Designing Engaging Instruction for the Adult Learners

Background

When planning instruction for adult learners it is important to examine their motivation for being in the classroom. They have chosen to pursue a higher education degree and the faculty’s challenge is to plan and execute engaging, relevant learning experiences. The traditional model of instruction in higher education, such as lecture and testing, while possibly engaging, is limited. If the goal is to be able to explicitly assess how students are making the connections among theory, content, and personal experience there needs to be a master course design. Fink (2007) explains that “our current instructional procedures are not working very well. Students are not learning even basic general knowledge, they are not developing higher-level cognitive skills, and they are not retaining their knowledge very well. In fact there is no significant difference between student who take courses and students who do not” (Fink, 2013, p. 4).