Facilitating adult learner persistence through innovative scheduling and teaching methods

Abstract

Adult non-traditional students have different educational goals and outcomes than their undergraduate counterparts, as well as more responsibilities and distractions making persistence to complete a degree more challenging. It is therefore important to examine drivers that improve adult student perseverance such as degree of involvement in learning, integration into the learning community, relevance of course content and validation. Instructional approaches and scheduling methods that improve the learning experience for adult students are also examined, including use of accelerated, intensive, and block scheduling, use of technology to facilitate student interaction outside of class, and replacement of pedagogical techniques with andragogical methods. An integrated model of adult learner persistence was developed demonstrating the factors and relationships affecting adult learner persistence. Insights gained from the FDU GBM programme and recommendations on how to better engage adult students, improve learning and support persistence conclude the paper, together with areas for future research.