensuring the decisions being made relates to the learner at their particular level becomes a matter not of personal preference or inappropriate research applications, but of what really works for our learners. 

Anatomy of ABE Students

Why do we need to be conscious of the research and the tools connecting to our students' reality?

For anyone who has worked with pre-high school level students it is obvious. The reasons for separate, intentional and flexible programming reflects that the reasons behind adult basic education students not achieving success in prior schooling are many and varied.  

 "The lesson eventually learned is that ABE/GED students with high expectations and equally high vulnerability to physical, psychological, and family stress are less likely to believe that persistence pays. For many ABE students, getting through two classes may take more persistence and energy than it took their teachers to get through two years of college… imagine enrolling in a graduate program where you have no idea how many years it will take to get your master's, and seated beside you is a student who has been in the program for twelve years (Dr. Nancy Boraks)." 


(Excerpted from "What I Wish They Had Told Me" by Dr. Nancy Boraks). 

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UDL

Universal design.  The first time I heard about UD was at a conference for persons with disabilities in Hermisilio, Mexico.  Based on principles "developed in 1997 by a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, led by the late Ronald Mace in the North Carolina State University, UD led the way towards awareness and accommodations for people with disabilities.  

That conference also brought to light the systemic and financial barriers inherent in implementing Universal Design.  One of the students in our group was in a wheelchair and was often prevented from continuing on an outing due to physical barriers, like the height of curbs or condition of a sidewalk.   My Mexican counterparts advocated for the same principles of UD: Equitable, Flexibility in, and Simple and Intuitive Use, as well as Perceptible Information, Tolerance for Error, Low Physical Effort and Size and Space for Approach Use.  However, the ability to achieve these goals were impeded by many obstacles. Not the least of which was a sort of disability illiteracy, that didn't take into account the realities of the individuals that benefited from UD. 

Connecting this to teacher training and curriculum design courses, these same principles are transferred to a Universal Design for Learning.  Online accessibility within the virtual environment encompasses many facets.  Adult basic education learners arrive with learning issues and a host of other needs that should be recognized and supported by principles such as those found in UDL. 

Just as Universal Design connects to architecture through considerations such as wheelchair ramps that are a one-size fits all, there are also considerations such as right-left handedness, or access to anyone who is either sitting or standing that acknowledges the individual.  These same principles need to take into consideration the adult basic learner. 

This is achieved not only by accessing and implementing various tools through learning management systems and assistive technologies, but by strategizing the delivery of content to meet each learner's needs. A focus on holistic delivery and the whole learner, ensures that any potential illiteracy by the developer or the teacher towards basic education learners can be overcome.  

Literacy Quotes

"Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. 

Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. 

For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... 

Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential." 
~ Kofi Annan

"Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens." - President Bill Clinton on International Literacy Day, September 8th 1994

"People are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958)

"As an empowerment right, education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalised adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty, and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities." 
-- Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General

Separating the Tools from the Learner

I read a perfectly joyful post of the virtual environment by Carey Hilgartner, Online Learning is Being Shipped to the Museum. He shares the excitement and possibilities provided by the tools that can be used online.  He notes, "online learning"  is everywhere and being used all the time, so eventually, the term itself will be relegated to history.  

The tools are tremendous and do hold tremendous possibilities when teaching online.  The issue is sometimes the tools are focused on in lieu of the learner.   We'd never give a student an eraser, a pencil and a calculator, who has never used them, and go right into the content. Yet this is the danger of assuming the tools are the learning.  

Learners at the ABE level require scaffolding and explicit instruction.  One tool used at a time to ensure comfort and confidence can be built.  Sometimes the danger is that a variety of tools are used, as a replacement for being attuned to diverse learning styles, rather than the building up of skills and efficacy first.  

Afterall, the tools aren't the content.  They are a means to achieve an objective, complete a task, learn another skill.  There is only so much cognitive energy that can be delegated to any task. I have seen the beauty of a tool such as a calculator opening up spaces where a learner can suddenly grasp a concept.  I have also seen times when a calculator has interfered with the learning process that needs to be occurring to develop a basic concept. 

It isn't the term or the tools that need to be relegated to history.  It's the assumptions that occur with our learners.  What is occurring at the level of the learner who uses the online tools is a conversation that needs to be happening at all levels. 

Systemic Myths of Online Learning and the Adult Basic Education Learner

"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?" Erich Fromm  

Systemic myths or misconceptions that exist include:
If you can use a smart phone, you can do online learning. Really?!? (that is my disappointed inside voice). My professional voice: this does not capture the reality of adult basic education learners, nor computer or digital literacy, in the slightest.

Someone else will do it.  The compassionate approach is hard to marry to a business model at the post-secondary level.  Pulled and pushed by political and economic forces and paradigm shifts, institutions cut that which isn't sexy or profitable.  Life skills, trans-vocational programs, and adult basic education programs all fall under that sphere. Volunteer literacy programs (the "someone else") play an essential role in the services needed at the pre-highschool level, but in no way can they match dedicated services provided by a community college. 

Class sizes have gone down so literacy levels are rising. (Translation: We don't need it anymore): Statistics are a funny thing, aren't they? Especially when the latest international survey of adult literacy skills precluded those who are Indigenous, ESL, EAL, or with learning needs or disabilities.  Funding models have changed the way learners can access education at the ABE level as well. 

We can just fund or provide short programming that leads directly into a career program or trade. This is a wonderful idea, with the exception of two very pertinent facts.  Firstly, until the prerequisites for trades and career programs eliminate high school English, Math and Sciences, a solid pre-high school curriculum will still be needed to create opportunities for adults who enter at the basic education level.  Secondly, there is no magic curriculum powder that precludes the way the human brain learns.  If a learner is starting at a grade 1-6 level, it is almost neurologically impossible for them to be ready for a grade 10 trades exam in 6 weeks. 

We need to focus more on improving learning at the high school level. Initiatives that integrate transition programming at the high school level are innovative and create successful learning paths for students.  Yet, again, if students' abilities aren't at the high school level, these programs are moot.  In addition, unless teen pregnancy, bullying, sexual abuse, child abuse, learning disabilities, poor teaching or inadequate teaching resources, systemic racism, poverty, and a host of other social issues vanish, we will always need basic education programming at the adult level. 

Online Learning & Basic Education Students - a compassionate approach

There is a wonderful TED Talk by Bryan Stevenson, "We need to talk about an injustice." He represents people on death row, and in this talk, he speaks about the seemingly magic power of a judge to change a child defendant into something he's not - an adult. 

He ends his talk with the thought that "we cannot be full evolved human beings until we care about human rights and basic dignity. That all of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone. That our visions of technology and design and entertainment and creativity have to be married with visions of humanity, compassion and justice."  

So when we start to connect the dots, the vision for adult basic learners from a systemic point of view needs to be one married to human rights and justice.  How often is the word "compassion" used with curriculum development for the disenfranchised learner, the learner for whom the skills and concepts of the educational system need to be explicitly taught - not assumed.  

How often is a students' humanity recognized, when they are marginalized and streamed into the same square hole as their mainstreamed peers.  Systems and institutions sometimes seem to think that they can magically change learners from low-self-efficacy to one of privilege just by standardizing online platforms, providing online classes, and maintaining the status quo that works for the learner operating at a higher literacy level. 

The systemic and administrative myths of the online platform need to be dispelled in order to provide programming that is rooted in the paradigms of justice and dignity.