The focus of this oral
comprehensive exam is a segment of one class that was part of a two-month
course that I taught at James Madison University. Over the summer of 2014, my
department head and my program director—Dr. Jane Thall and Dr. Diane Wilcox,
respectively—asked me to be the instructor for a pilot course to be offered
through JMU’s Office of Outreach and Engagement to employees of Merck. The
opportunity to create such a partnership between JMU and Merck presented itself
when Jessica Cave, a supervisor at Merck, Inc. and a graduate of the AHRD
Master’s program at JMU, asked if the department of Learning, Technology, and
Leadership Education could offer a learning theories class to students at Merck.
These students were recently promoted to training positions and needed to hone
their skills by acquiring a basic foundation of learning theories.
To
develop the skills of these students, I needed to show how learning theories related
to their jobs at Merck, so from the beginning I knew I would need to include
some instructional design components and that the focus would be on adult
learning. It was a constant struggle to mediate between the needs of the
university, the client—including Merck as a whole and the individual
learners—and myself. For me, taking the role of instructor with students who
were older than myself felt a little bit awkward, especially because my
students had years of experience in the field, while I was only relying of my
knowledge of theory from years of related schooling.
The
attitude and motivation of the students in my course was another major
obstacle. Many seemed somewhat resistant to being forced into the class;
Jessica made participation in the course mandatory for the new training
positions each employee had accepted.
Keeping these factors in mind, I asked for feedback mid-course, so that
I could improve with what class time was left. This occurred about one week
before the taping of the video for this oral comprehensive exam. Most students
agreed that the content was too focused on theory and not enough on practice,
and one student even expressed some hostility. All of this is relevant because
this formative evaluation influenced the content and my teaching style during
the accompanying clip.
This session represented
a turning point in the course; after presentation of this material and our
conversation over dinner, the students and I seemed to better understand each
other. I continued to tailor my lessons towards instructional design and
specific strategies that the students could employ in their workplace. They
appreciated the extra
effort I put into making the class worthwhile for them, although I was
originally contracted to teach a pre-prepared online version of LTLE 480:
Learning in Adulthood. Adding content and focusing on applicability of the
content pushed me to expand my own understanding of the material, which only
benefited myself and my students all the more in the end.
