A Conversation
I spoke with my fellow student, and we discussed the Roles and Trends in Adult Education and in the workplace. My learning partner works in an industry where she is responsible for training in the areas of safety. She has seen a substantial change in the need for safety equipment to be designed more for females.
They had valuable information that I had never considered or was even aware of, for example, they mentioned that even seatbelts and safety equipment in vehicles are designed for larger and heavier male bodies, and that they are not always effective for a smaller and lighter female body type.
Knowing that this is the case, they must train others in their workplace to adapt to this growing trend. We discussed how globalization and technology changes affect the way that we train and respond to the educational needs of our respective learners. Her learners being employees and my learners being in the Applied Business Technology Program at the college where I work as an instructor.
We discussed the need for increased soft skills due to the changing communication needs due to globalization as we instruct in safety and ABT. To adapt our own learning to the future needs of our learners, we discussed this course and others that will help us identify the changing needs.
We discussed how the change in technology directly affects communication skills of our learners and how we can adapt our own instruction to address the growing technological challenges. Although, I am seeing adult learners having a more comfortable relationship with technology, cellphones are taking the place of desktop computers and laptops.
In one sense, this can be helpful because the adult learner has more information at their fingertips, but I am seeing a direct lack of computer software skills and communication skills because of this trend in technology.
The discussion with my learner partner was highly informative and I also found it helpful to discuss my own learning challenges with another adult learner. I admit, in the beginning of the conversation, I was wondering how the discussion would go, and I felt it would be a bit forced, however, the conversation went smoothly. My learning partner communicates well and has particularly good input and ideas. I will consider their perspective and our discussion when lesson-planning in the future.