1. Class Preparation and the Adult Learner
Dr. Christine Helfrich

2. Based on YOUR experience and the workshop description: What do YOU want to learn today?
[Ask participants what they want to learn?]
Task
Purpose
Criteria
Could move participants to meet future activity goals… years of experience, discipline, etc.

3. Challenges Discover common traits/needs of adult learners
What to do about them????
Examine the role of self-efficacy in learning
How to encourage positive self-efficacy?
Identify teacher-centered vs student centered instruction
How to convert a lesson from one model to another?
Our workshop is really a series of challenges. Likely they are reflective of the challenges you experience in the classroom on a daily basis. [review the list of planned objectives]

4. Administrative Responsibilities
Ensure your is set up and working
Get your copy of any textbooks that will be used
Make photocopies of handouts, if needed
Setup and publish your Canvas site, even if you intend to only use Announcement and Gradebook feature
Review your class schedule and visit each classroom
Print your roster for each class
View your classrooms online at
Find out what supplies you might need and pack them in your teaching bag – i.e dry erase markers, eraser, extra pens
View your classrooms online at

5. Creating a Successful Semester- Administrative continued
Prepare to communicate policies for the following:
Attendance
Cell phones
Late work
Plagiarism
Late openings
Contacting you (mechanism and when you will respond)
Know your resources for the following:
Alternate readings (if textbook not available)
Disruptive students/students in crisis
Student tutoring
Your own absence
Safety concerns
Classroom technology needs, including printer paper
Enroll in HCC’s mobile alert system -
Students will have questions about items that may or may not be addressed in your syllabus. Be prepared to let them know things like your policies on attendance, late work, cell phone use and others.
Teaching is often about being able to respond quickly to the unexpected. Knowing some of your campus resources can help ensure that instruction is not interrupted and that you and your students are safe.

6. The Community College Student
Pedagogy vs
Andragogy
The diversity of our students includes AGE diversity. However, this workshop provides evidence that research supports teaching adults differently.. From leading children to the art/science of promoting adult learning.. Assumption for this workshop ALL COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE ADULTS. “The goal of education should be to self-actualize and thus should involve the whole emotional, psychological and intellectual being.: Knowles (1980)

7. Andragogy Has 6 Principles
Adult learners…
Working in sma

8. If Andragogy Has 6 Principles
Your Turn
If Andragogy Has 6 Principles
As a college instructor, what did you do during the first week to support these principles? What teaching approaches or first week happenings could challenge these principles?
Working in groups or pairs, take 5 minutes to share last week’s experience.
Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
Adults are goal oriented
Adults are relevancy oriented
Adults are practical
Adult learners like to be respected

9. First Day! Plan a strong opening statement/example/introduction
Raise a question or provide a demonstration
Share a story
Conduct a poll
Create an activity connected to your syllabus
Plan for late arrivals
First five - ten minutes of class may be chaotic so plan accordingly.
Take attendance via index cards
Pair students for introductions
Write a provocative entrance question
Your opening sets the tone for the course. It helps students get a sense of your approach, the style of the course and what their learning experience may be. It is also the day you’ll introduce the syllabus but it can still be a valuable instructional event. Plan a strong opening experience. Questions or demonstrations might pique student curiosity. Sharing a story about yourself and why you love this class/subject matter can help students begin to know you. Analog or digital polls can help you get to know your learners.
Students will likely be exposed to a similar “first day” in all of their classes, that includes reviewing the syllabus. Help them connect to the content in yours by creating an activity. Perhaps run the text through Wordle and ask students what they believe is the focus of the course and course strategies (show next slide by clicking link)
Plan for late arrivals – anyone ever able to start their very first meeting of any new group on time? The first five to ten minutes are often chaotic as students find their room, ask you questions, etc. Plan something for students to do in pairs or independently for the first few minutes
Have students fill out an index card with their name on one side and an interesting fact about them they are willing to share with the class on the other. Take attendance by collecting those cards and calling out the interesting fact first and seeing who responds to it. Pair students and ask them to learn something about their partner and then stand and “introduce” the partner in 30 seconds. Consider the topic “Why xxxx Would Make a Terrific Group Member”
Write a question on your whiteboard or project it and let students use the first few minutes to respond.

10. Now to Learn Like an Adult!
Malcolm Knowles, father of andragogy, noted several key principles he believed to be true of adults. Adults are internally motivated. Adults come to instruction with prior knowledge and experiences. Adults require relevancy. Adults are goal oriented. What’s In It for Me is big with adult learners. Providing context and capital for what they are learning by helping them to know WHY they may want to learn it is key.
What’s in it for me?

11. Adult Student ADD Attention Dis-Interested Disorder (aka Guess who)
ENVIRONMENT NOT SUPPORTIVE
ENVIRONMENT SUPPORTIVE
Don’t See Value
See Value
Evading
Defiant
Motivated
High
Low
Students in your classroom will exhibit any number of behaviors when you are teaching a lesson. Let’s see if you recognize any of them. (click image of students)
This table represents some common behaviors or feelings students exhibit during instruction. When have you seen these behaviors appear in your classes?
Research shows that many of these behaviors are strongly coorelated to a student’s self efficacy for learning. (click image of man at left) If a student has low self-efficacy, you notice that rejecting is the most common behavior. If they have high self-efficacy, you still have only a 25% chance that they will be motivated. You can increase that motivation by acknowledging the student’s attitude toward the content being taught. (click High) the nature of the learning environment and whether the student considers it supportive or not supportive. (click motivated)
Rejecting
Hopeless
Fragile

12. Role of Self-Efficacy It is my terrible secret………………………………
Whether you think you can or you can’t you’re probably right. –Henry Ford
Students with low self-efficacy are often provided additional supports – glossaries, extra readings, other supplemental material. The problem is – if I don’t think I can do it and don’t believe I possess the strategies to learn it, I will not succeed.
We’re going to look at some teaching and communication strategies we can use to support student’s with low self-efficacy. We are also going to look at strategies to help students with hi self-efficacy stretch a bit.
It is my terrible secret………………………………

13. Zone of Proximal Development
ZPD was proposed by Vygotsky as a way of describing levels of capabilities of a learner. Vygotsky was a social learning theorist who observed children’s learning behaviors but his work has application with all learners.
ZPD is related to scaffolding because the teacher acknowledges what the learner can already do or know and then assigns them tasks that they might also be able to accomplish with the assistance of peers or the teacher. That is the zpd.
Click the graphic to return to scaffolding slide.

14. Strategies to Motivate and Increase Support
Pair up
Person 1 – share a concern about … (pick one)
not being able to stay on top of the readings
not understanding how to use Canvas
Material being too easy
Materials being too difficult
Really hating group work
Person 2 – provide support/actionable help to Person 1
Switch roles
Perform Task
Discuss what participants found helpful in terms of language, demeanor etc. that made each exchange positive
Your Turn

15. ENVIRONMENT SUPPORTIVE
Scaffolding
Why Do it?
To orientate the learner’s attention to the task
To reduce the number of steps that are required to solve a problem
To maintain the activity of the learner as she/he strives to achieve a specific goal
To highlight critical features of the task for the learner
To control the frustration of the learner and the risk of failure.
To provide the learner with idealized models of required actions
If conceptualizing scaffolding remains vague or not actionable in your development of instruction, this list may help give you a framework to use.
Fernández, M., Mercer, N., Wegerif, R., & Rojas-Drummond, S. (2015). Re-conceptualizing "Scaffolding" and the Zone of Proximal Development in the Context of Symmetrical Collaborative Learning. Journal Of Classroom Interaction, 50(1),

16. Student-Centered Instruction
“Active-learning activities positively affected the degree of students’ retention and retrieval of knowledge and affirmed active learning helped students make practical appli­cations of abstract concepts” (Yazedian & Kolchrost, 2007 in Lumpkin et al, 2015)
Teacher = guide
Content = structured problems
Expectation for Performance= at edge of ZPD
Teacher as guide
Students given ill-structured problems to solve not directions to follow
Do you have examples of student-centered instruction you have done or you have seen? Discussion
Lumpkin, A., Achen, R. M., & Dodd, R. K. (2015). Student Perceptions of Active Learning. College Student Journal, 49(1),
Yazedjian, A., & Kollchorst, B. B. (2007). Implementing small-group activities in large lecture classes. Col­lege Teaching, 55,

17. Teacher-centered Instruction
Teacher as provider of all knowledge
Content is delivered not discovered
Content Is or isn’t – not nuanced
Is there a value in teacher centered instruction? Is lecture a viable instructional method? Discussion

18. Un-lecture the Lecture
The lecture approach is often attacked as being antiquated while others also advocate FOR it as the method that THEY learned from when they were in school. Still others say it is the ONLY way they can be sure to cover all the material they need to in a given class meeting. This graphic illustrates strategies you can infuse INTO a lecture approach that will support student reflection on the delivered content which is how learning occurs.
The research supports that EVERY minutes lectures should be punctuated by a diversity of learning activ­ities to keep students focused and engaged, which in turn will help them learn

19. Learn More! Resources to support learning about the adult learner
How Learning Works: 7 Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching - Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett (2010)
The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species - Malcolm Knowles (1973)
Adult Learning in Under 3 Minutes
@MERLOTorg

20. Classroom Technologies
Task
Tool
URL
Resources
Create word clouds to analyze text
Wordle
Use digital ink to capture whiteboard notes
Brightlink interactive projector NA
Capture student understanding during class
“Clickers” and Turning Point Software
Use online software for students to collaborate
Google Docs
This list is built from the items you shared on the whiteboard during the workshop….
This list was generated from a workshop that occurred October 2015

21. Future Workshop Offerings
Next Steps…
Future Workshop Offerings
to collaborate on integrating instructional strategies or learn some of the classroom tools we identified.
Thank you!