Introduction / Syllabus

         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.