Foundations of Adult Learning Theory – Week 2

As an elementary school student, I remember sitting in class, listening to the teacher talk about nouns, pronouns, and verbs. I was unable to grasp those concepts, and so I failed to learn them as a child. However, I continued using nouns, pronouns, verbs, and all other parts of speech without knowing anything about them. I had learned my native language, English, well enough to advance to adulthood.

When I was a young adult, I decided I wanted to learn Spanish. So, I obtained a course with a Spanish grammar book and recordings that follow the book. I quickly realized that I would have to learn the gender of the nouns, the conjugation of verbs, the agreement of adjectives, and all the other general grammar I failed to learn in elementary school. I had not learned my native language well enough to become bilingual.

My self-concept as a bilingual person has been my greatest motivator in life. As I struggled to learn foreign languages, I had to direct myself to learn more about my native language. By gaining a firmer understanding of English, I am better able to read, write and think.

Although I have not taken many formal academic courses on World History (none actually), I have a passion for both World History, prehistory, and classical philosophy. This passion has compelled me to read, watch documentaries and research questions to know more about how people used to live and think. This passion I experienced has been a lifelong lesson that helped me during my formal writing classes as an undergraduate English major./p>

As an English major, I had to write a lot of persuasive essays and creative works of both fiction and non-fiction. Having a pool of historical knowledge to gather ideas helped me through those times.

While working as an administrative assistant for a nutritional consulting firm, I was asked to take a class in medical terminology. Although I was not interested in medicine in general, nor had I any former or informal training in the subject, my position as an administrative assistant presented me with the social obligation to learn about the prefixes, roots, and suffixes of the medical terms the dietitians applied to their profession. Since I learned medical terminology, I was more prepared to fulfill my social role as an assistant to the dietitians.

In my attempts to learn JavaScript, I watched a lot of screen recordings of the instructor typing code and then checking the functionality of the code in the browser. Oftentimes, the code would not work, and the instructor would check the console for an error message. The JavaScript machine will generate a vague reason for the error. (For example, a common error is, “string literal contains an unescaped line break”). Then the instructor would ask the viewers to think about what the message indicated and how to resolve the error. Then the instructor would ask the viewers to try to look at the code and again think about the message. By looking at the code, analyzing the meaning of the error message and applying critical thinking, the reason for the error comes clear.

This is problem-centered learning. The instructor intentionally created the problem, invoked a question to solving the problem, and inspired the viewers to solve the problem through critical thinking.

When I decided to learn Spanish, I had no expectation nor desire to want to become a diplomat or a translator. My motivation to learn Spanish was rooted in my pursuit of a peak experience, and I have experienced many since my success.

I developed the desire to learn Spanish after experiencing the culture while on a vacation in Mexico many years ago. I was twelve years old, and the excitement of that trip to that fabulous place would later boost my efforts to learn Spanish.

As a video learner with Lynda.com, I frequently searched for courses that taught a project that I wanted to lean. Those courses that add in the introduction a look at the final project inspired me more than any other. I chose to dedicate my time on courses that intrigued me. I also wanted to know how what type of material the course covered. So, I would jump ahead and view lessons in the course to determine whether it looked interesting.

While creating my own courses, I always add a video of the final project that I record after creating the course. This video will inform the adults who consider whether or not to purchase the course what they will create. I also follow the video-learning platforms’ (Udemy, for example) required demand that a detailed explanation of the course be completed before publishing. This requirement is a good principle to follow since adults need to know what they will learn before choosing to dedicate their valuable time to learning.