There is widespread support for expanding access to universities for under-represented groups, such as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and older students, because of the higher rates of return to university degrees. This study examines whether this assumption holds true for mature-aged graduates who have received their degrees in an…

This article presents an evaluation of an intergenerational education experience at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). For this evaluation, following a review of the literature regarding the state of the issue, we undertake an analysis of benefits and disadvantages from the perspective of the participants. Among the benefits we find…

The researcher in this study utilized the Montessori concepts and materials that emphasize the use of hands-on manipulatives in the classroom with 10 adult English language learners ranging from ages 18-60. The purpose was to investigate whether or not hands-on manipulatives were effective in aiding adult English language learners to acquire…

This case study of the Ontario Shores Supported Education Program (OSSEP) illustrates the importance of a hospital-based education program for adult learners living with mental illness and its impact on participants' quality of life and hopes for the future. The findings demonstrate that supported education programs catering to the needs of adults…

College and universities underwent tremendous shifts in the latter part of the 20th century caused in part by the shrinking pool of college ready 18 year-olds. Concerned about diminishing enrollments and lost revenue from traditionally-aged students, administrators at faith-based, tuition-driven universities instituted adult degree completion…

This study examined whether cadets at a U.S. service academy perceived attitudinal differences toward their military and civilian L2 instructors along three variables: foreign language expertise, communicative anxiety, and relatability. Cadets' proficiency levels (divided by beginning and intermediate classes) and current instructor (civilian or…

The current study sought to investigate the relationship between critical thinking and speaking ability among EFL students at Payame Noor University (PNU) of Rasht. This research concerned determining the fact that whether language students who are as critical thinker, perform better in their speaking ability or not. In order to answer the…

Diagnostic assessment approaches intend to provide fine-grained reports of what students know and can do, focusing on their areas of strengths and weaknesses. However, current application of such diagnostic approaches is limited by the scoring method for item responses; important diagnostic information, such as type of errors and strategy use is…

To help graduate students with academic writing, a college of education at a large university implemented a new service, Writing Support Circles. Based on the results of the first series of this service, we changed its design. The purpose of this article is to share how changes in the design affected these adult learners' writing self-efficacy and…

Frustrations with traditional testing led a group of teachers at the English for adults program at Universidad EAFIT (Colombia) to design tests aligned with the institutional teaching philosophy and classroom practices. This article reports on a study of an item-by-item evaluation of a series of English exams for validity and reliability in an…

Millions of adults in the United States lack the necessary literacy skills for most living wage jobs. For students from adult learning classes, we used a lexical decision task to measure their knowledge of words and we used a decision-making model (Ratcliff's, 1978, diffusion model) to abstract the mechanisms underlying their performance from…

How can we better engage adult learners during information literacy sessions? How do we increase students' perception of the relevance and importance of information literacy skills for academic work and life in the real world? To explore these questions, the ARCS Model of Motivational Design and Problem-Based Learning were used to develop…

This paper describes a small-scale study conducted in England with a group of adult migrant and refugee ESOL learners. The study explores how participants conceptualised integration, and their perceptions of the relationship between learning English and integration. The findings highlight that the extent to which a person feels integrated, for…

This study addressed how the ability to manage change affects leadership style. The problem addressed in this project was the natural human tendency to resist change and how the inability to mange this tendency can interfere with the development of leadership skills. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how an individual's change…

Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning, and many instructors believe that technology can facilitate this core activity. While numerous websites and apps offer language-learning activities and games, not all provide evidence that their content and techniques are effective. VocabularySpellingCity (VSC), however, commissioned a study…