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Monday, 3 February 2025

Helping students back into study

I have been thinking about the barriers for students coming back to study as older adults. These students all have an undergraduate degree in something (perhaps physiotherapy, education, or business) but have shifted over time into the career development space. A significant percentage of our students tend to be teachers who parent, teach, and volunteer; and a few who are parenting alone, and trying to develop themselves at the same time. 

They get hit by multiple issues, and I have been trying to work out what some of those issues are. This is my first go and attempting to unravel them:

Time. Trying to squeeze another ten hours into an already full week is very demanding (actually, I don't know how many do it, while also managing to deliver such good quality work!). Students tend to have valid concerns about how long study will take. So I am clear about what the time commitment (10 hours each week to pass), and what assignment work and tasks needs to be delivered and when, so they can begin with their eyes open.

Ability. Most of our students already have an undergraduate degree. I get them think back to their second year. That is the level of work and complexity that they need to deliver for our 600-level courses. In general most of our students cane the quality. It tends to be the next issue - the volume of work needing to be planned - rather than the difficulty of the material.

Scheduling/micro-tasks. It is rare that any of our students will have the luxury of a full day a week for study: instead it tends to happen on the margins of other things. I advise them to squeeze in ten minutes here and there; half an hour when they can; do tasks in lunchtimes; crack out an activity on the bus or at the dinner table in discussion with the family. Previous students have advised they approached course work by getting their readings done each Sunday for the coming week (e.g. they would do each week 1's reading before the week started), so that they could mull things over and get their tasks done earlier in the week. Then they had back half of the week to focus on doing a little assignment work, then onto meeting work and family needs. However, some students simply cannot get work complete until the end of each week, and they accept that this will have a cost on their experience and learning. All students will budget their time according to their personal circumstances. There is no judgment: everyone just does their best with the time they have 🙂

Assessment load. Students need to realise that there will roughly be an assignment due every five weeks over a 15 week course. This is on top of keeping up with the learning materials. Assessment work needs to be chipped away at, week by week.

Low risk. At my institution, students can enrol, then withdraw if they find the workload too great. At the moment students can withdraw by the end of week 2 and have their fee refunded, so can 'try before they buy'; lowering the financial risk of study. This enables students to see if they can wedge in the study requirements via a "ten minutes here; half an hour there" strategy. But if they find their week is already way too full, they have an 'ace in the hole', and can withdraw. And withdrawal is an easy process.

It is always scary to put ourselves back into a beginner space. But getting the infrastructure nailed means we have frameworks to support getting the work done, and knowing what to expect. That then allows us to deal with how we feel about inexpertise, as those feelings arise. 


Sam

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