If at First You Don’t Succeed, Become a Lifelong Learner: Gaining Capital through Online Higher Education Environments

In this chapter, the authors propose examining online learning in higher education as a mechanism for promoting lifelong learning skills, and thus, as a way to provide capital to students. With that in mind, they provide a theoretical foundation to demonstrate the need for workforce development as well as interdisciplinary perspectives on the skills and requisites necessary for successful lifelong learning, and how both are important to the central mission of higher education. This chapter explores the literature and major issues surrounding the importance and use of capital and lifelong learning skills, and how both can be gained through online learning. The authors argue that lifelong learning skills can be generated through transformative leaning experiences and that facilitating these experiences should be a goal of online learning in higher education in order to ensure that students have the skills necessary to gain social, cultural, and economic capital in order to remain relevant through their lives in a 21st century, learning society. In this chapter, the authors discuss several relevant examples of “Tools for Lifelong Learning” including specific examples to demonstrate how online classes can serve as a mechanism to generate capital for students in higher education settings. They provide a model and build upon theory across higher education, sociology, adult learning, and educational psychology to provide a new perspective of the importance of lifelong learning as well as best practices for achieving these goals

Expanding the ADN-Based Monopropellant Thruster Family

The development of High Performance Green Propulsion (HPGP) was initiated with the goal of meeting the requirements for future satellite missions. The HPGP technology includes a storable monopropellant blend based on Ammonium DiNitramide (ADN) and a thruster with a high-temperature resistant thrust chamber and catalyst. After more than 10 years of R&D, the HPGP technology is emerging as an enabling technology for improved performance, enhanced volumetric efficiency, reduction of propellant handling hazards and safer launch operations. The development has been performed by ECAPS under contract from the Swedish Space Corporation, the Swedish National Space Board and the European Space Agency (ESA). The progress of the development has been presented in several papers since 2000. Ref. 1-11. ECAPS, ATK and Moog are in partnership to pursue new applications for this novel technology. This paper describes current status of the implementation of HPGP technology for satellite programs and the latest results from the development of larger HPGP thrusters

The Mind–Body-Spirit Learning Model Transformative Learning Connections to Holistic Perspectives: Seizing Control of Your Healthcare - The Relationship among Self-Agency, Transformative Learning, and Wellness

At a time when the medical field is dominated by the pressures of private insurance demands and government regulations, many people discover they need to be self advocates in order to battle illness and regain their health. Moreover, these issues are not constant, as many countries (like the USA) face changing demographics and continuing radical changes in healthcare funding. These conditions require that patients seeking healthcare re-examine constantly their assumptions on several levels including, but not limited to medical professionals’ motivations, training and accuracy, healthcare philosophies, and recommended treatments. Within this context, patients’ self-advocacy becomes essential. Yet such positive independence regarding the medical professions contradicts traditional American cultural mores. A critical question for this situation springs from adult learning and development: what are the relationships among discovering self-agency in personal healthcare, wellness, and transformative learning? This article uses the frame of an autoethnography to explore the relationship among these domains. The writer’s eight-year journey through debilitating illness includes growing understandings of and connections among transformative learning, mind-body-spirit connections, self-agency, self-advocacy, and cultural concepts of wellness