Use of Online Active Methodologies in Higher Education

Introduction

In the last decades, there has been an exponential growth of online learning programs in virtual learning environments (VLE), particularly in higher education. The profile of most students enrolling in online higher education is that of nontraditional learners, that is, adult students—commonly over 25 years old—with financial and familiar responsibilities (Chen, 2017). For these learners, VLEs provide an ideal setting for time management, at the same time that adults can pursue higher education with the aim of improving their professional conditions or to find a job (Zamecnik et al., 2022). However, nontraditional learners have to make an even bigger effort to keep up with their assignments and school workload, so the drop-out rates for this group of students is higher than for other higher-education learners (Beluce & Oliveira, 2015). Finding active methodologies that motivate and engage nontraditional learners becomes a requirement that higher education teachers must consider. In fact, the effectiveness of online learning relies on three pillars: technology, students and teachers, who are in charge of selecting and implementing the appropriate digital tools to facilitate learning and motivate students (Tham & Werner, 2015). Adult learners commonly show different interests from younger students, and they tend to be more pragmatic and practical, but emotions still play an important role in their motivation for learning, as well as their socioeconomic status, which can also be leading factor in the increasing dropout rates for this group of students (Padilla-Carmona et al, 2022). For this reason, the learning experience must be relevant for their personal and professional goals, being able to put into practice the learning acquired in VLE in their own work settings (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2017). The use of active methodologies becomes a need to foster adult learners’ interest for the content learned at higher education and to attend to principles of autonomous and meaningful learning.

Adult education, including higher education, has grown exponentially over the last decade across the world, and online higher education has definitely experienced this growth, mostly in the last few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, online higher education is not a new phenomenon and, in two decades, the number of students who learn remotely has increased 900% (Varea, 2021), most of them being adults and nontraditional learners. The term ‘nontraditional learners’ is used to refer to those adult students who are over 25 years old and, most of the times, are working full time, are financially dependent or have dependents, such as spouses or children, or even resume studies after a long period of time (Padilla-Carmona et al, 2022). In fact, while there are not many studies on nontraditional learners in Spain (see Navarro-Mateos et al., 2021), recent reports from the Ministry of Universities of Spain found that 84.4% of the 50.9% of students enrolled in a Master’s degree at a distance-education university are 30 years old or older (Ministry of Universities, 2023). The number of adult learners registered in Master’s degrees is increasing as are those enrolled in distance education universities, a group that represents 17.4% of students. According to the Ministry of Universities of Spain (2023), these universities and their VLEs provide accessibility opportunities that are reflecting on the rising numbers of students from other countries (23.8%) who enroll in distance Spanish universities; most of them coming from Latin America and the Caribbean (15.8%). Most nontraditional learners usually seek higher education as a way to improve their careers and socio-economic status, struggling with the balance between a student life and the responsibilities of adulthood (Tenorio-Rodríguez et al., 2021). Thus, motivation is even more crucial for these students, in order to fulfil their necessities and avoid dropout, and even more so in VLEs, because learners need to undertake actions to monitor the regulation of their own learning (Beluce & Oliveira, 2015). It is well known that emotions play a critical role in learning, and this is also true in adults, but in their case, motivation is also based on the practicality, relevance and application in real work settings of what they learn (Zamecnik et al., 2022). The use of active methodologies offers limitless opportunities for fostering motivation and could be especially significant for nontraditional adults in VLE as a means to foster autonomous learning and attend to different learning needs and styles (Ranilla, 2018).