A Brief Look at Adult Learning

In this day and age, more and more adults who have been part of the workforce all their lives are considering adult learning as a potentially valuable tool to polish their existing skills or learn new ones that will help place them ahead of the competition when it comes to the job market.Adult learning can help when it comes to earning a much desired promotion or helping an individual to qualify for a lateral move within their existing profession that will be beneficial to them.When it comes to preparing for a completely new profession, a course of adult learning is often not just desirable, but absolutely essential when it comes to gaining the necessary credentials.However, embarking on a course of adult learning is not the simple return to one’s college or high school days that it’s sometimes made out to be.Adults have different reasons for participating in a course of study than young people who have yet to start out in the world do, and as a result, there are different fundamentals in place when it comes to what constitutes a successful cycle of adult learning.Autonomous LearningWhen it comes to how they approach a course of learning, adults are much more autonomous students than their younger counterparts. They benefit most from a course of study that allows them to at least somewhat schedule their own studies and apply their own collective life experience to the subject at hand. Many people choose a course of adult learning that involves distance learning for this reason. Many varieties of distance learning allow adult students to learn at their own pace and fit school into their life in a way that feels comfortable to them.Goal-Oriented LearningAdults differ from younger students in that most do not usually embark on a course of adult learning simply for its own sake. Grown students need to be able to see distinct reasons for taking certain classes and for learning new things. There needs to be some potential pay-off involved that they can relate to – for instance a promotion or the promise of a rewarding new career that can provide them with a level of fulfillment their existing one does not. For this reason, most courses of adult learning revolve around the development of professional skills that have practical applications in the real world.Learning That Fits Easily Into Full, Busy LivesUnlike many younger students, most adults will be juggling adult learning with other big priorities that can create obstacles to learning – for instance, an existing job that must be kept in order to stay on top of financial responsibilities or a family that might include young children that require care. Successful adult learning programs fit comfortably into mature lives that are already full and busy, so as a result, many adult learning programs often take into consideration the fact that most adults will not have the luxury of being able to attend school full-time. Part-time adult learning programs, night school, or distance learning programs are often preferable to busy adults that must juggle school with other demands on their time.Successful courses of adult learning help make it easy for people to minimize existing obstacles to further education while maximizing the potential pay-offs for the individual. When educational establishments who specialize in adult learning are able to achieve this objective, then they find that students are not only willing and able to learn effectively, but that they enjoy the experience itself as well.Author: James CopperArticle Source: EzineArticles.comProvided by: Programmable Multi-cooker