In the Spring of 2014 I took Karen Day's HRD 631 The Adult Learner. This course, like many others, came at the perfect time. I'd just had a student leave after one, what seemed to me to be, relatively small 'failure'. The student has waited until the last minute to turn in a document after having been given a chance to turn in a draft. Calculating that as a mature student who'd already finished an advanced degree years prior, she wouldn't need that opportunity, she waited til the very last minute to turn it in. As it turns out, she made some big errors that caused her grade to drop from an A to a B. In her mind this was a huge failure and so she left the program. I was devastated and tried to talk her out of it to no avail. As a result, I did my project in this class on finding a better understanding of these returning students as they are such important role models for our younger students in so many ways. That project is attached. One of the big tools I gained in this project is the ability to add audio to each power point slide. This is really significantly different than creating a video out of a power point. I now use this technique in many classes as it allows students to go back and review particular points of a topic at their leisure and conveniently re-listen to the relevant parts. For instance, in animal nutrition there are ration developing equations that are a bit complicated... walking through these in class may seem clear but when student go home and try to do assignments, they may get lost. Simply looking at the power point is very one dimensional but being able to repeat that one portion of a lecture can be really supportive for some students... older and younger!!!
It is worth noting that the other really significant project in this course was an autobiography. It was a painful but meaningful experience. I toyed with the idea of attaching it here but I'm just not quite ready for that. Maybe someday...