Considerations for Young Enlisted E-Learners
When it comes to online learning, young enlisted active duty military are a tremendously misunderstood population. Online course developers and administrators fail to appreciate their skill sets, military training, educational background, cultural diversity, work schedules, and the nature of their access to the Internet — even as they aggressively pursue young enlisted as students.
Many online programs are so out of touch with the realities of today's military service that one wonders whether it is due to ignorance or an unconscionable money grab. Giving the worst offenders the benefit of the doubt, one can explain the high failure rate of students by showing that there is a huge disconnect between reality and academia.
Courses are produced by instructional designers who follow standard, one-size-fits-all best practices without benefit of needs assessments or audience analysis. Information Technology departments promote learning management software (LMS) solutions and integrated online services (course registration, elaborate, customizable portals, libraries featuring online reserve documents averaging 10 megabytes), that are not at all aligned with the technical realities of the majority of their users.
Good intentions translate to disaster, especially when coupled with overwhelmed instructors who, out of desperation, are trying to deploy little learning factories (their virtual classrooms), rather than focusing on substantive interaction. It does little good to chastise Blackboard, WebCT, or even today's darling of open-source courseware, Sakai , for not hiring ergonomics specialists, or even gaming programmers in order to streamline tasks. Each "improved version" is even more complex and requires more clicks, downloads, screen-changes, and complicated uploading. By creating prisons of busywork for the instructors, they further alienate learners from their instructors — at precisely a time when war and war stress exhort one to re-humanize the e-learning space, to reach out and touch the inner core of the learner who is battling isolation and terrible danger, and to satisfy the overwhelming desire to learn and obtain a degree.
Senior active duty military personnel often have close to ideal situations for e-learning, but only if they are lucky enough to be stationed in one place for a long time, with broadband internet access, and are not burdened with frequent TDYs or time in the field. That profile fits a pathetically small handful of individuals. It's probably easier to win the lottery than to be in one of those propitious situations.
Younger enlisted personnel, who are deployed or have an MOS (job) that takes them into the field for weeks at a time, are almost guaranteed failure in most online programs. Yet, they are the ones most targeted by recruiters and marketing types.
"Can't attend the classes held at 4:30 pm each afternoon on base? Don't worry! Sign up for our online courses! Don't worry about the expense — we have a special loan program for you."
Because a college education was often the main reason for committing oneself to military service, the young enlisted personnel are very vulnerable. A well-designed online program can be incredibly valuable for morale. For those in harm's way, or soon to be, the ability to focus on a positive future, potential economic access forged with a college degree, is what gives them hope, drive, and a sense of future.
Some of the critical elements to keep in mind when designing programs for young enlisted military, who are either deployed or in the field, are fairly obvious. Others require the institution to step back a moment and invest time and effort into conducting needs assessments, computer utilization studies, and audience analysis.
Access is not constant. Young enlisted personnel spend a lot of time in the field and are likely to be called out to special schools or training with little or no prior notice. Deadlines, collaborative tasks, discussion board entries, and other elements should be designed with enough flexibility to accommodate these situations.
Highly computer literate. Visit any barracks where the young enlisted are able to get in-room phone service or in-room DSL, and you'll find a group clustered around a laptop and an X-Box, simultaneously instant-messaging friends, watching each other play Halo2 (or some other game), downloading and playing music, downloading and viewing movies (sadly enough, often pornography), adding entries to blogs, buying books on Amazon.com, looking for tickets on Travelocity or expedia.com, etc. Online is a collective experience in this situation, and it is amazing that course developers do not keep this in mind. Even in Internet cafes, it is not unusual to see young enlisted sitting together and discussing what they are doing.
IM and games-adept. The population tends to prefer instant messaging and interactive games to static, asynchronous activities. This creates a paradox — how does one accommodate that interest and ability? Chat seems to be the answer, particularly one that utilizes customizable avatars, in settings such as Activeworlds.com. However, this is not possible when slow connections and lack of access are the norm. In this case, it is better to be able to provide a downloadable module or game that can be played either on the computer or on X-Box, and where a "live" connection is not needed. Needless to say, it requires developers to look a bit further than in pdf files to stimulate young learners. It may not be a bad idea to incorporate some of the learning software used in high school (AP) classes — geography, math, etc.
Internet Explorer-rejecting. Mozilla Firefox is quickly supplanting Internet Explorer, for obvious reasons. Not many young enlisted are completely up-to-date with antivirus software or firewalls if they are using their own laptops. This is important to keep in mind, and it is good to be able to offer a download of virus protection software to enrolled students.
Peer-to-Peer file-sharing habits. Instructional designers could capitalize on the fact that young enlisted are often used to sharing files — music, videos, etc. — and some may have let their computers stay constantly connected to the Internet as a mini-server. While one would not want to encourage copyright violations, it is good to know that there is a readiness to share files, which helps with collaborative activities.
Skill sets gained from military schools and training. Young enlisted personnel are often required to take courses that involve developing leadership skills, cognitive psychology (motivation, training program design, etc.), navigation skills, and other technical skills. These are often overlooked by course designers who could tap into this experience and create "situated learning" experiences that connect real life to course concepts.
Writing deficiencies. Many individuals entering college suffer serious writing deficiencies. This is even more the case with young enlisted. All courses should provide scaffolding and support when it comes to improving writing skills. Remediation should be made available as well, and ideally, one could incorporate the writing skills-building activities in all classes.
Math challenged. Remedial math is often required. Math modules need to be designed so that a virtual mentor "on demand 24-7" will be there to show solutions to problems. In this case, a CD to accompany the test is often a good approach.
Standardized testing problems. Many young enlisted military personnel are from disadvantaged neighborhoods where the schools did not have sufficient resources to offer ACT- or SAT-tutoring courses, or special prep courses for taking standardized tests. Despite the emphasis on "No Child Left Behind" and the fact that teachers often resort to teaching the test, students are still often unprepared when it comes to taking standardized tests. An overuse of standardized tests will most certainly work against student success.
This is the first part of what is envisioned as a multi-part series of articles that will deal with ways to develop successful online courses and programs for active-duty military from all branches and all levels of service. Please check back for the continuation of this article.
Susan Smith Nash
