Adult Learning and Development

If your goal is to teach adults in business training programs, adult education classes, or at the college level, then this fully online self designed degree program is for you. Adults have unique qualities, motivations, and capabilities. Learn to leverage these into powerful adult learning programs. The courses in this program help you understand adult learning styles and will guide you through the process of creating successful programs for adult learners. You will learn a framework for understanding and responding to the unique needs of adult learners.

The adult learning program provides you with:

An increased understanding of adult development
Strategies for teaching adults and facilitating adult learning
Models for creating, sustaining, and evaluating adult programming

Programs of study are created on an individual basis and based on previously completed coursework and experience.

CAGS Core Component – 18 credits
3

EP 7020 Collaborative Leadership

In this course, students will explore major concepts related to developing partnerships and communities of learners. Course topics include the change process, forms of school and community governance, school culture, the concept of collaboration, and agencies and organizations involved in community programs and initiatives. Special attention is focused on planning and implementing system-wide and building-level networks. Students will develop and evaluate a framework for collaboration and demonstrate systems thinking. Typically the first course completed in the CAGS program.
3

EP 7030 Transforming the Educational Agenda

This course focuses on the development of a self-renewing capability inherent in professionals and organizations. Students will discuss the notion of transformation in the context of knowledge base, self-reflection, and the socio-professional processes in educational change. Students will explore the integration of ecological perspectives within a changing society and the demand for greater tolerance of human behavior in the context of learning. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the need to keep student learning and development as the central core of educational change. Prerequisites: EP 7020 and EP 7040.
3

EP 7040 Planning in Education and Human Services

The purpose of this course is to develop effective collaborative planners. This course presents the major stages in the process of developing a strategic plan, including forming a mission statement, crafting and implementing the plan, and evaluating plan performance. It provides a theoretical and practical overview of the skills, strategies, and resources required through each stage of the systemic planning process. (Prerequisite: EP 7020).
3

EP 7050 Qualitative Methodology and Applied Research

This course addresses qualitative research methodologies with a particular emphasis on constructing grounded theory. Candidates will engage in the process, design, and critique of qualitative inquiry and research. Organizational and community issues will be explored and discovered through the analysis of patterns of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within interpersonal and intercultural contexts. Descriptive analysis of initiating the inquiry, gathering and picturing the data, recording and analyzing data, and evaluating the study. (Prerequisite: EP 7020, EP 7030, and a course in research design).
3

EP 7060 Legal Issues in Policy Making

This course presents a discussion of ways institutions and their communities must deal with the legal and political environment in which they exist. Topics include current legal issues and how the stakeholders in society can use the law as a tool for social change. Institutions must advocate for positive change through the development of thoughtful legal policies and practices.
3

EP 7070 Contemporary Social Trends

Contemporary social, economical, political, and educational issues are the core of the course. They are identified in a forum that provides opportunities for the students to research current methodology together to address problems that relate to the specific roles of the course participants in their work inside or outside of the educational field. Working collaboratively, course candidates explore short-range and long range problem-solving strategies directed toward increasing their awareness of community perception and expectations, techniques for facilitating institutional change, and responding to the nature and culture of internal and external political systems and environments as they apply to their work sites.

Specialization Component– 15 credits (shoose 5)
3

AL 5060 Psychology of Adulthood

This course takes a life-span developmental approach to adulthood in contemporary American society and includes the major theoretical perspectives regarding developmental transitions and age-related tasks. The course seeks to acquaint the student with seven broad themes of adult development: 1. Theory; 2. Research; 3. Changes that occur within oneself throughout adulthood - physical, cognitive, health, social; 4. Personality characteristics; 5. Meaning in life; 6. Stages and pointers for a successful journey; 7. Death and dying. Students use their own life experiences as a context for creating understanding in these seven areas.
3

AL 5070 Learning in Adulthood

The course focuses on the nature and process of learning in adulthood, especially in formal learning situations in business, industry, adult basic education, and adult higher education. Also emphasizes the concept of learning how to learn and the ways in which adults function in independent learning situations. We will examine theory, research, and practice from several different discipline perspectives to answer the question: "How do adults learn?"
3

AL 5080 Teaching Adults

This course builds on adult learning theory and examines the role of the instructor as the facilitator of learning. Major focus is on incorporating strategies for encouraging active learning, collaboration, self-directed learning, and self assessment by learners into a variety of learning situations. Class participants will be involved in demonstrating teaching methodologies and receiving feedback from group members.
3

ED 5140 Assessment Principles and Practices

The emphasis throughout this course is on the practical application of appraisal techniques in education. Critical concepts related to assessment and the integration of assessment into teaching and learning include: the role of assessment in teaching, how validity is determined, factors influencing reliability, avoiding stereotypes, understanding and using numerical data, using standardized assessment to improve instruction, and ideas and strategies for mining and reporting assessment data.
3

AL 5090 Program Design and Evaluation

This course addresses a broad spectrum of program development ranging from an individual course to a complete program of major learning activities conducted over a period of time. Participants will design programs based on their own special interests, for example, adult higher education, business and industry training, adult basic education, etc. Major emphasis will also be placed on designing program evaluations tailored to meet specified goals.
3

AL 5140 The Learning Workplace

This course deals with the professional learning needs and priorities of the workplace. It examines the variety of ways in which employees and their managers gain new knowledge and skills as part of their professional growth. Particular emphasis is given to the concept of the learning organization: its characteristics, how the concept of 'learning organization' is implemented in different types of organizations, the benefits of a learning organization to both the employee and the organization, and the role that the professional educator or trainer plays in building a learning organization. Also included is the role knowledge management plays in the development of the learning organization.
- OR -
3

OH 5300 Work as a Personal Journey

This course offers an exploration of the personal, interpersonal and transpersonal elements of work and personal growth. Through varied learning methods, participants will attend to the ways in which occupations transform us and how we transform our work to support personal development. Learning will extend to the ways in which we, as followers and leaders, can cooperate to support these synchronous and reciprocal processes creatively and with intention.