• Assessing Adult Learning
• Designing Educational Offerings
• Facilitating Adult Learning

The Educating Adults Certificate is for those looking to build skills in facilitating, designing, and assessing the educational offerings and learning outcomes of adult students, including:

• Human Resources professionals
• Learning and development professionals
• Corporate training professionals
• Adjunct faculty in higher education
• English as a Second Language instructors
• GED instructors
• Career changers looking to teach adults in formal and informal settings
• Anyone seeking professional development related to teaching adults

The Educating Adults certificate program will:

• Provide a comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals you need to teach, train, and develop adult learners in academic and professional settings
• Expand your expertise in teaching mature students
• Teach you the means to develop effective adult training programs

Designing Educational Offerings:

• Identify and apply theories, concepts, principles and/or models regarding adult learning that inform design choices in general as well as for your specific learn experience design.
• Examine a variety of techniques to employ in a learning experience to enhance memory, retain and recall information, and create an element of surprise.
• Produce a design plan of an educational offering for a select audience of adult learners to address all core elements of design.

• Distinguish “facilitation” from “instruction” and recognize the role of both in adult learning.
• Develop an approach to facilitating adult learning based on a general understanding of how the human brain “learns.” 
• Assess your own assumptions, tendencies, and attributes as a facilitator to guide your ongoing practice and development.

• Produce informal assessment instruments and critically review them in terms of their cultural relevance, validity, adequacy, and contextual appropriateness.
• Construct a coherent assessment plan for a selected offering (e.g., course, workshop, training) that responds to learning outcomes, is supported by the literature, can be feasibly implemented, and identifies how assessment evidence can be used to improve instruction/delivery and contribute to learning. 
• Assess your own learning in relation to learning outcomes, and draw on your work and products to identify areas of growth and challenge.

Is there a required text? 
Yes, each course typically requires a textbook. In addition to the texts, there will be other readings and articles posted on the D2L site.

Are books included in the tuition fee? 
The textbooks need to be purchased, but many can be found for library loan. If you’re entering teaching adults as a profession, we encourage you to keep your textbooks for future reference. Supplementary readings are included and downloaded from the D2L site.

Are courses taught in class or online? 
These classes are taught online with zoom sessions for live instruction and discussions. 

How long is the program? 
The certificate program is comprised of three courses. Each course is 10 weeks of instruction. However, you can take each of the three courses as a single experience if you do not want to earn a certificate.

Do I need prior education or work experience to enroll in the program? 
While there are no prerequisite requirements, these courses are designed at the Master’s educational level. You will be most successful if you have college-level writing skills.

Will I have to write papers and take exams? 
Our teaching philosophy is on applied learning. It is expected that your course work will show evidence of applying the course learning to a variety of applications. A final project or assessment plan will be due at the end of each course. 

Is financial aid available for this certificate program?
No. The cost of non-credit certificate programs are not covered under financial aid.