Adult Educator Seminar Series Certificate of Completion

Classroom or Online
E-mail: cehealth@mtroyal.ca
Information: 403.440.6867 or toll-free 1.866.616.3606
Register: Start here
Location: Lincoln Park Campus, 4825 Mount Royal Gate SW

Required Courses | Optional Courses | Online Courses | Professional Development

All required courses are offered every semester.
Optional courses vary each semester.

Enhance your knowledge of adult learning principles and the specialized needs of adult learners through this dynamic and interactive seminar series. Develop strategies and techniques for immediate practical application to your work. In the information economy, lifelong learning is more important than ever before. It is critical for leaders, supervisors and trainers to have a grasp of adult learning in every environment, from business and government to education and non-profit.

Program Notes
The Adult Educator Seminar Series Certificate of Completion is offered in both classroom and online formats. The classroom format, delivered face-to-face, has nine required and two optional courses. The online format consists of three modules, each of which has three required courses plus one optional course.

Course Materials (Required)
Adult Educator Seminar Series, $36.90+GST, available at the BookStore. This text will be used for all required courses.

Earning Your Certificate of Completion
Complete the nine required courses (27 hours) and any two optional courses (6 hours), or complete the three online modules (36 hours).

Career Outlook
Successful completion of the Adult Educator Seminar Series will enhance the skills of anyone involved in teaching and training adults.

Fast Track

Earn your certificate of completion in only one week!
Complete all nine required courses and two optional courses from June 21-25 or August 23-27, 2010. Registration not available until March 8, 2010.

Required Courses - Classroom

Learning Styles - Implications for Adult Educators
Improve your teaching effectiveness and your students’ learning potential. Using the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, identify ways to enhance your teaching strategies. 

Effective Teaching Techniques
Expand your repertoire of teaching techniques to achieve instructional goals and meet the specialized needs of adult learners. Share your experiences in the classroom while discovering innovative ways to match learning outcomes with effective instructional techniques. 

Culturally Responsive Facilitation
Discover sensitive and practical strategies for working with culturally diverse adult learners to create safe and respectful learning environments. Using a motivational framework, explore values, learning strategies and structures necessary to establish inclusion, develop attitude, enhance meaning and engender competence for all adult learners. 

Tools to Enhance Instruction & Presentation
Review various media tools used to enhance instruction and presentations. Explore how best to match content with media tools to create the most meaningful learning experience. 

Classroom Presentation Skills
Explore effective verbal and non-verbal communication techniques for classroom delivery. Focus on vocal approach, use of space, style of presentation and body language. 

Conflict Resolution in the Classroom
Diversity of experience and perspective enriches the classroom, but at times these differences can create conflict. How can we manage conflict or even anger among adult learners without discouraging different points of view? Bring your experiences and worst fears for review and practise techniques for handling conflict effectively. 

Principles of Adult Learning
Explore principles of adult learning that can be applied to planning and facilitating effective courses. 

Designing Learning Outcomes
Write clear and concise learning outcomes that guide instructional design and assessment. This process provides learners with measurable course expectations and targeted competencies.

Assessing Teaching & Learning
Examine a variety of techniques for ongoing assessment of student learning in relation to your instructional effectiveness. Review assessment techniques that can be designed and implemented to improve the quality of the classroom experience. 

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Optional Courses

Choose 2

Developing Fair Tests
Too often, instructors forget to link evaluation to the learning objectives initially established for the course. Look at ways to design valid tests or exams so that they fit with the types of learning outcomes you desire – cognitive, psychomotor or affective. 

Generational Differences in Learning
Each generation or cohort of individuals has a set of defining events — social, political, cultural — associated with their lives. The resulting experiences influence the way they see the world, including their approaches and attitudes toward learning. Explore these generational differences and the implications they hold for teaching and learning. 

Using Case Studies in the Classroom
Case studies can be valuable interactive teaching tools, helping your students to develop problem-solving skills. Lean the qualities of an effective case study, recognize common mistakes in writing case studies and design a case study that bridges the gap between theory and practice. 

Improve Your Voice
Practice techniques to improve the quality of your voice. Develop projection and enhance voice tone through relaxation, breathing and voice exercises.

Storytelling
Gain insight into how storytelling can motivate student learning. The background and history of storytelling are explained. Discuss how to choose a story to suit your purpose and how to present a story within your own teaching situation. 

Mind Mapping: Making the Most of Your Mind
Discover how to use Mind Maps, a simple graphic thinking and presentation tool with amazing power to improve how you organize and express your ideas. Apply Mind Mapping to textbook reading, lecture notes, oral presentations, test preparation, test taking and report writing. 

Designing & Assessing Student Assignments
Take the guesswork out of designing and assessing a student’s performance. Discover how to apply a process for designing and assessing assignments that link outcomes, learning activities, assessment and feedback. As well, design and apply assessment criteria (rubrics). 

Task-Based Learning
Distinguish between learning and teaching tasks. Critically examine the philosophical and pedagogical assumptions underlying a learning-task approach. Explore the connection between content, objectives and learning tasks. Apply this approach to the context of your own teaching. 

Designing a Living Course Syllabus
Design a course syllabus/outline to serve as a planning device to organize your course and to guide course work for you and your students. Use your course syllabus/outline as an interactive road map that outlines what should be taught, why, by whom to whom, and under what conditions. 

Supporting Learners with Disabilities
As an instructor, you may feel unprepared to meet the learning needs of adults with disabilities. Through small and large group discussions and reflective exercises, explore instructional strategies that support learners with various types of disabilities and enhance learning for all your participants. Investigate options and resources available. 

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Online Courses

We have packaged the Adult Educator Seminar Series into three online modules, each consisting of three required courses plus one optional course.

Core Concepts of Adult Learning
Be introduced to the foundations of adult learning. This module includes the required courses Principles of Adult Learning, Designing Learning Outcomes and Learning Styles, as well as the optional course Designing a Living Course Syllabus. (See above for complete course descriptions.) 

Skills & Techniques for Adult Learning
Acquire skills and techniques to make your classes enjoyable and effective. The second module includes the required courses Effective Teaching Techniques, Classroom Presentation Skills and Assessing Teaching & Learning, as well as the optional course Online Facilitation. (See above for complete course descriptions.) 

Refine & Enhance Instruction for Adult Learning
Polish your presentations for enhanced learning in your classroom. The third module includes the required courses Tools to Enhance Instruction & Presentation, Culturally Responsive Facilitation and Conflict Resolution in the Classroom, as well as the optional course Generational Differences in Learning. (See above for complete course descriptions.) 

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Professional Development

Train-the-Trainer: Designing & Facilitating Training Programs
A well-trained workforce is vital to the competitiveness of every organization. To ensure that your organization’s training programs are current and effective, this intensive three-day workshop helps you plan, conduct and evaluate learner-centred programs. Cover learning styles, learner diversity, teaching techniques, program planning and ongoing assessment, and put theories into practice. 
Note: You will have the opportunity to put theory into practice by designing a learning module and doing a teaching demonstration on day 3.
Note: This workshop gives credit for four of the courses in the Adult Educator Seminar Series: Principles of Adult Learning, Learning Styles, Effective Teaching Techniques and Assessing Teaching & Learning
Required course materials: available at the BookStore.
Instructor: Trudy Mayer