Sunday Thoughts: Cohort-Based Learning
By most accounts, a cohort-based learning (CBC) course provides students the opportunity to enter a program together and remain together throughout their educational program. A significant amount of literature explored the historical benefits of face-to-face instruction. I am not concerned with digging up that literature for this piece. The data that’s been collected is significantly pre-COVID, and that is cool with me. #NoShade. I am more focused on the new educational landscape that is, and is not, addressing COVID and a post-COVID future.
With CBC, we have to acknowledge that its tenets are centered on in-person instruction, synchronous instruction, where students must go through the same pace and timing to cover content as arranged by the instructor. This implies that there is an expectation of conformity; students can challenge and learn and engage with the materials, yet must do so within an expected time line so that the course may reach the learning and target objectives for the semester. And of course, this is all before we even begin to discuss and interrogate what learning model a program or instructor is looking to implement: Cognitive Learning, Constructivism Learning, Connectivism, Behaviorsim Learning, Experiential, Transformative Learning, and there’s much more.
My observation is that when it comes to adults, we tend to see the Experiential Learning Model, Transformative Learning Model, and Connectivism applied more frequently today. It makes sense to me because as adults, we have additional lenses and experiences that create expectations and shape our social/psychological/emotional/intellectual world views; and when it comes to CBC, there is an unwritten expectation that you will bond through previously shared and future experiences. Yet, we have limitations there too, and that is fine because we are…no pun intended…still learning as we go and adapting as needed.
Is this actually working in CBC?
The application of the models listed above for adult learners could be elements of CBC. All models have some form of limitation, of course, but if we remember to use them as tools, rather than as absolutes, we can apply them as needed and swap in/out as student populations change in need of support, services, trajectories, access to information, and resources to succeed and belong. (I can’t help it, Validation and Belonging are so important to me that I cannot step away from those corners of higher education).
The “butts in seats” approach did not work pre-COVID, and it will not work post-COVID. There are too many challenges. As adult learners, we have competing priorities: health concerns, being primary care givers, working full-time and sometimes getting side hustles because we need the extra money.
Flexibility must be the new foundation in higher education. If, as students, we are expected to learn, reflect, adopt, apply new perspectives then we must have the flexibility to pace our learning for those moments when we need additional reflection time; we must have the flexibility to explore various learning pathways that uplift our learning styles; we must remove the out-dated A-F grading system, which creates an environment of competition that is not of benefit to a cohort-based environment.
Tempering expectations for cohort-based learning models is just as important. The expectation that everyone enters a program with the same mindset, the same level of experiences, or even the same awareness of social/emotional abilities is a disservice to students in the CBC program. We can discuss that programs (read: faculty members) don’t expect that to be the case; yet recruitment processes suggest otherwise to me.
A cohort model allows us to add to current circles, and to create new relationships. Just as there are people with toxic behaviors and personalities out in the workplace, or in your circles, they will be there in cohort models. Just as there are those in our private lives who will champion with you and be there to support and lend a hand, they are present in the cohort — I’ve come to consider some from my cohort close and dear friends, to be in community with them. (I’ve also made connections with others outside of my cohort, I am fortunate to share community with them).
I really enjoy cohort-based learning; it has challenges. I’m here to help make it better because it is a powerful teaching and learning vehicle. Not for my dissertation, but I am interested in doing some reading and writing on this topic more.
