Critical Challenges and Barriers to Online Learning

Older adult students are drawn to distance education because of the need to balance career, family, and continuing education responsibilities conveniently, effectively, and efficiently. When contemporary technologies are integrated into the educational environment, the lack of familiarity with these tools creates barriers to learning. With teacher shortages in certain fields, distance education may address this crisis. This book offers recommendations for implementing online teaching training for nontraditional students. They must have clear paths of communication available especially when social inclusion is limited by the online format; learning new pedagogy is secondary until a level of technology competency has been reached; the adult students will commit to learning when the goals and objectives are applicable and practical to their personal and professional needs; these nontraditional adult students have competing priorities and struggle with balancing family responsibilities, job obligations, and commitment to the program; this is only exacerbated by the state, university, and program assessment demands required. The book targets teacher educators and educational researchers.