The Promise of Online Continuing Education

“The harsh fact is that we have a literacy crisis today in America. At a time when one in three of our children is not graduating from high school, our current adult continuing educational system — designed for a different time and different challenges — is not equipped to address the current national need.

“We have a solution at hand: the computer and the Internet. Unfortunately, the promise of these tools for high school distance learning (as well as onsite learning) has not been realized. Our goal is to change this by creating a truly innovative, and dramatically more effective, learning experience for the adult learner. Compelling online distance education can significantly outperform most classroom learning. Here's why.

“Literacy education using distance learning classes will have dramatically better results with the following elements:

• “Learning should be self-driven. Students should learn because they want to, not because they need to. That means incorporating motivational strategies into learning tools.
• “Educational material should be presented in multiple learning styles and modalities so that everyone learns no matter what their learning style.
• “Instructional design should be flexible so that learners can easily access forgotten material to fill in knowledge and skill gaps.
• “Students should learn by doing, exploring, observing, and reasoning, and learners should be emotionally connected to the content.
• “Instruction should be embedded in a lively narrative using real-life characters that share the same problems, challenges, and background as the learners. It should be couched in reality and practicality, not abstract and ambiguous.

“These elements make continuing education courses and classes fun, exciting, and motivating to the learner because they engage the cognitive, emotional, and interest-generating aspects of intelligence.”