Challenges of Distance Learning for Adult Students
by Megan Mullen
(est. reading time 8 minutes)
There are two trends in higher education that have been both emerging and converging over the past two decades: the exponential growth of online education and a noticeable increase in the number of “adult” or “non-traditional” students attending college or distance learning.
At first glance, these two trends would seem to be perfect complements. After all, the online learning format provides a level of flexibility and convenience that should accommodate the educational needs and lifestyles of adult students. And adult students provide a revenue stream that helps to offset declining enrollments among more traditional-aged students.
Or so it would seem …
However, there is a lot more to this story. And this is what will be discussed in the paragraphs to follow. Are these trends actually the perfect complements they appear to be? And if not, how come? What challenges are presented – to both the adult students and the colleges they attend?
Who Are Adult Students Today?
Let’s face it – today’s students are struggling with college. They are struggling in ways that previous generations did not. College tuition is expensive, even with financial aid, and student loan debt is at an all-time high. Moreover, many of today’s students come from struggling K-12 schools and are not well prepared for college-level work.
Many students carry additional burdens as well, such as jobs (which they need to help pay for college), dependents, and various family and community responsibilities that, along with attending college, pull them in multiple different directions. This is more and more the case with younger, more “traditional-aged” students as well as older students.
Every day, it gets harder to say who is or not an adult (or “non-traditional) college student. We would put on the table the notion that, by some definitions, more students today should be considered “adult” or, if not “adult,” then certainly “non-traditional.”
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has identified characteristics that would cause someone to be considered an “adult student.”:
- Does not immediately continue their education after graduating from high school
- Attends college only part time
- Works full time (35 hours or more per week)
- Is financially independent
- Has children or dependents other than a spouse
- Is a single parent
- Has a GED, not a high school diploma
This list certainly adds students to the “adult” category who might not fit otherwise—certainly not under the definition of “age 25 or older.” This has been understood for several years now. As psychology professor Brian Tilley stated in a 2014 study, “it may be that the age criterion is outdated or, at least, an ineffective shorthand for identifying and supporting non-traditional students.”
Taking this issue a step further, in February 2019, the Lumina Foundation released a report, “Who Is Today’s Student?” that details the demographics of today’s college students. Lumina is a private foundation whose mission is “to expand student access to and success in education beyond high school.”
The Lumina report states that, among other things, “37% of college students are 25 or older, and 46% are first-generation college goers.” Also, “a majority of college students work–many full time–while supporting themselves through school.” Sixty-four percent of college students work, with 40% of them working full time. Forty-nine percent of college students are financially independent of their parents.
Given all this, it is not difficult to understand that there is a large group of students today for whom, perhaps, neither “adult” nor “non-traditional” is entirely appropriate. Maybe we should just call them “college students.” Increasingly, it seems younger students who are at least minimally secure financially, have no dependents, attend college full time and live on or near campus are the exception rather than the rule. In many places, this is already true.
What Are the Challenges “Adult” Students Face with Online Learning?
A recent meta-analysis, “Challenges Faced by Adult Learners in Online Distance Education: A Literature Review,” identified three categories of challenges faced by adult student learners working online: internal, external, and program-related. These are the following:
Internal Challenges
These are challenges that relate to students’ personalities and dispositions and fall into three sub-categories: management, learning, and technical.
Management challenges include the two most commonly cited in the research reviewed for this meta-analysis not surprisingly, these are the inability to create balance between education and work and the inability to create a balance between education and family or social life. Time management was also a concern.
Learning challenges related to issues of students’ self-efficacy, and included lack of prerequisite knowledge for courses, lack of interest, and low self-confidence. Technical challenges related primarily to students’ background with an ability to use the Internet effectively to do their course work.
External Challenges
These are challenges having to do with work or home life, or other extracurricular responsibilities. Adult students struggle continually to balance schoolwork with jobs and home lives. External challenges fall into the sub-categories of job-related and domestic challenges:
Job-related challenges include cumulative work overload, lack of support from employers, scheduling conflicts, financial problems, and limits on available study time. Domestic challenges relate primarily to unrealistic family expectations and difficulty finding appropriate space in which to work.
Program-Related Challenges
These are challenges related to a student’s particular program of study and its requirements. Sub-categories include tutor-related challenges and institutional challenges
Tutor-related challenges which generally refer to the inability to get the subject matter that’s needed at the right time. These could be the result of mismatches between the hours tutors are available and those that work for the students.
Institutional challenges are a broad category that includes what is fundamentally an institution’s lack of preparedness to address and work with the needs commonly faced by adult students.
It should be pointed out that each of these categories has different associated frequencies of occurrences in the research studies examined, with two being tied for the greatest frequency: inability to create balance between education and work and inability to create a balance between education and family or social life
The categories summarize well the areas in which there could be friction between adult students and their institutions. These support other research findings as well.
Who (All) Is Responsible?
Not to be glib, but one thing about many college students today is that they are not adolescents or even necessarily young adults. This is a significant factor in how they might (or might not) be educated effectively as online learners.
The Role of Support Services
Students who are older or have many responsibilities to juggle and therefore can be very direct, even somewhat demanding, when seeking assistance or information. These are students who almost literally are fighting for the quality of education they are paying for and the sorts of services they would expect to accompany that.
Therefore, the role of student support offices on campus is critical to the success of all students with non-traditional needs or circumstances. These students do not want to have their time wasted by inefficient college offices or faculty advisors who are missing in action. They want immediate and accurate assistance.
These offices range from advising and/or counseling centers to financial aid offices to professionally staffed tutoring centers. And, of course, they need to be available to students much more of the time than simply from 9-5 on weekdays.
The Role of Online Instructors
Instructors as well need to be highly attuned to the needs of today’s students and any “non-traditional” needs that relate to their courses. Although this is likely to change in the coming decade, as more college instructors retire and their positions (likely to be cast in very different terms for the 21st century) taken over by digital natives – many of whom will have studied online themselves.
Moreover, many online instructors themselves are adjuncts, working only part-time and probably at more than just one institution. Their busy schedules are a double-edged sword for their students. While, on the one hand, adjuncts can empathize with the competing life demands of adult learners. On the other hand, they might be too busy themselves to give the attention needed or even notice in the first place.
So it might well be only a short-term solution that is needed at this point. However, this will be a sorely needed short-term solution since many of today’s college instructors still feel ill at ease in the online environment and make injudicious decisions when it comes to students requesting special allowances to accommodate personal situations.
Have Things Changed for Adult Students?
In this article, we’ve discussed several challenges adult (or “adult”) students face in today’s online college environment. We can expect these students and their needs to have a significant impact on the institution of higher education as a whole.
It might be, actually, that the needs of adult students and the standard practices of colleges and universities—especially those with online programs—begin to converge as institutions become more adept and flexible in accommodating the needs of diverse student populations and the students, for their part, show more aptitude with the technologies of online learning.
Among other things, both the challenges and the obstacles have existed and been observed long enough now that college staff at various levels and in various positions are better able to address adult student’s needs more directly and routinely.
References:
Kara, M. J., Erdoğdu, F., Kokoç, M. & Kursat, C. (2019). Challenges faced by adult learners in online distance education: A literature review. Open Praxis, vol. 11 issue 1, January–March, pp. 5–22. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1213733.pdf
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (N.D.). Definitions and data: Who is nontraditional?. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97578e.asp
Tilley, B. P. (2014). “What makes a student non-traditional? A comparison of students over and under age 25 in online, accelerated psychology courses, Psychology Learning and Teaching, vol. 13 issue 2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/plat.2014.13.2.95
“What Is a nontraditional student? (2019). Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), 2019. http://www.youcandealwithit.com/borrowers/nontraditional/nontraditional-undergrad.shtml
The Lumina Foundation. (2019). Who is today’s student?, February 12. https://www.luminafoundation.org/resources/todays-student
