Academic Motivation

What leads to academic success? Why are some students able to achieve academically and others not? A breadth of research exists supporting the notion of motivation as having a significant impact on academic success. This chapter investigated historical and theoretical developments of motivation from the Greek Philosophers, through the Industrial Revolution, to the perspective of motivation in fulfilling psychological needs. Once the general concept of motivation is fully exhausted, academic motivation is explored from theoretical foundations to current research on factors influencing academic motivation and the impact of academic motivation on academic achievement. This foundation has practical implications for assessment of motivation and curricular and program development as a result.

Implications for E-Learning in Adult Education Curriculum

Technology plays a vital role in the field of e-Learning in adult education curriculum. The intent for this chapter is to explore the implications for e-Learning in hopes to stimulate attention as it relates to the acquisition of knowledge and inferences for higher education practitioners and program designers in terms of the contexts of students, embedded technology, and faculty. Conquering the challenges facing technology implications in any educational system is vital and ideally this chapter offers a means of collective literature to increase the quite extensive and potentially overwhelming components of effective curriculum programs within the field of adult education, using embedded technology. This chapter highlights briefly some of the concepts and identifies simple and applicable suggestions for increasing effectiveness of embedded technology into higher education curriculum and adult education teaching.

Utilizing Digital Educational Games to Enhance Adult Learning

As adult educators, we strive to facilitate learning using a variety of teaching strategies that engage learners. Learning by doing is a powerful method that combines both application and practice to address the needs and motivations of adult learners. Digital educational games provide one type of an engaging instructional strategy for adult learners that can be delivered in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. Digital educational games are not something new, however, as they were developed soon after the first computer games (Wolfe & Crookall, 1998). Additionally, game-based educating has been used in many adult learning contexts, including the corporate environment to train staff in financial and economic skills, and in the military system for combat and strategy training (Whitton & Hollins, 2008). Despite these successful applications, there is a lack of recognition of digital educational games as a significant instructional method for the adult learner (Connolly, Boyle, MacArthur, Hainey, & Boyle, 2012; Gros, 2007). In this chapter, we review the research literature on adult learning via games in terms of learner motivation and engagement, specifically focusing on adult learning in the online environment. We will define key terms and essential characteristics of educational games, share best practices for developing and designing engaging educational games as an instructional strategy, and discuss the types of learning outcomes that can be achieved through the use of effective educational games, concentrating on adult learners in the online environment.

Harnessing the Tiger of Emerging E-Learning Platforms

This chapter explores the evolution of E-learning, defines many E-platforms and discusses the relationship between contemporary Andragogical practices, and future technology trends, which key drivers for the implementation of new technology, play a significant role. This chapter argues that online education (E-learning) has the potential for greater access and advancement of knowledge for learners across their life spans than the traditional four walled classroom. The purpose of this chapter argues how we can rely on practice and research to harness the untapped potential of increasingly diverse modalities of online education. Some of the major issues revolving around online education and adult learners in the 21 Century include: processes of learning prevalent in E-learning platforms, issues concerning policy, access and program completion, barriers to online learning adoption for adult learners and assessment of online learning in the context for the 21st Century.

Designing an English Curriculum for Everyone

In this chapter, the authors demonstrate a practical view of a foreign language curriculum development in Colombia. Within the chapter, they give a brief description of language policies that guided the curriculum; a discussion of the research framework, methods, and data collection; and a reflection of the choices made with regard to education, language, and language learning. By triangulating existing policies, contextual and conceptual needs analyses, and existing classroom practices, the authors demonstrate a collaborative and flexible means of meeting foreign language teaching across a broad spectrum of inconsistencies. Conclusions review and discuss the importance of maintaining an open and adaptable perspective throughout foreign language curriculum design while establishing and creating a working, flexible English language curriculum.

Improvisational Self-Directed Learning

Contemporary organizations are characterized as complex and continually changing as a result of global competition, technological advances, and fluctuating consumer expectations. Flourishing within continually changing environments requires professionals with the capacity to thrive within a dynamic context. Developing the capacity to think and act quickly is important and doing so with competency and character is paramount. Becoming an effective organizational professional requires proficiency in improvisational self-direct learning. Improvisational self-directed learning describes people who can solve novel and surprising problems, create value from fortuitous events, and take action without preplanning. The exercise of human agency, bolstered by strong psychological capital, which includes self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience, is presented as the foundation for self-directed improvisational learning.

Context and Participation

Programs of study are an important interface between student and institution. The program curriculum, as the architecture of learning experiences greatly influences the learning environment and the students' experience of the institution. Despite the recent institutional concern about program quality and significant investment in making positive change to teaching and learning, there is evidence of little change in curriculum design processes. Programs are frequently faced with challenges of criticisms, poor student experiences and opposing view points about what should and should not be done. The present chapter develops a conceptualisation of the program level curriculum design process, with the intent of contributing to evolving approaches of program level curriculum design which meet the demands of the twenty first century. The conceptualisation of program level curriculum design presented in the chapter brings together key ideas from the literature including curriculum models, capacities for the twenty first century learners, activity theory and participatory design.

Teaching and Learning Through Interdisciplinary Pedagogies in a Second Life Environment

While virtual worlds have been available since the 1970s, opportunities for teaching and learning leading to improved pedagogical practice have increased over the past three decades (Livingstone, Kemp, & Edgar, 2008). Second Life, a highly immersive and scalable three-dimensional (3-D) multi-user social virtual environment, emphasizes the use of rich and authentic worlds for supporting an array of human activities and interactions within Web 2.0. Through synchronous communication, collaboration, and simulated experiences (Skiba, 2009), students accept the role of active creators of knowledge when faculty members adopt the Second Life platform as a learning environment. Bandura's social learning theory, Vygotsky's social development theory, and Piaget's constructivist learning theory form the conceptual framework for this chapter. This chapter describes how faculty from different disciplines in higher education adopted the interdisciplinary approach to course design, development, and delivery of a Second Life course with emphasis on authentic evaluation and assessment to improve student learning outcomes. The Second Life platform offered unique opportunities for students to become fully engaged in learning outcomes within two different courses. With learning outcomes and pedagogical needs at the forefront of instructional design decisions, instructors identified strategies for teaching, assessing, and evaluating the collaborative, immersive opportunities within Second Life as they taught two separate courses to the same group of students. This interdisciplinary approach to teaching entailed the use and integration of methods and analytical frameworks from more than one academic discipline to examine a theme, issue, question, or topic (Newell, 1994, 2001). Following both a constructivist approach and an integrated teaching model, instructors from two disciplines collaborated in the learning process with the goal of fostering inter-professional interactions. Interdisciplinary education was based on mutual understanding and respect for the concrete and unique opportunities for new contributions of each discipline.

Following the Drum

This chapter provides an overview of motivational theory from adult education, psychology and educational psychology, spanning nearly 60 years. The first half of the chapter focuses on the motivational theories in terms of their developmental genesis, while later sections examine the relationship between motivation and learning resistance and engagement. Final sections suggest conclusions regarding the importance of studying learning resistance as a construct over and beyond motivational theory and position learning resistance scholarship as a learner-centered, positive approach to adult learning.

Assessing Teacher Candidates' Professional Competence for Evaluating Teacher Education Programs

The conception of teacher preparation programs in German-speaking countries usually rests on a largely normative set of professional competencies to be acquired by teacher candidates. The fact that this cluster of competencies is quite complex entails the considerable challenge of finding adequate procedures for the assessment at the end of the training. Valid and reliable information on professional competencies of teacher candidates can only be obtained by analyzing their actual teaching performance in the classroom. This chapter discusses theoretical assumptions of current assessment practices, a variety of methodological approaches, current developments, and implications for teacher education programs. A special focus is on the use of video portfolios as an assessment tool in the final stage of teacher preparation programs. The results of such assessments can provide a solid base for answering the question of whether the training program has managed to achieve its major objective, namely to qualify the candidates to teach successfully.