Ahmad Kareh

Adult learners have different needs and expectations and the curriculum designer needs to take those into consideration. While completing a certificate in instructional design at UC Berkeley, I’ve compiled materials from several courses to put together a general four step approach to developing a course curriculum. The four steps are designed around organizing content from various resources into a student centered course design that's easy for adult students to understand.

First, is research. We’ve always emphasized learning about our student population, and the best ways to connect with them. But it is also important to reach out to a diverse group of influential business members in the community in order to understand the needs of companies who are likely to hire our students. If you know what qualities and skills the community needs, you can design a curriculum around these needs and shape the course designs accordingly. The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation published the article Thriving in Challenging Times- Connecting Education to Economic Development through Career Pathways that discusses in more detail the the growing importance of business engagement in education, and how big of a role businesses must play in supporting successful education models in their local communities, particularly in challenging economic times.

Next is gathering information for your course. After gathering your main course objectives, partnering with a department within the college, such as the Department of Educational Initiatives at Salt Lake Community College, is a great way to pull together valuable resources. McGraw Hill also offers a new program called Create where teachers can use specific chapters from different books to create a personalized book for their specific course.

Now that you've gathered your content based on your research, it's time to develop your course. Adult learners have specific expectations that should be considered when developing lesson plans. Teachers should present material clearly, emphasize relevance, create a comfortable learning atmosphere, use a variety of methods, and adapt to meet diverse student needs. A great way to develop lessons is to use a backwards design template, which is very well explained in a book by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe called Understanding by Design. This book discusses the importance of looking at the overall goal or learning outcomes that you want for your students. Once that is complete you can figure out what evidence to use to assess the outcomes. Then you can develop specific activities or lesson plans from there. If you design the course with an overall picture of what students should know by the end you will be able to meet the student’s expectations and create a learning environment for adult learners to succeed.

Finally, the last step is to test and modify. You should strive to continually improve the content and design of your curriculum. The best way to improve is to ask students for their feedback. Sometimes you’re able to monitor feedback by observing patterns exhibited by the students. If you notice a large number of questions around an assignment, then chances are that the description of the assignment is not easily understood by the students. Adjusting your course based on the reactions of students will allow you to create a quality course that learners will find valuable.      

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