Reading-Post 2

Knowledge provides the key to the world you hold in your hands - Creative Commons Photo

This time in EBSCO Host’s scholarly peer reviewed articles, I searched ‘adult learners in today’s technological world’ and retrieved over one million articles.  After two advanced searches using the key words, “elearning” and “instructional design", I narrowed the relevant articles to a manageable 13.   These articles contain many interesting findings!  Below, I have shared a few of them.

Cook, R. (2008). Combining quality and expediency with action research in elearning instructional design. Journal of Educators Online, 2, 1-34. Retrieved from

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=51&hid=105&sid=b982b455-e30f-4848-8d6a-90683afcd595%40sessionmgr11

Interesting article.  The author has conducted research focusing on the obstacles that surround the actual company/school/business when striving for success using technology.  It appears the author has also “embedded action research in electronic instructional design” (Cook, 2008) for this study to give important feedback to the developer.  This article might prove beneficial to the writer’s AR project as the project focuses on instructional design and e-learning.

Eberle, J. H. (2009). Heutagogy: What your mother didn’t tell you about pedagogy and the conceptual age. National Social Science Journal, 28(2), 181-188. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=57&hid=10&sid=b982b455-e30f-4848-8d6a-90683afcd595%40sessionmgr11

This article contains a cross-reference of ideas pertaining to andragogy, pedagogy, and heutagogy, “the study of self-directed learning”. (Eberle, 2006).  It concentrates on the advantages that e-learning offers to the adult learner.  For this writer’s AR project, it appears to contain a wealth of valuable information.

Silver-Pacuilla, H. (2008). Access and benefits: Assistive technology in adult literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50.2.4, 114-125. doi:10.1588

This article focuses on development of adult learners skills – particularly adult literacy - through assistance and support using technology.  It appears to present concrete research and a methodical approach for tackling a portion of the ‘fear of technology’ issue and may prove to be supportive of this writer’s AR project.  It also appears to include research conducted using multiple intelligence theory, which, again, may prove useful to this writer’s final AR project.

Stewart, J.A, & Alexander, G. (2006). Virtual action learning: Experiences from a study of an sme e-learning programme. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 2, 141 159, doi: 10.1080/14767330600885854

This article shares results gathered in a project that investigated both workshops in a face-to-face situation and in a virtual learning environment. The results of their research may be beneficial to this writer’s AR project in that the e-learning and instructional design projects this AR project references also target both types of demographics.