Adults as Learners: An Orientation

Are you a new adult literacy educator? Need help figuring out how to effectively teach the adult literacy learner? Through this online course, you will learn the keys to success in working with adults through:

• instructional strategies,
• classroom management techniques, and
• assessment approaches to measure learning gains.

Through the online course format, you can learn at your own pace from the comfort and convenience of your own home or office. Facilitators, available to help you throughout the eight-week course, lead you through the content and technical aspects of the course.

Each week's lesson addresses a topic in adult education pertaining to adult literacy. Course activities include readings, assignments, and discussions. The lessons are sequential.

• Adult Literacy and Education Issues
• How We Learn
• Classroom Management
• Instructional Strategies
• Special Topics in Adult Literacy
• Assessment
• Lesson Planning
• Next Steps

Completion of the course is designed to require a minimum of 32 hours of your time; approximately four hours a week. However, you may find that you want to spend longer with some topics. Also, please note that you will be required to complete an observation in an adult education classroom as part of your course requirements.

In order to receive the certificate for participating in the Adults as Learners: An Orientation training, you must complete all assignments, respond to each discussion question, and respond at least once to one of your classmates in any of the week’s discussion/assignment forums.

Remember that, although you will gain from doing the activities, you will learn most from discussions with your online colleagues and facilitator. To keep our discussions as productive as possible, you must stay within the timeframe outlined for this course.

To begin your registration for this facilitated online course, please go to ERO and register for the How To Be a Good Online Learner short tutorial course. This short tutorial course serves as a prerequisite to all of our facilitated online courses and will help familiarize and prepare you for participation in our longer courses. The short tutorial course will not take much of your time and only needs to be completed once. If you have already completed the short tutorial course, return to How To Be a Good Online Learner in Blackboard to download the contract for this course and email it to courses@valrc.org.

This course is available to out-of-state participants for a fee of $175. To begin the registration process for out-of-state participants, please send an email to courses@valrc.org.