Adventures in Learning

As many of you know, I'm work on Master's Degree #3 (MEd in Instructional Design), in part because I'm a nerd and in part, it would help my current position as an Instructional Designer.  One of their required courses (which is one of two that are required to be face to face) is The Adult As Learner.  And if you can't anticipate what I'm going to say next, you're not paying attention.  As part of that course, we're required to keep a blog.  My instructor kindly let those who are blogging already use their own blogs, so this series of posts will be labeled as "Adventures in Adult Learning."

So what is a course on The Adult as Learner entail?  The course description reads as "Students are introduced to the body of knowledge concerning adults as learners.  This course focuses on the principles of adult education, learning styles, variables that affect adult learning, appropriate training methodologies, reinforcement of learning, skill transfer, and measurement procedures for identifying learner characteristics.  All of these are uniquely important to the professional instructional designer to ensure learning materials which have the most significant impact possible."  Got all that?  There won't be a quiz later...just more posts.

The first class already attempted to change the paradigms of which many are accustomed to in the classroom.  The instructor did the typical round-robin of introductions and covered the syllabus, but then delved into a discussion about the agreed upon rules we could establish to make the classroom a strong and healthy learning environment.  With these establish class norms, she slid into discussing and providing material for consideration about group work since there will be some group projects.  This group project has things that I appreciate.  It allows for choice (which learning theory am I interested in) and purposeful application (teach the class about the theory using examples or by teaching the theory by using the theory in teaching).

Overall, I like the outlook and the content of the course.  The instructor discussed that we would be dealing with more intellectually rigorous material and that does excite me.  The first two courses haven't pushed my brain as much as I would like to (or that I think a "master's course" should).  Coupled with the fact that there is a research paper involved (though it's only 5-10 pages), I'm ready to learn about the Adult as Learner (and of course, the self-knowledge that will hopefully stem from it).



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Comments

  1. This sounds like a class I want to take!!

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  2. Thanks Jessi! You'll be hearing all about the updates soon :)

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