Finally, Adult Education Books Designed for Adult Learners
How Shana Friend curates a CK-12 FlexBook®
Shana Friend, instructor at Highline College in Washington State, has been working as an adult educator for over 25 years. Her work helps adult students gain the necessary knowledge and skills to prepare them for high school equivalency, high school completion, career opportunities, and/or college entrance.
When Shana first started teaching a course preparing her students for the four subject GED exam, she was frustrated by the traditional, print copies of GED textbooks. These books were available for students inside the classroom, but if students weren’t physically present, they didn’t have access to materials. Often, GED resources are cost prohibitive for many students, and the books lack quality practice exercises and depth of instruction.
“And that’s when I started creating my own content. And when I say create my own content, I am not writing my own steps here. I’m using CK-12 and really I call it curating a textbook.”
Why Shana Chose CK-12
In 2019, Shana approached her supervisor at Highline College and floated the idea of having an online course for GED students, particularly due to the low attendance rates for in-person classes. Once approved, Shana searched the Internet for quality open educational resources, finding it easy to get overwhelmed: “I started just looking for online content and was lost in the sea of OER Commons, unable to find what I was looking for.” Then Shana clicked on a resource from CK-12. At first she found individual lessons on such topics as Genetics and Heredity. “And I noticed there was a whole textbook and I thought, oh my goodness, this is it. This is the stuff I can use. And when I got into CK-12 and realized not only can I use it and print it for free, but I can change it, then I got really excited.”
How Shana Curates a FlexBook®
Using CK-12’s middle and high school FlexBook® lessons as the foundation for her customized adult education books, Shana follows these guiding questions: “What is the content that I need to help my students? How can I adapt the content to fit my situation better?”
This is the checklist Shana uses to curate and customize her FlexBooks®:
- Look at Outcomes. For Shana, she looks at the GED indicators that she finds on GED.com. Next, she sets up spreadsheets with the GED Indicators and State Outcomes to make sure all relevant content would be covered in the FlexBook®.
- Get Materials from CK-12. Shana goes to her CK-12 Library and presses “Create” to start building a FlexBook® 2.0 from scratch. Then, using CK-12’s “Add Content” feature, she brings a variety of CK-12 lessons into her custom FlexBook®.
- Assess the Materials. Shana sets up another spreadsheet to assess how she will customize the CK-12 lessons to meet both the accessibility needs for Washington State and the specific needs of her adult learners.
✓ Is it accessible? (Are the photos labeled and are the videos captioned?)
✓ Is there an attached Quiz?
✓ Are there answer keys?
✓ Is there a PLIX?
✓ Is there an additional interactive? - Customize as Needed. With her adult learners in mind, Shana looks at the wording and images in each lesson and makes appropriate changes to names, examples, and length.
✓ Are the examples written for an adult audience?
✓ Will adult learners see themselves in the images in the lessons?
✓ Do shorter lessons need to be combined to create a more robust lesson? - Use It! Shana shares her lessons with her students and makes updates and changes throughout the semester. She can edit the book at any time, students can immediately see her changes, and she’s able to share it with colleagues for them to customize and adapt as well!
“The great thing is, I did this for me, but because it’s open education and because it’s housed on CK-12, now no one else needs to recreate it. You can grab what I did and change it to fit your situation and your students.”
Examples of Shana’s Modified Lessons
Shana begins each of her adult books with a section highlighting the FlexBook® features. She recorded her own screencast videos and audio to help acclimate her students.
Shana explains that you don’t want childish examples for the adult learners: “How many people are looking for a lesson on decimals and you’ve got all these things about candies and cookies and stuff that doesn’t really relate to the adult experience? Sometimes that can be a little insulting.” As an example, she took an intro about a toy airplane from a middle school book and converted it to a drone. Then she added in a video she made before moving into more of the content.
To format her lessons more like the GED exam, Shana has included depth of knowledge questions throughout the lesson, and she has replaced the Adaptive Practice with a customized Quiz. “I was able to make my questions more GED style and then add them to the quiz because the quiz allows me to track how the students are doing.”
Using CK-12’s FREE FlexBooks® for Adult Education
Shana encourages other adult educators to use her books and customize them. “The great thing is, I did this for me, but because it’s open education and because it’s housed on CK-12, now no one else needs to recreate it. You can grab what I did and change it to fit your situation and your students.”
For more information about getting started with CK-12, email jumpstart@ck12.org.
To learn more about CK-12’s Adult Education initiative, email partners@ck12.org or visit our Adult Education page at www.ck12.org/adulted.
Written by CK-12 Foundation
Featuring Shana Friend, Adult Education Instructor, Highline Community College
Sketchnotes by Wileen Hsing @madebytofu
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