Education scholars explore career and technical education when both the content and the medium of education are in digital formats. Their topics include public-private partnership principles applied to industry-school partnership to support technical and vocational education, deep learning and online education as an informal learning process and whether there is a relationship between them, aspiring and practicing school leaders embrace the need for a more integrated approach to leadership preparation and development, influences of gender and computer gaming experience in occupational desktop virtual environments: a cross-case analysis study, and practitioners of career and technical education in the US.
– Protoview Reviews
Adult Education and Vocational Training in the Digital Age is designed to work with adult learners in the digital age. It provides a reference for the best ways to educate adults, often working adults who are seeking vocational skills. As formal educational institutions begin to adjust to offering more distance education programs to working adults, the method of instruction must adjust to this new student base. The adjustment to certificate programs is another reason that educational institutions must work to adjust their method of educational delivery to their new and nontraditional student base.
Victor C.X. Wang of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida has used his extensive experience in adult education and vocational training to edit a wide-reaching anthology that includes 14 varied essays and case studies spread out over 294 pages. The essays are varied in scope and include the broad topics of critical thinking skills, gender considerations, instructional design, online learning, problem-based learning, school leadership, and serious games.
One of the hot topic essays, written by both Wang and Theresa Neimann of Oregon State University, is entitled “Deep Learning and Online Education as an Informal Learning Process: Is There a Relationship between Deep Learning and Online Education as an Informal Learning Process?” The essay considers two very different phenomena and the impact on adult education and vocational training. First, the essay explores informal learning, which is defined by the authors as a “universal current phenomenon of learning via participation, experience, or learning via student centered knowledge creation.” This student-centered knowledge creation stands in stark contrast to more traditional learning methods which involve an instructor disseminating knowledge to students. While Wang and Neimann do not take a position that either method of instruction is superior to the other, they do make the point that the informal learning process may be more useful in an area like vocational education, where emphasis has traditionally been placed on peer-to-peer learning (i.e., the more experienced mentor providing “in the field” instruction to the new trainee). Further, the essay explores the impact that online education may have on these informal learning processes and the potential for online learning to strengthen or weaken this established method of learning.
Overall, the book is a very useful tool for those who are looking to explore online vocational learning and online adult learning. While the field is one that is constantly changing, the book provides a baseline for exploring current trends in an emerging field. This book is recommended for academic libraries.
– Sara Mofford