As financial aid restrictions take hold and economic downturns result in job loss, the likelihood that your class roster includes more than a few adult learners increases. In today’s post, I define an adult learner as a person at least thirty years or older that is taking a non-traditional path to earn their law degree as opposed to a traditional, full-time student that is straight from undergraduate studies or only a few years out from undergrad. I chose age thirty to account for several years of career and life experience between undergraduate and law school education.
Reaching the adult learner in your classroom may require a few adjustments to your teaching approach. If you are in the business of working with adult learners like I am, here are a few helpful tips to see us through:
1. Be flexible in your approach. While some adult learners may want full autonomy in their learning, others will need access to you at times that may not be the most convenient. Try to include at least one day per week where you offer early morning or evening (or late evening) office hours to capture this audience. And when making this adjustment to your own schedule, protect time somewhere else in your calendar so that you can still focus on other channels for growth and self-care.
2. Tie each course activity to learning outcomes. Not only is this best practice in evaluating assessment and outcomes, doing this also allows adult learners to understand why each activity matters to their education. Adult learners with limited time appreciate understanding their specific purpose.
3. Listen to the analogies in their experience. Many adult learners will want to discuss their professional experiences with you. Speaking about their professional career and past experiences is a comfort zone when the law school environment makes adult learners feel very uncomfortable. Find opportunities to analogize a challenge that an adult learner overcame in their past career to a current challenge the student faces in law school. Help them channel “lessons learned” from prior life experience into new avenues for growth.
4. Don’t be afraid to use psychological word choice to convey respect for our skillset. Psychological word choice is the cognizant selection of certain words or phrases to control the tone and flow of a conversation. If you observe that an adult learner is showing less respect for a “skills course,” adjusting your approach to communication may help reset the tone of the conversation. Use last names to assert professionalism and consciously avoiding words that make your course appear less valuable to maintain legitimacy.
5. Tech awareness. Adult learners may experience more tech challenges in the classroom environment. This is particularly the case in online class environments because of differences between Learning Management Systems (“LMS”) and individual device security configurations. Be prepared for unexpected tech hurdles and understand that your instruction may require some pseudo tech lessons in addition to your usual legal instruction. Incorporating ways to train adult learners on technology and best practices in Ai enriches their skills development. And if you aren’t tech savvy yourself, do not be afraid to allow online training videos to help you. There is no need to recreate the wheel when troubleshooting.
As you continue your efforts, here are a few more sources to add to your toolbox:
Steven Foster, Melissa Hale, Nicole Lefton, John Mayer, Laura Mott, and Allie Robbins, Closing the Law School Gap: A Collaborative Effort to Address Educational Inequities Through Free, Asynchronous Tools, 14 J. MARSHALL L.J. 116 (2021)
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/faculty_scholarship/1369
Re: Assessment and Learning Outcomes – see the ABA Outcome and Assessment Committee’s Sourcebooks and Guides, Available at: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/about/committees/outcomes-assessments/
“Now is Not the Time for Another Law School Lecture: An Andragogical Approach to Virtual Learning for Legal Education” by Charletta Fortson, Saint Louis University Law Journal (2021), found at: https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2249&context=lj
(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)
