2019 Annual Conference

Colleges and Universities

Concurrent Session (45 minutes)

The session will cover doctoral students’ learning experiences and their challenges in navigating a pathway toward accomplishing academic success in higher education. In addition, the session will discuss how andragogy is used to facilitate doctoral students’ learning journey in Instructional Leadership program at a Midwest university.

This session will focus especially on the audiences whom have had experiences with facilitating learning to doctoral students from diverse backgrounds; higher education faculty; and policy makers in adult and continuing education.

The audiences will know: doctoral students' learning issues, relationship between professors and doctoral students in face-to-face and online classrooms, and the application of andragogy to enhance doctoral students' learning experiences and success in Instructional Leadership Program at a Midwest university. In addition, participants will be welcomed to share and discuss their teaching experiences and/or teaching techniques/approaches that may be helpful for novice and/or experienced teachers of adults to help improve the learning of doctoral students in higher education environment.

The lecture is used regularly in educational setting. It is often used as a 'one-way' communication from speaker to listeners. This 'living lecture' will be demonstrated, including added techniques interspersed within the lecture to provide multi-directional communication among speaker and audience participants. The short lecture will focus on application of andragogy in a doctoral program to facilitate doctoral students’ learning experiences and success. Before the lecture, the participants will be asked to serve as "listening teams" according to the section of the room they are sitting in—one section to listen to the presentation/lecture for points requiring clarification [the clarification team], another for points with which they disagree [the rebuttal team], another for points they wish to have elaborated on [the elaboration team], and a fourth for problems of practical application they wish the speaker to address [the application team]. After the short lecture, the teams will be asked to "buzz" in groups of about five to pool their thinking concerning the points they want raised, following which one member of each group in turn presents one point at a time, which they want addressed and the speaker responds until all items are discussed or time runs out.

Through the use of what I call "A Living Lecture", participants and the facilitator share their experiences in facilitating diversity of students in the classes using andragogy and/or other adult teaching techniques that might be helpful for improving student success in a doctoral program. They will then utilize the process of raising and addressing questions for clarification, rebuttal, elaboration and practical application. Thus, participants and facilitator have the opportunity to discuss, debate and construct a usable framework of applying andragogical teaching techniques on improving doctoral students’ learning experiences and success.