Final
Reflection: Myself as a Learner
It
took me almost all semester to figure out that a significant portion of this
class wasn’t about the generic, abstract “adult learner,” it was about me.
Looking back, it seems almost comical that I wondered why we had a mid semester
reflection assignment or why using new technologies was incorporated so
heavily. It seems so obvious now from the coursework and syllabus that all of
thinking I was doing about my own learning style and preferences was part of
the planned curriculum. In addition to the expected material, I was learning to
put myself in the shoes of other adult learners.
One
of the major takeaways that I had in this course is that adult education is
multifaceted. Because of my own context, I tended to apply the term “adult
education” to more formal channels while not fully considering what the
informal channels contributed to the field. I never considered myself an
educator before I entered higher ed, but when I was helping people learn new skills in the context of my past jobs, I was just as much of an
educator as I am today. I recently went to a personal training session at my gym, and in
the middle of the session, a light went off in my head. This trainer is an
adult educator! He was presenting what amounted to a customized hands on
workshop explaining how my body worked and what steps I could take to reach a
goal, using specialized knowledge and an understanding of effective teaching
strategies for his field. I gained context about adult education as a field
from more detailed lessons, such as examining the theories of various adult
educators and looking at how various programs worked in practice to meet the
needs of adult learners, but the idea of adult education being integrated into
everyday life was the most fascinating and resonant theme through the course
for me.
Overall,
I enjoyed the course very much. As much as I love to get perfect scores, I
appreciated the critical feedback as much as I did the positive feedback on my
assignments. Throughout my program so far I have vacillated emotionally between
a sense of perfectionism that makes me feel frustrated when I don’t earn full
point value on an assignment and an appreciation for the push to think about my
work from multiple angles and to improve, which is ultimately my goal as a
student. While I don’t feel that I did as well as I possibly could in this
course and lost points because of that, I do feel that I learned a great deal
that will apply to my future studies.
It’s
not been a secret this semester that as a general preference, I do not like
group work at all. The way that group work was structured in this course was a
little bit different than what I’ve experienced in the past, and I thought the
differences were interesting. I very much appreciated the ladies in my group
and their hard work, and their support as I balanced my coursework with
multiple personal issues this semester. Unfortunately, even as a graduate
student, I’m usually the person assigning tasks, sending out reminders, and
picking up the slack for people who don’t pull their weight, and this semester
I didn’t feel the pressure to do those things because my group members were
equally willing to pitch in and share responsibility. I still think I would
have chosen to do more work individually this semester if given the option due
to my personal preferences, but one thing that would have helped me across the
board is if the group assignments were more spaced out over the semester. We
often had due dates that were basically back to back, which would have made it much
more difficult to coordinate in time if my group were larger (as it originally
was intended to be) or less organized. In my opinion, having more individual
assignments would have been acceptable to allow more time to coordinate for
group assignments.
In
addition to helping me think about my own learning and encouraging me to
consider the challenges I have when working with groups, I also got what I came
for in the course: a practical and well rounded concept of the history and
status of adult education as well as perspectives on its future. I learned
quite a bit about how adult education took some of the shapes it holds today.
More importantly, I was able to start narrowing my understanding of the field
into major concepts that give me a place to start when examining the problems
and questions I will encounter as I develop in the field of adult and community
education. This course was well connected to my major, career and technical
education. I appreciated how so many of the weekly resources covered
international programs, educators, and students. One weakness that I’m sure I
share with many students is that I tend to frame new information within the
context of the United States, with international issues as an afterthought.
With the world becoming smaller through globalization, increased ability to
communicate internationally, and efforts of educators to draw international
students both in person and online, it behooves educators to expand their
worldview and be able to effectively consider international perspectives in the
conversation whenever applicable. Another thing I liked about the weekly
discussions was the ability to choose to ask our own question as one of the
discussion options. There were several weeks when I didn’t particularly connect
with a particular piece of the reading, but when taken together, they sparked
an interest in a more tangentially related topic. Having the opportunity to
engage other students in those conversations was fun, and also contributed to
my understanding by drawing out thoughts and ideas that may not have been
covered by the other questions. For example, when I asked for class opinions
about MOOC’s (massive open online courses), I was surprised at how many people
hadn’t been familiar with them. Researching them in relation to the week’s
lessons and learning from others who brought a completely fresh perspective on
the topic was interesting and useful to me.
My
experience in this course has been very good. As I progress in my program,
choosing electives always makes me nervous, so I’m glad that this one turned
out to be a great fit with my degree goals and allowed me to expand personally
at the same time. I’m grateful to the person who recommended the course to me,
and I would definitely recommend this course to others as well.
