Adult Education Guided Intensive Study (AEGIS) | Teachers College Columbia University

Workshop in Adult Education: Life History

This course introduces the use of life history and biological approaches in adult education.  Through the process of reflecting on their life experience, participants gain insight into the field of adult education, develop their capacity for critical self-reflection, and explore strengths and challenges associated with the interpretation of qualitative data.  In order to promote learning and build up the cohesion of the cohort, this course articulates multiple settings (lectures, class and small group discussions) and specific tasks (writing and sharing autobiographical experiences, keeping a learning journal, organizing a field trip in NYC, etc.)

Seminar in Adult Basic and Critical Literacy

This course offers an overview of the field of adult education’s legacy and connections to the study and development of adult basic literacy.  The course covers literacy skills, domestic and global trends, and research.  It also covers critical literacy from the perspective of the role of education and the interplay of power and privilege in defining requisite cultural literacies for individual and collective success.

Workshop in Adult Education: Strategic Advocacy

This course provides a foundation for understanding and utilizing practices for learning and engaging in advocacy under conditions characterized by complexity and uncertainty.  The workshop will focus on how these practices can be applied strategically to organizations (private and public, for profit and not-for-profit) and to individual action in order to address challenges marked by uncertainty and ambiguity.  The objective of this course will be to further develop student capabilities to address complex personal, organizational, and societal challenges strategically.

Workshop in Adult Education: Technology in Organizations

This course is designed to help students understand and cope with the many issues involved in developing organizational learning programs and integrating an important component: technology. The course aims at providing a combination of research case studies together with existing theories on organizational learning in the workplace. The workshop responds to the complex and various dilemmas faced by many human resource managers and corporate executives regarding how to actually deal with the impact of technology on employee learning and management.

Workshop in Adult Education: Capstone

This course is designed to assist students in reflecting on and making meaning of their overall AEGIS curricular coursework and community experience.  It is a closure experience in which they engage in multiple multi-sensory activities oriented towards outgrowth issues and transitioning to the independent research phase of their doctoral study.

Adult education is an interdisciplinary field of theory and practice that draws on social sciences. Students in AEGIS are experienced practitioners who come to the program with a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, and practical backgrounds on which they can draw as they begin this journey.  The pro-seminar provides a common language in our quest as adult education scholar-practitioners.  It is a forum through which students can examine the common threads of adult learning and education that run throughout the different settings and disciplines through which they practice. Students examine the main theoretical orientations and professional practice areas in the field. They also examine and critique the personal, philosophical, and professional presuppositions and underpinnings of their practice.

This course is the third in a sequence of research courses aimed at helping students understand the qualitative approach to dissertation research. In this course, students begin to scope out the parameters of a topical inquiry and begin to grapple with the many facets of the dissertation proposal.

Learning is at the core of most initiatives in organizations and requires dynamic, collaborative, and innovative approaches to program planning.  A main idea in this course is that program development is about a series of choices. To enable well-informed choice, program planning theory and practice is explored.  Emphasis is placed on developing the knowledge, skills, and values needed to achieve greater capacity for effective program development.

Adult Development 

This course provides an overview of adult development theories and how they inform adult learning.  Students will gain insight into stage and phase theories and how adult growth can be supported in a variety of workplace, educational, and community settings.  Developmental assessments will be examined and differences explored based on theories that differently explore psychological, lifespan, spiritual, moral, and other frameworks for understanding adult development.

Adult Education/Learning: Theory and Practice

This course helps educators gain insight into themselves as facilitators of adult learning based on theory, research, and practice related to learning from and through experience, self-directed learning, and transformative learning theory. This course supports a critical appraisal of one's facilitation practice. The format will be interactive discussion of various theoretical perspectives on adult learning, with a view to how these ideas can be used to understand / improve / change your practice.

Advanced Seminar: Leadership in Adult Education 

In this course, we will explore various theories and practices of leadership from the perspective of adult learning; we will do so in a workplace context.  Specifically, we will examine the framing of leadership as a form of human performance and focus on contextual, conceptual, and behavioral dimensions of leadership.  Our inquiry will be guided by four essential questions: 1) Are leaders born? 2) Can leadership be taught? 3) Does it all depend? 4) What's new/emerging?  The format will be a seminar where cases be read and discussed to examine various perspectives on leadership theory, models of practice, and research in light of class members' own experiences and practice.

Workplace and Organizational Learning

In this course, we will examine trends that have affected the shift to knowledge work and globalization and implications for learning in organizations.  We will contrast structured training practices with the embedded, contextualized nature of informal workplace learning and critically assess learning practices in different settings (business organizations, not-for-profits, higher education, healthcare, community, other educational settings).  Finally, we will examine differences when learning is supported at individual, group, and organizational learning levels.

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.

Extends the learning from Learning Communities I, with an emphasis on using web technology to facilitate learning communities as part of action learning methods. Special emphasis is placed on developing reflective practice in such communities.

This seminar focuses on the use of learning communities to facilitate research and inquiry. Students use their own research topics as a focus for the course.

Introduction to Research 

This is the first in a sequence of courses designed to develop student competencies in conducting and assessing research.  The overall objective of this course is for students to become conversant with the current discourse on research and with the most fundamental research designs encountered in practice.  The course begins with a discussion of research paradigms. From this context, the class considers issues around experimental design, survey design and analysis, field/case study research, and action research--all forms of research design and methods with which adult educators and human resource development require competence.

Literature Review

This course is an intensive seminar designed to introduce doctoral students of an AEGIS cohort to the discipline and constituent practices of conducting a literature review within the context of doctoral studies and dissertation work. On conclusion of this course, students will be able to a) search for topic-related literature, b) take and organize notes from the review, c) identify qualities of literature constituting the review, and d) possess knowledge of fundamental resources needed for writing the literature review.

Advanced Research Seminar I

This is the third course in the research sequence.  The objective of this seminar is to help students strengthen their conceptual frameworks, refine their research questions, and tighten their thinking around research design, providing them with the foundation for a robust pilot study experience in the spring.  Students will continue to develop a critical understanding of the nuances, conundrums, and complexity of research methods and the research process.

Advanced Research Seminar II

This is the last course in the research sequence.  It is intended both to advance participants' understanding of the interpretative research paradigm and its accepted methodologies and to facilitate the further development of a viable dissertation proposal.  The course focuses on the following components of the proposal: the proposed research methodology, additional literature review, and refinement of the anticipated context and background.  Students will develop a plan for finishing the proposal.

An experiential course aimed at developing basic collaborative negotiation and mediation skills for interpersonal conflict in a variety of contexts. Students will have the opportunity to develop more self-awareness and basic collaborative negotiation skills with supervised practice.