Adaptive Release: Of Modules, Accessibility and Wellness

It's a long weekend, everyone! Do remember when long weekends had such a different aesthetic and feel before the pandemic. Now it's just maybe an extra day where you are not in Zoom meetings for 7 hours straight. Oh what a difference a year makes.

I have been thinking about andragogy and heutagogy this week in responses to some emails that I have received about how to best support learners in a remote environment. I am still processing all the great ideas and concepts from #UDLHE Digicon, and one of them of course was how different kinds of choice and ability to self-regulate learners are given. I know that some LMS (most in fact) have the ability to create timed or adaptive release modules, where learners would have to complete a certain aspect of the module before another aspect appears. I can see how this can help with guiding the learners to certain tasks, but I really am unsure how much this can support accessibility or even non-linear learning opportunities if that is what the learner prefers. 

Heutagogical research suggests that non-linearity is a principle that helps support self-determined and self-regulated learning. A lot of test takers use this exact principle and it is often suggested to learners as a test taking strategy- when you sit down to write a test, first read through the whole test so you know the scope and then address the sections in order or in whatever way feels best for you. How does this translate (if at all) in a remote environment where we use timed or adaptive release to support academic integrity? 

There are many aspects of the remote teaching and learning environment that need good SoTL research and I really believe this tension between adaptive release, self-regulated learning (as part of a heutagogical framework and UDL guidelines), and academic integrity needs a lot more data and practice exemplars. I am not here with all the answers, I am simply here for all the questions to be fair.

From an instructor point of view, I can also see how adaptive release can help support the workload of course development, design, and delivery. We simply don't have time to have 10 modules of content ready to go when a semester starts. There is also the counter argument that having all the modular content up could create confusion if something needs to be changed (as it definitely will need to in active pedagogical teaching and learning models) as the semester goes on. There is a lot to be said about how having 10 modules of content open up at the same time in September or January or May and how that could in fact overwhelm some learners who just see so many documents to navigate that they give up the course before they can even start.

So where is the wellness point with this? What does the evidence say? In fact you will find studies that support both delivery of the whole course content upfront and adaptive release arguments. So how do we balance this in true UDL fashion to support all learners? The easiest way would be to give students control of what they get to see in the LMS (and I can hear both the LMS companies and the IT departments at every Higher Ed institution laughing and gasping simultaneously at this thought).

But isn't it time that this is an option? Isn't it time that students get to choose for themselves what modular adventure they see?

Call me a dreamer...