Assignment 3.1

On pages 120 – 121 of the text, the author lists nine conditions which affect cognitive development in adulthood. For four conditions, provide an activity, assignment, or teaching method that an instructor could use to help his/her adult student develop these skills.

For this condition I might suggest a game of “What If?” Participants would have to come up with questions based on the context of the class or workshop. For example, in a podcasting workshop, participants would have to come up with two what ifs before a break. One would be hardware/software related, the other content related. A hardware/software example might be “What if I wanted to use several computers to make one recording?”  A content question might be “What if I asked my students to write a script using creative writing techniques?”

Condition Four: Live in environments where it is not clear what one’s goals should be.

I would use a blog activity and have each participant write a future scenario depicting what the future looked like at certain stages. For example, I could set up a scene in which the fast forward to 1 year from now and have to journal about what they see. Then we fast forward to 3 years, then 5 years, then 10. At the end of the activity, I would have them reflect on their journal and try to come up with goals and/or objectives that would get them to the point they last wrote about. I would also have other classmates look at and suggest possible goals to comment on the others blogs.

This activity would work well with condition three also.

Condition Six: Managing interactions and conflicts within a system of roles and relationships.

I would have participants participate in a related internship or job shadowing opportunity and have them reflect specifically on the interpersonal relationships encountered and how these might be appropriate or need adjusting and how this might be accomplished. If something like this were not available, I would set up a mock classroom or environment and act out several scenarios they could “judge.”

Condition Seven: Ability to reflect on their own actions.

For this activity, I would have participants journal and evaluate themselves at certain stages of the workshop. It would be useful to have a rubric of some sort they could objectively look at what they had done and compare where they were in the process. Leading questions might be “What have you done up to this point?” “Have you met your objective?” “How did you meet your objective?” “What could you have done or provided to instill the objectives better?” “What do you still need to do?” “Is there anything you thought of in the process that you would like to add?”