Benefits and Challenges of Long-Tenured Employees
Organizations can benefit from seeking out their long-tenured employees and utilizing their knowledge and experiences as power.
Author: Dr. Shirley J. Caruso, Ed.D.
Barriers to Participation in Adult Learning
Many adults experience mixed feelings about returning to school or participating in job-related training. These feelings can include nervousness and lack of confidence as well as determination and excitement. In addition, although adults may have a strong desire to participate in education, they are weighed down with responsibilities of their families and career. These emotional factors and responsibilities cause barriers that prevent adults from participating in learning.
Constructivism
School of human learning which believes in the need to identify current learning prior to constructing new meaning. Knowledge is seen as a mental construct that is built on and added to. Learners create an image of what the world is like and how it operates and they adapt and transform their understanding of new […]
Human Resource Development (HRD) Buzzwords
Buzzwords are commonly used terms or phrases that are connected with a specialized field, such as Human Resource Development (HRD). These words may be true to their conventional meaning, or unfamiliar and difficult to understand for those unassociated with the field in which they are used. Buzzwords may gain or lose popularity, depending on the popularity of the trend or information for which they were created.
Learner Characteristics and Instructional Design
Two broad categories of human characteristics to consider when designing instruction are individual differences and similarities (Smith & Ragan, 2005). These individual differences result in adult learners having different learning styles, different attitudes and beliefs, and different educational backgrounds. Conversely, adult learners share similarities such as the capability to process information, sensory capabilities (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling), and the capability to cogitate.
Self-Directed Learning
Adults want to be viewed as being capable of making their own decisions. This includes making decisions about learning. As the need arises, adults take it upon themselves to seek methods in which to learn a new skill or increase our knowledge. Adults learn through a variety of channels common in their everyday lives. They deliberately seek information from their colleagues, family, community, or place of work. This information can lead to new knowledge or the acquisition of a new skill. On the other hand, because learning is embedded in their lives, they are often unaware that learning takes place all around them.
Instructional Strategies for Attitude Change, Motivation, and Interest
Learning strategies are devices employed by learners to assist in the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Instruction should guide the learner in the choice of appropriate learning strategies for particular learning tasks. Facilitating the learning of declarative knowledge, concepts, procedures, principles, problem solving, cognitive, attitudes, and psychomotor skills begins with decisions on what content should be presented, how it should be presented, and in what sequence the instruction should follow (Smith and Ragan, 2005). Ideally, an instructional strategy should be as generative as possible while still offering motivational support for learners.
Micro-Level Instructional Strategies
Strategies for Instruction Leading to Learning Procedures
Instructional designers should carefully perform a task analysis, analyze learners, and the analyze the context when designing instruction to make a determination to facilitate the use of strategies with more direct prompting of learning strategies or more direct and complete instruction. If inhibitors to use of strategies are present (learners have low skill in strategy use, learners are not motivated, learners do not recognize the applicability of the strategy, learners lack awareness of their own cognitive capabilities, learners are unaware of the learning task, learners have no prior content knowledge, etc.) the instructional designer may need to develop a technique to improve them or choose strategies with more direct prompting or instruction that is more direct. A continuing goal of the instructional designer is to apply the different types of instructional strategies to best achieve the different types of learning.
Consultants Can Expect to Encounter Ethical Issues
By Dr. Shirley J. Caruso, Ed.D. Consultants, especially new consultants, can expect to encounter ethical issues. Ethical behavior affects the quality of work a consultant performs. Consultants should always keep the client’s needs as a driving force to ethical behavior. In the following paragraphs, three ethical dilemmas that consultants are likely to encounter are described […]
Cognitivists
Cognitivists believe that learning occurs when learners are able to add new concepts and ideas to their cognitive structure by recognizing a relationship between something they already know and what they are learning. The focus of cognitivists is on the inputs of the learning process. Cognitive theorists emphasize internal processes and knowledge representations which are […]