Adult learners are taking advantage of the availability and convenience of online education. Mature learners in online higher education classrooms bring a wealth of experience filtered through cultural, generational, and socioeconomical differences. The purpose of this research was to explore community building in an online graduate course by…

Based on 62 hours of videotaped adult English as a second language classroom interaction, this conversation analysis (CA) study details how engaging life outside the classroom is accomplished in the micro-moments of teacher-student interaction and how such engagement becomes a resource for learning vocabulary and doing conversation. By showing how…

Learning communities have provided adults with effective environments for professional growth and allow learners to meaningfully interact about a topic. Online course management systems (CMS) are often used to support a community of learners but do not necessarily facilitate learning communities, and specific constructivist learning activities on…

This article centers on theories of adult learning methods and how they relate to the practice of using icebreakers in the adult classroom. While one's language is geared toward the adult learning world, one's experience has been that these practices also work well in a variety of classroom and group settings, both traditional and non-traditional,…

The objective of this paper is to draw attention to four features that distinguish the pedagogy of patient interviewing from the teaching of other clinical skills: (a) students are not naive to the skill to be learned, (b) they encounter role models with a wide variability in interviewing styles, (c) clinical teachers are not usually specialists…

Discussion of the role of language and dialogue in adult learning looks at dialogue as epistemology and at talk as learning. It is proposed that the challenge in teaching and retaining adult learners is to create dialogue-rich classrooms, including many external speech opportunities, small-group discussion, and group projects. (MSE)

These guidelines are adapted from Verderber and Verderber's "Inter-Act," a manual for interpersonal communication. The examples are from English composition classes, but the general principles are applicable in any situation involving criticism. Guidelines for giving constructive criticism include making the criticism relevant and…

The resource book was designed for teachers of adult learners of English as a second language (ESL). It provides background information on language acquisition, adult learning, and cross-cultural issues, and presents specific teaching techniques and activities. An introductory section outlines the principles of adult and second language education…