Teaching an in-person course in adult development and aging is becoming more and more of a luxury as more campuses turn to online education, both for budgetary and pandemic-related reasons. Because this course is typically not a core requirement in psychology departments (though it should be!), department chairs may be under pressure to move their offerings to remote formats. This is frustrating for instructors who value seminar-style or even the less interactive lecture-based methods of content delivery, but it need not totally interfere with the joy you can experience in the online environment.
Whether or not you are personally making the shift from in-person to online or are beginning to plan an online course from scratch, you will quickly find that it is indeed possible to deliver this course content in a way that engages student interest and allows you to accomplish your pedagogical goals. The three keys to success are: 1) Learning the technology, 2) Being committed to an interactive experience, and 3) Using the many online resources at your disposal. Needless to say, being flexible and willing to tolerate ambiguity and frustration are additional qualities that will make your online course experience a positive one for you and your students.
Learning the technology
As is true for any course, it’s necessary for you to think through each aspect of your syllabus as you design your class meetings and assignments. Knowing what the technology can (or cannot) do is a big piece of this process. Does your campus learning management system easily allow for online posting of discussions among students? Can you integrate video into your assignments so that students can watch online content asynchronously? How easy or difficult is it for you to import content into online quizzes? What can the course gradebook manage?
Ideally, you can divide your course requirements into categories that can map neatly onto the learning management system. The optimal online course combines reading-based homework assignments in the form of quizzes, chats and sharing among students in which you serve as moderator, and a combination of lecture and video presentations.
Being committed to an interactive experience
An interactive experience, even in an online course, allows students to communicate with each other, and with you, in a way that engages them in the course content while also giving them grades as an incentive for their active participation.
Discussion topics
In the online course on “Mental Health and Aging” that I teach once a semester at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I developed a series of discussion topics assigned once a week that correspond to the course material. Below are examples of these topics along with the course content with which they are associated:
Ageism in the Media: The media is full of ageism when it comes to the topic of older adults. This can take the form of jokes, cartoon drawings, memes, and posts on social channels. Television shows and movies are another source of ageist portrayals. For this discussion, please find what you think is the best example of ageism, and submit the link, an image, or a verbal description of the example. Please come up with your own example, but feel free to comment on the examples shared by your fellow class members!
Preventing Fallsin Older Adults: Falls are a major concern with respect to the well-being of older adults. Consider a situation in which an older adult you know well lives alone in a small apartment. What are five design features you would want to see in that apartment in order to reduce the chances that the older person would sustain a serious fall?
Unhealthy Habits in College Students: Think about the unhealthy behaviors that you've seen among college students, especially those that increase the chances of developing chronic diseases (i.e., not with respect to COVID). Choose the three that you think stand out as the unhealthiest and state why each is so unhealthy.
Creative Older Adults: Provide an example of a creative older adult whose work meets the criteria of: (1) originality, (2) appropriateness, (3) lastingness. Add any relevant websites to support your examples, and be sure to address all 3 criteria for each example.
Driving and Aging: Look around at your own neighborhood or the places in the city that you most frequently travel through. Describe one street, intersection, road sign, or traffic light that you think could pose a hazard that would especially affect older adults. Please state why you believe this is a hazard and what you think could be done to fix the problem.
During class time, make sure that you read through at least several contributions your students made to this discussion, using their responses to emphasize important points you’re trying to make in your own presentations. This will show that you’re interested in their ideas, and it will also give them additional motivation to come up with well-conceived responses.
Live chat times or lectures: If you have the opportunity to use live “chat” time to present your materials (which you can also record for later downloads), encourage your students to respond to questions you pose through a chat or polling function. Students will quickly learn that their presence is both valued and rewarded, and it will keep them on their toes throughout your presentation.
Resourcefulness
An online course provides you with an almost unlimited potential to demonstrate your own creativity as an instructor. It can be a very simple matter to assign videos that students can watch on their own time. You may have your own favorites that you can, potentially, upload to a secure campus server. Additionally, YouTube has an almost unlimited number of instructional videos related to aging, clips from syndicated television shows, and even brief clips from relevant movies. The only risk you run in using this valuable search engine is that you could easily spend hours just browsing. This is an enjoyable distraction, so as a warning, give yourself a time limit!
Finally, turning to that flexibility and willingness to tolerate frustration, there will be days when the internet doesn’t cooperate for yourself or your students, or you run into a snag on the campus website itself. As in all successful teaching, overcoming these challenges will not only reflect your effectiveness as an instructor, but improve it in the semesters ahead.
If you would like a copy of my most recent syllabus, please feel free to email me, and I’ll be happy to share it with you.
Author Note
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, PhD, ABPP, is professor emerita of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and adjunct professor of gerontology and faculty fellow in gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on personality and identity throughout adulthood. Currently, she is engaged in a longitudinal study of personality from college through retirement.