Abstract:

With the advent of more technological infusion into the modern classroom, the learning environment, teacher preparation, and student enrollments have changed. As a result of changing economic influences, many educational institutions have had to adjust their outlook to education due to the lack of classroom spaces, budgetary constraints, and changing student demographics. Equally important, student demographics of the traditional student have transformed slowly into a minority at times at some universities with a larger non-traditional student body. Thus, more non-traditional students are returning back to school, but each with different learning needs and wants. While many educational theorists have addressed the various needs of the adult learning, there are the practitioners in the field that can attest to the changes in terms of not only the changing student demographics, teacher demographics (Babson, 2018), as well as the changing learning environment and need for more and more educational institutions to do additional environmental scanning in order to forecast for future educational needs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the various economic, educational, and social media influences which have impacted the birth and development of the online learning movement, as well as created a growing need for modifications in teaching preparation programs. During the past two decades, the field of education has seen a migratory crossover of the traditional teaching profession to the online field of learning. While some educational institutions have developed outstanding best practices for such a transition for both their adult learners and educators, there is still room for improvement and a growing need today to step back and assess what has happened and plan for future changes in the field of online education and online teaching. Consequently, this paper will highlight current best practices in the field of online learning and teaching to overview what are the current trends and issues raised for further exploration in these areas in the context of economics, education, as well as the impact of social media in online education and teaching in today’s learning environment.

Keywords:

Adult learning, online learning, best practices, student demographics, technological challenges.