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Thoughts on Professional Learning: Considerations when transitioning to online instruction

  Considerations when transitioning to online instruction By Nadia Kader There is a need and interest in transitioning to online instruction in adult education. While having informal conversations with practitioners, I noted how quickly people wanted to jump to online instruction without considering how much an impromptu move changes practice, affects staff and students, and what learning gaps there are. We are a resource-starved field serving students with high support needs and competing responsibilities, such as family, work, and personal. It is incredibly challenging to plan ahead of time when there are fires to put out, staff to hire, reports to submit, and grants to write. However, if we can plan and take into consideration how challenging online teaching and learning can be, we can mitigate issues before they become too big to handle. A better understanding of the problems at hand helps us solve them in the long run. We can also better support each other in building a learni...
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Literacy Corner: Our Learning Brains: Principles for Tutoring

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  Our Learning Brains: Principles for Tutoring  By Carrie M. Cannella   Adriene Converse, Unsplash At Mountain Plains’ annual conference last month, I facilitated a session on brain science and learning for tutoring. Here, I am sharing some of the key ideas we discussed about the learning brain and how we can use what we know to approach tutoring effectively. To arrive at this, we will look at foundations of “Adult Learning Theory,” learning preferences, and learning difficulties. In order to have the best reading experience, get up and move around first. After reading a bit, get up again, do a walkabout, and think about how this all relates to what you know. Do that a couple of times, and try some doodling as well. When you’re finished reading, write a little reflection about how you’ll use these principles with your student(s). Together, we can create happy brains! (Human) Learning Theory In our field, we often start thinking about learning with Malcolm Knowles’ Adult L...
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