With experience and research insight, Dr. Shalin Hai-Jews’ most recently released publication is titled Building and Maintaining Adult Learning Advantage (IGI Global) and focuses on the varied facets of adult learning as well as how to keep learners on the cutting edge of their education. Read more about this publication and topic in Dr. Hai-Jews’ IGI Global guest blog below:
Adult learning is one of those things that is most central to survival for humanity, in a complex world. Such learning is the basis for human actualization, and societal innovation, problem-solving, and endeavors. While learning is inherently part of being human, it is also one of the most challenging aspects to develop.
A High-Level Lifelong Learning Trajectory
A lifetime perspective may be used to understand human learning. When learning something new, there is quite a bit of time spent acquiring basic information and practicing clumsily and advancing slowly. At some inflection point, one suddenly gains traction. The decisions and steps come more easily. The challenges that one can take on become more complex. At some point, one can take on “hard problems,” those that are meaningful in the world and that do not yet have a known solution. Perhaps one can contribute in multiple small ways to the solution. This described trajectory is not an uncommon one.
Each of the respective steps can take many years of a human lifespan. For many years, people are just constantly learning to acquire a baseline understanding of a field, much less thinking about creating advantage and contributing uniquely.
For many, a lifetime’s work may seem actually small. I remember my former students marveling at works and ideas that were the culmination of the individuals’ lifetimes. Sometimes, a book would be the sum total of an individual’s contribution to communality, to human history. And with the transience of human focus, what may seem highly relevant today may be meaningless and forgotten in another time.
With varied works, Building and Maintaining Adult Learning Advantage (IGI Global 2020) applies to the majority of the span of adult learning.
Educational Questions
This collection engages various questions:
- What are ways for teachers to integrate their domain knowledge with pedagogical and technological knowledge?
- How can practice be better designed into online learning?
- How can focal intensifications be designed into learning to enhance the learning outcomes?
- How can the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) be used to design future research (as described in a grant application)?
- How can the work of learning groups online be maximized for group and individual learning?
- How can instructors who use hard problems in their teaching and learning optimize the feedback to learners, in ways that benefit their work and their discoveries and their creativity?
- How can animated infographics be harnessed for enhancing teaching and learning?
- What are some theory-based ways to improve adult learning?
- If the sound-based modality is somewhat less used in many teaching and learning resources, how can these be strategically and tactically harnessed?
- How can “mixed embodiment” of learners and teachers be used to enhance online learning?
These and other questions are engaged in 11 chapters presented in three sections:
- Part 1: Teaching and Learning
- Part 2: Engaging Complexity and Open-Endedness
- Part 3: Principled Approaches
Contributing researchers include Drs. Jim Prentzas, from Democritus University of Thrace, Greece & University of Patras, Greece, Michael D. Hamlin, from Touro University Worldwide, Israel, and Shalin Hai-Jew, from Kansas State University, USA.In conclusion, Building and Maintaining Adult Learning Advantage offers some unique approaches to enhancing adult learning, to meet the moment and the future.
IGI Global would like to thank Dr. Hai-Jew for sharing her research on profiling target learners for effective learning strategies. For more information about this research, view the publication here.
About Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew: Dr. Hai-Jew works as an instructional designer at Kansas State University (K-State). She has taught at the university and college levels for many years (including four years in the People’s Republic of China) and was tenured at Shoreline Community College but left tenure to pursue instructional design work. She has Bachelor’s degrees in English and Psychology, a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Washington (where she was a Hugh Paradise Scholar), and an Ed.D in Educational Leadership with a focus on public administration from Seattle University (where she was a Morford Scholar). She reviews for a number of academic publications and publishers and is the editor of several IGI Global titles. Dr. Hai-Jew was born in Huntsville, Alabama, in the USA.
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For your reference, find below a sample of related titles from this prominent IGI Global editor and author, which are also featured in IGI Global’s InfoSci-Books database and are available for purchase in print and electronic format. Be sure to recommend these titles to your librarian, to ensure your institution can acquire the most emerging research.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of IGI Global.
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