ETEC522 (Fall 2016)

Adult do not learn like children.  Adult learners comes from all walks of life, and bring to the table a rich tapestry of experience.  They are also goal-oriented and will take a certain course to gain a specific skill-set or knowledge.  While adult learners may focus better because they approach learning with a specific objective in mind, it is even easier for them to lose interest.  Other life obligations such as family and work often compete for their attention, so if they feel they are not getting what they want out of the learning, they will quickly decide it is not worth their time and money to continue.

 

Given these characteristics of the adult learner, it is not a surprise that online open-source learning is enticing to the adult learner.  Distance education removes the limitations that schedules and distance can pose and allows learners to learn at their own pace from anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost of brick-and-mortar institutes.  New programming knowledge also gave birth to responsive design which allows learners to access learning from various types of devices. 

 

This allowance introduced mobile learning which further evolved the e-learning field.  Firstly, as long as they have a mobile device, learners can learn on-the-go while still taking advantage of the affordances of thoughtful user design.  Secondly, this type of on-the-go learning introduced micro-learning which breaks down learning material into small, easily and quickly consumable knowledge bites. Learners can spend as little as a few minutes to learn a new bite-sized lesson.

 

The three companies in this comparative analysis all provide online, responsively-designed mobile micro-learning that specifically targets the on-the-go adult learner.