Adult Learning and Leadership | Organization & Leadership

Courses

• ORL 6500 - Qualitative research

  This course is an introduction to qualitative research methods—conceptualization, design and data collection procedures–with a special focus on organizational study. Students will formulate qualitative problem statements and research questions; design a qualitative study guided by an interactive model and consideration of five different approaches; learn to use observation, interviewing, focus groups, and archival data resources; and apply design and data collection skills by undertaking a pilot research study. Consideration will be given to conceptual frameworks, ethical considerations, field work, sampling, and data management. This course requires a minimum of 27 hours per week of out of classroom work.
• ORL 6501 - Qualitative Research Methods in Organizations: Data Analysis & Reporting

  "Prerequisite: ORL 6500 or equivalent qualitative design/data collection course. This course is designed for students who have taken coursework on qualitative research design and data collection and who have data (including pilot data) they can use for coding, analysis and synthesis with a view to writing and interpreting results. First and second cycle coding, memoing, and use of data displays are introduced along with advanced data collection strategies. Differences in data analysis are explored that vary with different design approaches (e.g. narrative, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, case study). Computer Assisted Data Analysis Software is used for coding and analysis."
• ORLD 4027 - Education and Social Transformation: Elites and Inequalities in Transitional Economies

  Drawing from several bodies of literature, this course explores critical bridges between education, on one hand, and the complex dynamics of the elite formation, polarization, corruption, development and social transformation, on the other hand. Students will examine the elite dynamics in crises or developing contexts; what role education plays in those contexts; and how education systems work to validate or delegitimize the old or new elite. Current events will be incorporated.
• ORLD 4050 - Introduction to adult and continuing education

  The purpose of this introductory course is to develop familiarity with the core theory and field of practice in adult and continuing education. This course will provide an overview of the current thinking about the nature of adult education, adult learning theory, various areas of practice, and the challenges adult educators face. It will also look at areas for future research and development. The goal is to help students build a common language for understanding adult education concepts, learning theory, and practice, as it is found and utilized in different settings and disciplines.
• ORLD 4051 - How adults learn

  This course provides a sophisticated introduction to the field of adult learning and its relationship to adult development and how these principles can be used to support learning across various types of organizations. Students will learn how to practically operationalize the science of human development in their instructional design, facilitation and experiential learning, and assessment and course evaluations. The course takes a design thinking approach to learning, enabling students to engage with prominent models of human development and learning in a hands-on and practical way, grounding their learning through action and lived experience.
• ORLD 4053 - Facilitating adult learning

  In-depth consideration of issues, strategies, and methods for facilitating adult learning. Theory is considered in relationship to practice. Methods are identified that are suited to adult learning in different settings, and to the role played by groups in individual to team learning. No prerequisites required, but learning is enhanced when taken following ORLD 4050 and ORLD 4051.
• ORLD 4060 - Coaching from an Adult Learning Perspective

  This course takes a selective look at the contribution of major adult learning theories and their relationship to the fast-growing field of coaching. Exploring the links between key adult learning concepts and current coaching practices, the class will outline a number of critical adult learning concepts and frameworks selected because of their practical applications to the coaching process. The course will also give students space to experience coaching through various coaching experiential activities and build a model of coaching adapted to their organizational contexts and their coaching style.
• ORLD 4065 - Leading Change in a Democratic Society

  This introductory course aims to help participants learn about and understand the paths that others have traveled in their quests to create revolutionary change within democratic societies. By drawing on the common frameworks and general example of the champions of social and political change, this course explores sets of repeating practices, principles, patterns and recurring themes that effective agents of change employ in the process of learning about and, ultimately, creating revolutionary change. Embedded in a practical, action-oriented framework for creating broad, revolutionary change, this course consists of four core components: Thinking About Change, Preparing for Change, Leading Change, and Sustaining Change. We examine together the role leaders and change agents play in learning to create social and political change within free, open and democratic societies. Ultimately, this course is geared toward understanding the lessons we can learn from the champions of change in a way that we can apply to our own organizational or institutional areas of practice. Finally, this course attempts to draw practical inspiration from change leaders as well as insights useful in our own individual lives with an ongoing emphasis on practical application. This fully asynchronous course centers around online group discussions, individual or small group workbook exercises and activities, and limited video lecture.
• ORLD 4085 - Management and Leadership Skills in Practice

  This course develops skills as a manager and leader using a cognitive-science based approach to skills development. Taking a hands-on, experiential approach, the purpose is to demystify the notion of management, provide students with feedback about their own management potential, and facilitate their personal and intellectual growth as a skilled leader. To paraphrase the father of modern management, Peter Drucker: Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and underperformance. Everything else requires management and leadership. In this course, students will learn how to more effectively lead and motivate groups while understanding, as Paul Hawkes said, "Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."
• ORLD 4091 - Somatics: A Mind/Body Approach to Leadership Development

  This course presents a somatic, or whole body, approach to professional and personal leadership development. Somatics is a methodology and change theory that views the individual as an integrated mind, body, and spirit and utilizes the whole body, not just the mind, as an essential place of intelligence, learning, and change. Working with our interdependent system of thoughts, emotions, and neuromuscular physiology, somatics give us “a way in” to quickly and directly develop deep insight into our embodied and largely unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that result in our actions, conversations, decisions, relationships, and the leader we show ourselves to be. Throughout this experiential course, students will participate in an interactive, creative learning experience designed to build whole-body awareness, reconnect with their leadership purpose, gain a repertoire of practices that can enhance their potential to develop a more powerful leadership presence, maintain balance in chaos and conflict, and build more effective relationships and teams in a diversity of contexts. Connections will be made to the ways somatics is supported by neuroscience, Western and Eastern philosophies, spirituality, psychology, adult learning, leadership, and organizational development theories.
• ORLD 4800 - Workshop in adult education

  Special topics or events related to the administration of programs in adult education. Topics change each semester. Open to degree and non-degree students.
• ORLD 4815 - Developing critical thinkers

  In this workshop, participants will explore the ways in which adults learn critical thinking and they will experience different techniques to teach critical thinking. Exercises to be reviewed will include: Scenario analysis, critical conversation protocols and critical incidents. The course is highly participatory and will take participants through a series of increasingly complex critical thinking activities.
• ORLD 4827 - Fostering Transformative Learning

  In this course, we will explore how adult learners transform their habits of mind through critical self-reflection and discourse. We will also examine individual and social transformation and how they are connected. We will focus on practical and innovative strategies for fostering transformative learning in a wide range of adult education settings. This is a fully asynchronous distance learning course.
• ORLD 4828 - Imagination, authenticity and individuation in transformative learning

  Participants in this course will engage in an in-depth exploration of transformative learning with an emphasis on the role of affect, imagination and the arts in the learning process. We will investigate how the journey of becoming authentic is a transformative process. Jung's concept of individuation - —i.e., differentiating one's Self from the collective—will be used as yet another lens through which we can view transformation. Participants are encouraged to engage in various creative processes for exploring transformative learning in personal and professional contexts. This is a fully asynchronous distance learning course.
• ORLD 4844 - Helping Adults Learn

  This workshop will explore different methods and contexts for facilitating adult learning. Participants will be encouraged to explore their own experiences as learners and facilitators and to consider how these experiences might help them to reframe their practice. This highly interactive course will examine what counts as an adult educational approach to learning, the emotional rhythms of learning and what adult students look for in their teachers.
• ORLD 4850 - Discussion as a way of teaching

  Discussion is one of the most frequently used teaching methodologies in higher and adult education today. This 2-day workshop takes participants through a number of increasingly complex and varied discussion exercises with the intent of participants being able to use and adapt these in their own practice. It is based on Stephen Brookfield (the workshop leader) and Stephen Preskill's books Discussion as a Way of Teaching (2005) and The Discussion Book (2016).
• ORLD 4855 - Learning As A Way of Leading

  This two-day workshop builds on practices of social justice leaders to argue that effective leadership involves constantly learning about the practice of leadership in different contexts, and learning how best to support the learning of colleagues, followers and subordinates. We explore the different learning tasks associated with transformational, organic, and social justice leadership such as practicing openness, supporting the growth of others, analyzing experience, learning to question, and fostering democracy. Over the two days participants are taken through a series of sequenced exercises to gain experience in practicing learning leadership tasks.
• ORLD 4860 - Teaching Race in Predominantly White Organizations

  This course is aimed at practitioners who work mostly in predominantly white settings. It explores the process of teaching about race and racism in educational contexts, corporations, communities, organizations and social movements. We examine the complex dynamics of working to unmask white supremacy and expose color blind perspectives in such settings. Participants consider how to use autobiographical disclosure, sequence the consideration of increasingly contentious racial issues, create conversational protocols to discuss race, prepare students for ‘brave space’ (rather than safe space) environments and respond to expressions of anger, hurt and pain. We examine the importance of examining the leader or teacher’s own racial identity, and the need for multiracial teaching teams to model difficult conversations. Finally, the course explores how to move people from individualized to structural ways of thinking about race and racism.
• ORLD 4900 - Research and independent study in adult education

  Permission of instructor required.
• ORLD 4999 - Career Strategy Development as a Lifelong Learning Process

  This course is designed as a two-day workshop to develop students’ understanding of the career development process, in order to design informed and appropriate strategies for their career and ongoing educational pursuits. Students will explore key career development activities and learn how to integrate self-knowledge into occupational/life decisions, set career goals, and devise strategies to attain these goals leveraging active learning.
• ORLD 5023 - Leadership and Self Development

  This course investigates the nature and process of leadership and self-development. It is based on the assumption that effective leadership starts with self-development, mindfulness, and critical self-reflection, and is further cultivated through dialogue, inquiry, and active listening as means of influencing others towards shared goals, rather than through traditional top-down, command and control approaches. Each student will be asked to take on a personal development goal for the semester and will be working with other students in a peer coaching process that supports the practical cultivation of their leadership abilities.
• ORLD 5050 - Mobile Learning Design for Professional Growth

  This course provides students with comprehensive practical strategies to leverage mobile first learning designs, and utilizing mobile devices in numerous contexts. As mobile-learning can happen anywhere and anytime, the concept of learning and that of a classroom has become more fluid. Today’s contemporary classrooms can be imagined and realized as any place where students of all ages can engage in student-centered, active learning using various mobile technological tools. This course enhances people’s ability to learn, access and leverage technology who are not experts in the field of technology. It provides an adult learning overview on mobile devices, and helps you pursue mobile learning activity designs, mobile app design and prototyping, m-Learning delivery, assessments, monitoring, and evaluation.
• ORLD 5053 - Program Development: Designing for Complexity and Sustainability

  Program Development: Designing for Complexity and Sustainability introduces students to the process of program planning for adult learners from theoretical, conceptual, and practical perspectives with the goal of promoting a more informed, reflective, and contextually relevant practice. Students will explore program planning in a complex world through the lens of sustainability, one of the most “wicked problems” of our time. Students will also critically analyze the strengths and limitations of a range of program planning approaches and acquire practical tools through the use of experiential learning.
• ORLD 5054 - Strategy development as a learning process in organizations

  This course provides a comprehensive view of organizational strategy from a learning perspective. Students examine various models for facilitating the development of strategic initiatives through learning interventions.
• ORLD 5055 - Staff Development and Training

  This is an introductory course that covers an overview of the Training & Development (T&D) component of HRD and provides participants with a working knowledge of basic skills required to be successful T&D professionals in organizations, whether private or public, business or not-for-profits. While focusing on the traditional components of training assessment, design, delivery, implementation, and evaluation, this course also explores alternative training/learning modalities and strategic value of T&D for organizations. This course also challenges the dominant assumptions under which trainers are asked to work in an increasingly turbulent and competitive environment.
• ORLD 5057 - Adult learning and education: Theory and practice

  In today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, we are faced with a myriad of challenges and need to be better equipped to navigate this ever-changing world. This course introduces adult educators (i.e. learning designers, coaches, facilitators, teachers/professors, and consultants, etc.) to the 3 pillars of adult learning practice: 1) Transformative Learning, 2) Learning from Experience, and 3) Self-Directed Learning. Understanding and applying these theories to real-life issues and problems will be core in this course. Students will examine these theories in various cultures and contexts through formal, informal, and incidental learning in corporations, medical healthcare and non-profits, among others. To consolidate learning, students will be equipped with the knowledge, understanding, and capabilities to apply the learning theories to their own unique situations and challenges.
• ORLD 5060 - Strategic Digital Learning and Organizational Leadership

  This course is designed to help students understand the rapidly changing role of intelligent technology for organizational learning about strategy and capacity building. The course draws on a combination of research case studies together with the existing theories on organizational learning in the workplace to address the complex dilemmas faced by human resource managers and corporate executives regarding the impact of technology on employee learning and management. The objectives of this course are presented in four integrated competency units: first, the ways in which IT has revolutionized learning in organizations; second, the alternative ways technology can be used to support distance learning; third, technology as it supports knowledge management; and, fourth, how technology changes organizational functioning and management.
• ORLD 5061 - Learning Organization: Digital Workplace

  This course will explore the concept of a digital learning organization, and how to create or improve one that already exists. We will cover topics such as digital learning strategies, creating a learning culture, using technology for learning, assessing digital learning needs, emerging technologies, and implementing solutions for maximum impact. We will also address the need to support adults as they navigate the ambiguity that is a constant in today’s organizations, regardless of sector. Technology is changing at an increasing velocity and organizational practitioners should be equipped to be empathic and support the fluid needs that digital technologies will continue to bring as they emerge, regardless of what they are and the context in which they are used.
• ORLD 5062 - Global and Strategic Human Resource Development in Organizations

  This course seeks to provide graduate students from varied backgrounds which may or may not be directly related to human resources with a comprehensive view of the field of human resource development. This view includes a strategic HRD focus in global organizations and implementation of HRD initiatives that develop the social/human capital resources of the organization, contribute to the organization’s sustainability, and advance the organization’s strategic positioning in a way that accounts for all stakeholders including the community and society. The emphasis is on how HRD relates to a changing workplace and emerging theories and practices in the management of organizations and learning and development needs of people in the workforce.
• ORLD 5063 - Online Teaching and Learning: Applying Adult Learning Principles

  In this course we will explore online teaching and learning within adult education, higher education, community colleges, and organizations (corporate, non-profit); new theories, research, and applications that inform best practices in online learning; and “participative culture” vis-à-vis communities of learning, the history and evolution of online learning, and planning and designing an online course.
• ORLD 5070 - Leadership for Adult Development

  Supporting adult development enhances adults’ internal capacities, which in turn enables them to manage better the complexities of leading, teaching, learning and living. This course seeks to help leaders—across levels and sectors—support adult growth within organizations. To support internal capacity building, leaders need to implement practices in service to adults’ professional and personal development. This is especially important given the complexities of the adaptive challenges we face in the course of leading, learning and working —especially today. In this course we will explore an expanded notion of leadership that includes adult development. We will study research on adult developmental theories and their connections to practices that facilitate adults’ transformational learning (i.e. learning that helps adults develop greater cognitive and affective capacities to better manage the complexities of leadership, work and life). We will consider questions such as: How can we create organizations and systems that support adults’ transformational learning? What practices support adult development? What developmental principles inform these practices? How can we support leadership development in the workplace? What supports and conditions are necessary and needed?
• ORLD 5073 - Action Learning Design and Coaching

  Organizations increasingly build learning directly into work—as a part of the way that people get and use new ideas, solve problems and meet difficult challenges. Action learning is a popular strategy for leadership development that does just that. In this approach, people learn as they work together in small groups to ask questions about their challenges, try out new solutions, and rethink results in light of the data they collect. Sometimes this results in organizational learning and change. This course is an experiential learning laboratory that will help participants begin to develop a framework and skills for designing and coaching action learning programs. Students will learn using a project of their own choosing and will work as peer coaches in small teams during the course.
• ORLD 5540 - Social Entrepreneurship & Leadership

  Social Entrepreneurship can be simply defined as the application of the mindset, processes, tools, and techniques of business entrepreneurship to the pursuit of a social and/or environmental mission. Social entrepreneurship brings to bear the passion, ingenuity, innovativeness, perseverance, planning bootstrapping abilities, and focus on growth characteristic of business entrepreneurs on the work of meeting our society’s most pressing challenges. Incorporated into each class will be implications for how entrepreneurs learn (entrepreneurial learning theory) through practice. The course will concurrently address the necessary skills needed to start a social enterprise including how to develop a business plan with a social/societal benefitting focus. Students will develop a comprehensive business plan for a social enterprise of their choosing throughout the semester, as well as a Pitch.
• ORLD 5550 - Research on organizational learning

  In our today VUCA world, organizational learning – understood not only as learning in organizations, but above all as learning by organizations – is more necessary than ever. In a changing world, organizations of any kind (companies, schools, hospitals, public agencies etcetera) need to learn to stay alive. Research on organizational learning, including its actors and its objects, its triggers and its phases, its obstacles and its support, needs to be well founded on both theories of organization(s) and theories of organizational learning as well as on given empirical literature. This course develops such theoretical and empirical foundations alongside students‘ research projects in self-chosen organizations. Students will prepare and realize small own-research projects. Presenting and discussing both preparation and realization will serve to support this process. As this course sees organizational learning as a process of praxis, qualitative research methods will be favored. Therefore it would be helpful if ORL6500 or comparable qualitative research course have been completed or will be be studied parallel with this course.
• ORLD 5815 - Critical theory and adult learning

  In this workshop, participants examine the core elements of critical theory as originated by the Frankfurt School. Critical theory holds that ideological manipulation works to make inequity appear as the natural order of things. Participants will examine core concepts such as ideology, power, alienation and liberation via the works of Marcuse, Fromm, Gramsci and Foucault and consider how these relate to adult learning and the practice of adult education.
• ORLD 5821 - Leveraging emotional intelligence (EQ) to enhance organizational effectiveness

  Leveraging Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to Enhance Organizational Effectiveness will explore research, best practices, and future directions. Students will learn to select among popular EQ assessment and measurement tools, distinguish between cognitive learning and emotional learning strategies, effectively position the business case for EQ, and evaluate the effectiveness of EQ learning strategies. Participants will receive personal profiles based on three popular EQ assessments (i.e., Emotional Social Competence Inventory - ESCI; Emotional Quotient Inventory - EQi 2.0; and Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test - MSCEIT) and applied insights to leadership development strategies including executive coaching.
• ORLD 5822 - Building productive relationships with social intelligence (SQ)

  Building Productive Relationships with Social Intelligence (SQ) describes the components of the emerging emotional economy and why it's important to organizational performance, expand EQ capability by amplifying social intelligent components, examine the social neuroscience behind the dynamics of productive relationships, combine non-verbal agility to expand empathic accuracy for improved communication, and develop foundational human interaction skills to enhance relationships. Participants will examine the results of 3 assessments: (1) NBI (Thinking Style); (2) Listening Style Profile; and (3) Coaching Mindset Index, with a focus on devising small group and team development interventions.
• ORLD 5823 - Building 21st century organizational capability with cultural intelligence

  Building 21st Century Organizational Capability with Cultural Intelligence (CQ) students will learn a strategic learning and leadership framework used to guide cultural diversity interventions in organizations, examine the theoretical and philosophical foundations associated with evidence-based cultural diversity strategies, explore a set of core practices informed by important leadership questions, experiment with sample tools designed to launch strategic cultural diversity processes, apply strategic diversity learning and change process to personal project to integrate key learning. Participants will examine how three assessments (i.e., Culture In the Workplace Questionnaire, CQ Assessment, and Bennett's Intercultural Development Inventory) can be used to inform the design and implementation of various learning strategies focused on building a leveraging diversity capacity in the workplace.
• ORLD 5900 - Research and independent study in adult education

  Permission required. Conduct research studies (not a part of a doctoral dissertation) under guidance. Focus on a particular institution or type of institution, e.g., college of liberal arts, professional school, community college.
• ORLD 6054 - Learning to Think Strategically

  This highly interactive seminar offers an opportunity for participants to challenge conventional approaches to strategy by focusing on how successful strategists learn to think strategically — the learning aspect of strategic thinking will be emphasized. As organizational leaders, the seminar participants will be encouraged to critically assess their own and their organizations’ strategy development habits. Accordingly, participants will be working with their own current strategy cases in order to expand the breadth and depth of their strategic thinking baseline. This seminar provides a thorough grounding in the foundation and underlying concepts of strategic thinking. Based on a critical reflective process-oriented design, this course content explores the genesis of strategic thinking, its value to an organization, and includes extensive practice and intensive reflection as learning methods.
• ORLD 6900 - Research and independent study in adult education

  Permission of instructor required.
• ORLD 6914 - Learning Communities: Introduction to Research

  Drawing on the literature, presents students with the central challenges of establishing learning communities as an adult education method of practice. Special attention is given to the use of the web as a way of establishing virtual learning communities. Students gain experience through the use of the web to facilitate dialogue linked to their course work.
• ORLD 7500 - Dissertation Seminar in Adult Education

  Permission required. Students should have completed most or all coursework (including research methods courses) and have passed the certification examination. The course is intended for students who have identified a reasonably narrow area for research and have already completed a preliminary literature review. The course will assist the student in design, methods, and other matters of concern in the preparation of an acceptable dissertation proposal.
• ORLD 7900 - Directed Dissertation Research

  Permission required. All doctoral students eligible for this course must register each semester until a proposal hearing has occurred and a proposal has been approved.
• ORLD 8900 - Dissertation Advisement in Adult Education

  Individual advisement on doctoral dissertations. Fee to equal 3 points at current tuition rate for each term. For requirements, see section in catalog on Continuous Registration for Ed.D./Ph.D. degrees.