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Instructors' Perceptions Of Connectivist Characteristics In Adult Undergraduate Courses, John Bannister

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The enrollment of college students in the United States who are classified as adult learners will continue to grow, bringing new challenges to degree programs. Multiple studies have provided insight into how best to teach these learners. However, to maximize learning, institutions must now consider strategies that merge adult learning principles with the integration of technology and students' personal and professional networks. Connectivism, based largely on the work of Siemens, and andragogy, based on Knowles, provided the conceptual framework that guided this basic qualitative interpretive study that examined how instructors experience and interpret the characteristics of connectivism (autonomy, openness, diversity, …