How DO Adult Learners and Students with Children feel during COVID-19?

Consider your current job.  How stressful have the past few months been?  The potential of positions being furloughed, new hiring freezes, positions completely gone.  As professionals at Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s), the response to COVID-19 has ranged widely, depending on factors such as location, budget, student demographics (online, face to face, traditional vs adult or even post-traditional learners).  I would like to take a second and pull you back from the challenges of your own position and shine a spotlight on our Adult Learners and Students with Children.

I would argue many of us can identify with surface level issues for adult learners in this crisis.  Many of us have been in the field, have children, significant others, and are worried about position changes.  I would consider these issues surface level, but still deserve to be summarized.  Your adult learners may be feeling:

• Financial crunches from potential job reduction or loss, as well as the inability to drop classes and receive tuition back.
• Parenting challenges with either a lack of a babysitter, or potentially home schooling for the first time.
• Personal issues due to changes in family/personal/professional structure.

No doubt these challenges are ones you may have thought of, but there is another less present but equally important issue I would like to put forth: Community.  Here is an example of some of the challenges our students may be facing:

“Yesterday I was on the phone and Zoom with a 66-year-old student graduating this May, who has lost their roommate, cannot make the rent, food insecure and avoided online classes their whole life. They have survived thus far using wifi from outside campus buildings. This person is within striking distance of finished and is on the edge of a nervous breakdown now. After our call, this individual reached back immediately as they were being confronted by Campus Police for attempting to use the bathroom in the one building open on campus. They experienced the classic, ‘we do not think you are a student’ indignity from Dining staff who called the police.”

As we all attempt to redefine our structure and support our students, I believe this is the time we need to go back to our bedrock, theory.

Tinto (2016) made updates and changes from retention to persistence in the past few years.  I’m including the link to an easily digestible article overviewing these changes, but in short there are three areas as we consider student persistence in higher education; Self-Efficacy, a Sense of Belonging, and Perceived Value of the Curriculum. 

During COVID-19 there is no shortage of barriers affecting each of these areas.  Students from any background (Adult learner or otherwise) may be taking online courses for the first time.  When we speak about self-efficacy, this becomes an immediate and apparent barrier.  Students anguish over the perceived value of the curriculum is also apparent.  I work with both graduate and undergraduate students in my role as the Chair of the Leadership Department here at Doane University, and there is equal frustration over a lack of face to face interaction.  While I would argue that Student Affairs may influence both of these two areas through student support services, I believe it is the final area, a sense of belonging, where we as student affairs professionals can help students find the most success.  As we find our new normal, finding intentional reasons and ways to reach out to students is of the upmost important.  Here at Doane, we had volunteers from the college work together to call every single student and check-in.  While I understand this may not be feasible for your campus, there are certainly out of the box ways to support a student and their sense of belonging.  E-mails to students, check-ins, collaborating with instructors to send out announcements to students checking in.  These are all ways to keep students from feeling lost in translations.  During this crisis, I would argue that the need for Student Affairs is greater than ever.  This is the time to show how important it is to have professionals supporting our students, and I hope your department/area/campus is finding ways to support our students.

ALSC-KC Opportunities

As the NASPA IV-West Adult Learners and Students with Children (ALSC) Knowledge Community (KC) Representative for four years I have had the distinct pleasure of working with colleagues from around our region.  One of the challenges with smaller communities such as ours is producing and growing the body of literature surrounding our area of focus; Adult Learners and Students with Children.  Recently, our community has been engaged in several different facets of research, as well as professional resources for NASPA’s members and non-members.  Here are a few of the new and exciting things our KC has done recently.

Research –

• Dr. Jared Cook has co-authored a book titled “Redefining Post-traditional Learning: Emerging Research and Opportunities.”  This book is focused on a specific subset of Adult Learners.   

New Leadership –

• Michael Cunningham, Dean of Students at the Community College of Rhode Island has become the Co-Chair of the Adult Learners and Students with Children KC
• Dr. Anita Hicks, Director of the Oakland Center, Oakland University has also become the Co-Chair of the Adult Learners and Students with Children KC

Professional Engagement –

• Awarded our Outstanding Adult Learner Program award to Josh Rider at Kent State

Opportunities –

• We are in the middle of creating TWO new learning modules for NASPA.  These are amazing on the resume, and really help to develop your ability to design and craft intentional modules (which translates to programming, potential teaching, etc).
• Community members.  We maintain a strong, vibrant community.  We’re always looking for more people to jump in our calls, ask questions, and provide their experiences.  To participate in our monthly calls and receive our newsletter/emails, join our community on NASPA’s webpage or e-mail alscknowledgecommunity@gmail.com.

References

Tinto, V. (2016, September 26). From Retention to Persistence. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/09/26/how-improve-student-persistence-and-completion-essay