This is a collection of the finished papers/work that was created throughout the Adult Learning program at Colorado State University and could be used as a refresher for those familiar or as a foundational example of material an individual can use for clarity of understanding and/or application within their own program(s).

• Foundational / Basics:

  • Philosophy of Teaching – this document includes some of my early thoughts on the subject of teaching and how I’d like to take the subject ‘deeper’
  • The ‘Gamification’ of Teaching/Learning – an early interest that I felt could combine a variety of my skillsets.  I found that what the ‘educational’ community considers useful for games are just ways of reinforcing & memorization of facts.  Broadening the impact of including games within education to actually teach principles will be a big focus of my future work.
  • Case Study – Is eLearning effective with seasoned sales people is at the heart of answering the question of modernization and corporate America.  We need to continue a focus on better ways educate our sales force with shrinking resources.  As was explained within this paper, there were very few case studies of actual success/failure with the Corporate fields and I believe should be continued to be researched to answer definitely what works and what might not work in this area.

• Examples:

  • Rubric of a Musical Performance – How can you have a uniform evaluation of an event that could totally be subjective between a variety of ‘graders’?  The use of a rubric helps to remove the subjectivity and this example might help to spur on thinking of applications to other events.
  • Class Room Assessment – these three papers represent different approaches than an instructor can use to obtain iterative feedback about how well the students are learning the material (and stop the typical ‘shutdown’ of a student when they feel they don’t get it).  These techniques are only three of many ways to poll students thoughts about the course allowing the instructor to make minor course corrections to raise overall knowledge transfer.
    • The Minute Paper
    • Interest / Knowledge / Skills Checklist
    • Teach Designed Feedback Forms
  • Instructional Design – Three Day, Multi-Location example of a New Product Introduction was probably the largest project that I took on during my coursework.  This paper delves into the mindset of how to ‘train the trainer’ and pull a course together (or in my case quite a few courses) that someone else will be teaching.  This holistic view of AET forces the Instructional Designer to have to account for a large number of variables that may arise within a learning opportunity and provide pro-active documentation to prepare someone else with the ‘what to do next’ steps for a successful class opportunity.

• Miscellaneous:

  • a personal reflection on the book entitled, “Courage to Teach” – if I could only include one paper in which to refer back and be encouraged to continue ‘the fight’; it would be this one.  The book touched on so many of the subjects of teaching overall, I consider it a ‘must read’ for anyone in the field.  I don’t want to lose touch with the things learned from reading it.
  • comparison & usage of technology for distance learning – Kubi vs Google Hangouts was for me one of the most fun to be engaged with as it struck the engineering/technological side of my person along with how to combine it with a learning opportunity.  While we investigated the current ‘tech’ available to the field – we also discussed principles of use that should form the foundation of any technology in an AET type learning environment.