Creating a Place for Adult Learners in Higher Education offers deep insights into how to attract, teach, support, and retain students over the age of 25 – an important yet often overlooked student group. Comprehensive in scope, this book covers all the main aspects of adult students’ relationships with higher education institutions: recruitment, admissions, and financing; course and program provision and teaching approaches; and student support, retention, and completion. The discussion is bolstered by chapters of analysis on adult student demographics (including both diversities and commonalities), exploration of leadership challenges, and discussion of measurements of success. Drawing from the most up-to-date research as well as practical experience and descriptions of best practices by programs historically serving adults, the authors provide a broad set of strategies and recommendations to place adult students at the center of the educational process. Higher education leaders, practitioners, and administrators will find this book an invaluable resource as they seek to better account for and support this key student group, which now comprises approximately 30% of the US undergraduate population.

In today’s globalized world, professional fields are continually transforming to keep pace with advancing methods of practice. The theory of adult learning, specifically, is a subject that has seen new innovations and insights with the advancement of online and blended learning. Examining new principles and characteristics in adult learning is imperative, as emerging technologies are rapidly shifting the standards of higher education. The Handbook of Research on Adult Learning in Higher Education is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of adult education in residential, online, and blended course delivery formats. This book will focus on the impact that culture, globalization, and emerging technology currently has on adult education. While highlighting topics including andragogical principles, professional development, and artificial intelligence, this book is ideally designed for teachers, program developers, instructional designers, technologists, educational practitioners, deans, researchers, higher education faculty, and students seeking current research on new methodologies in adult education.

Become an effective adult educator by approaching teaching systematically As the author describes at the beginning of Creating Courses for Adults, "The big idea of this book is that education for adults has to be designed." Whether in basic skills training, English language classes, professional development workshops, personal interest courses, or formal degree programs, good teaching tends to conceal all the planning and decisions which had to be made in order to present participants with a seamless and coherent process for learning. The author posits that nobody is a completely intuitive teacher and that everybody has to make a series of choices as they put courses together. The decisions they make are important and far-reaching, and deserve to be considered carefully. Starting with the three core factors which must be taken into account when creating courses, Creating Courses for Adults walks readers through a manageable process for addressing the key decisions which must be made in order to design effective learning. Instructor factors are what the teacher brings to the teaching and learning process, such as experience and preferences. Learner factors are the influences that students bring with them, including their past experiences and expectations for the class. Context factors include the educational setting, whether in-person or online, as well as the subject matter. Readers of Creating Courses for Adults will learn a systematic approach to lesson and course design based on research into the ways adults learn and the best ways to reach them, along with pointers and tips for teaching adults in any setting.

Understanding and Supporting Adult Learners offers faculty and administrators a hands-on guide to the myriad issues adult learners face in their enrollment and participation in higher education. This comprehensive resource is filled with the analytical and practical skills that can help faculty make sound decisions relative to adult learners. The book also includes techniques and frameworks for assessing, implementing, and evaluating practices within the institution—at the classroom, department, school, and campus levels—to nurture and support responsiveness to adult learners. Praise for Understanding and Supporting Adult Learners "This timely book provides a clear road map for institutions to attract, retain, and graduate adult learners. It will provoke discussions among faculty and administrators on the best ways to serve and assess this important demographic."— John V. Moore III, associate director of institutional research, Temple University "A must-read for everyone serving adults in higher education! The book's wonderfully insightful and provocative cases bring to life the real dilemmas facing adult learners and the institutions that support them. It provides an enlightened analysis of the issues and an effective framework for creating and improving programs that ensure the success of adult learners in higher education."— Tai Arnold, assistant vice president for academic programs, SUNY Empire State College "This book is a must-read for community college faculty and administrators. Community college adult learners span several generations and even decades and bring different levels of learning skills and student support services needs. This is an excellent practical guide to addressing the varied needs and issues of the twenty-first century adult learner."— Christine Chairsell, vice president, Portland Community College

Whether it is earning a GED, a particular skill, or technical topic for a career, taking classes of interest, or even returning to begin a degree program or completing it, adult learning encompasses those beyond the traditional university age seeking out education. This type of education could be considered non-traditional as it goes beyond the typical educational path and develops learners that are self-initiated and focused on personal development in the form of gaining some sort of education. Essentially, it is a voluntary choice of learning throughout life for personal and professional development. While there is often a large focus towards K-12 and higher education, it is important that research also focuses on the developing trends, technologies, and techniques for providing adult education along with understanding lifelong learners’ choices, developments, and needs. The Research Anthology on Adult Education and the Development of Lifelong Learners focuses specifically on adult education and the best practices, services, and educational environments and methods for both the teaching and learning of adults. This spans further into the understanding of what it means to be a lifelong learner and how to develop adults who want to voluntarily contribute to their own development by enhancing their education level or knowledge of certain topics. This book is essential for teachers and professors, course instructors, business professionals, school administrators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the latest advancements in adult education and lifelong learning.

Trauma in Adult and Higher Education: Conversations and Critical Reflections invites readers to think deeply about the experiences of trauma they witness in and outside of the classroom, because trauma alters adult learners' experience by disrupting identity, and interfering with memory, relationships and creativity. Through essays, narratives, and cultural critiques, the reader is invited to rethink education as more than upskilling and content mastery; education is a space where dialogue has the potential to unlock an individual’s sense of power and self-mastery that enables them to make sense of violence, tragedy and trauma. Trauma in Adult and Higher Education: Conversations and Critical Reflections reveals the lived experiences of educators struggling to integrate those who have experienced trauma into their classrooms - whether this is in prison, a yoga class, or higher education. As discourses and programming to support diversity intensifies, it is central that educators acknowledge and respond to the realities of the students before them. Advocates of traumasensitive curriculum acknowledge that trauma shows up as a result of the disproportionate amount of violence and persistent insecurity that specific groups face. Race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and immigration are all factors that expose individuals to higher levels of potential trauma. Trauma has changed the conversations about what education is, and how it should happen. These conversations are resulting in new approaches to teaching and learning that address the lived experiences of pain and trauma that our adult learners bring into the classroom, and the workforce. This collection includes a discussion of salient implications and practices for adult and higher education administrators and faculty who desire to create an environment that includes individuals who have experienced trauma, and perhaps prevents the cycle of violence.

Developing and Sustaining Adult Learners is the second volume in a series of scholarly publications associated with the annual Adult Higher Education Alliance (AHEA, The Alliance) conference. The title of this volume, derived from the theme of the 2012 conference co-sponsored by American Association of Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) in Las Vegas, NV, encompasses significant issues and questions at the forefront of the field of adult education. At the conference, scholars, practitioners, and adult educators gave presentations and received feedback on some of the most significant and timely issues in their praxis. The Alliance, which values collaboration, transformative dialogue, and collegiality among professionals, considers this volume a continuation of those conversations as the presentations were expanded into chapters. We are glad that you are joining the conversation. This volume confirms not only that adult learning, higher education, and both fields of research have many contexts, but also that there is so much more to learn about different perspectives and opportunities for research and practice. Opportunities for symbiotic relationship abound. We hope that Developing and Sustaining Adult Learners will be a book that you pull off your bookshelf, or open in your e-reader, often. We know that as we engage in program and course planning, design and teaching, this book will provide needed refreshment and new vision. When research ideas seem too similar, this volume will also provide many seeds for new opportunities.