Adult Education in the Workplace: An Engineer's Journey to Foster Self-Direction in Others

Abstract

My initial entry into the field of adult education has been via an indirect route from the industrial environments where I've worked for the last 20 years in various engineering positions. I came to recognize many years ago that a large part of my job involved the education of adult employees. As a research and development engineer, I have been tasked with introducing new equipment and processes into existing production efforts. In some instances, this involved new technology for which there was no established curriculum in existing training or educational programs. In other situations, I was involved in introducing an established technology to a new geographical region and to employees who would be responsible for the new processes. Each of these situations left me in the position of being one of a small group of engineers who were knowledge resources called upon to prepare work instructions and develop training programs for specific employees. Developing educational programs is a common responsibility for many engineers. Managers or subject matter experts in many organizations are often put in the position of being the person with a specific job expertise that needs to be taught to new employees or to those employees facing the need to acquire new skills and knowledge. In many companies, there is no viable alternative for educating employees in new tasks other than transferring skills from the experienced individual to the less experienced. The person given this assignment frequently has little or no formal background in educating adults and usually has to perform their regular assignments with the instruction of employees undertaken as an additional task or duty. On-the-job training is common throughout business and industry, and it is often conducted with no formal direction or guidelines by individuals with specialized knowledge but little background in adult education and little time to dedicate to the task. As a result, much of what we label as on-the-job training might be more accurately described as unguided efforts to foster self-directed learning of job skills. My formal education through a Master's degree in engineering did not include any formal instruction in adult education, leaving me to trial and error attempts at the process. I eventually recognized the success of my work as an engineer became dependant on my ability to work effectively as both an educator and as a developer of curriculum and instruction. Successful operation of processes I have set up has always been highly dependant on how well I was able to transfer knowledge by developing curriculum and instructions for training employees. Effective engineering curriculum emphasizes the need to design products for manufacturability by considering the capabilities of the design, equipment, materials, and processes used to produce a marketable product or service. Human factors and the processes involved with educating employees in new technologies and methods are just as essential, but are not topics typically addressed in any substantial way in the engineering curriculum. As a result, I decided it was necessary to develop skills in adult education for my own progression relative to what I was trying to accomplish at work. I enrolled in an evening degree program at Auburn University and began the process of learning in a field new to me but which is highly related to my work as an engineer. I was fortunate to be located near Auburn University, which has both an outstanding program in adult education and which offers classes during the early evenings at a time more accessible to adult learners. Many potential students have to consider educational programs that fit around their full-time jobs, as these jobs must be maintained in order for them to support their families. Universities which offer flexibility in adapting to the schedules of working adult students provide a great benefit to our society. An indication of change in the workforce is the increased demand for flexibility within degree programs than there is availability of programs. …