Adult learners in online higher education often face significant challenges to persistence due to competing demands from work, family, and other life responsibilities. These challenges are particularly pronounced in accelerated online courses, where learners must quickly engage with content, demonstrate understanding, and produce high-quality work in condensed timeframes. This article describes a practitioner-informed approach to promoting adult learner persistence through inclusive and intentional course design and delivery practices. Drawing from the design and facilitation of two sequential, accelerated eight-week online courses, this article outlines a set of integrated strategies that support learner success. These include consistent course structure, clear expectations, scaffolded learning across courses, timely instructor feedback, weekly screencasts for guidance and motivation, and flexible assessments aligned with learners’ professional goals. Additional practices include peer engagement beyond standard discussion forums, optional synchronous meetings, and involvement in service learning, conferences, and professional organizations to foster a sense of belonging and relevance. Importantly, all activities were designed to fit within the weekly instructional time to ensure learners were not overloaded. By embedding inclusive practices throughout both the design and delivery of online learning, this approach supports adult learners holistically and promotes persistence. These strategies are grounded in adult learning theories such as andragogy, self-directed learning, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), ensuring both practical relevance and theoretical rigor. The article concludes with implications for instructors and instructional designers seeking to create supportive, learner-centered environments in online higher education.
Plain language is increasingly recognized as an important tool to promote equity by removing barriers to accessing and understanding information. While plain language has traditionally been used to support public understanding of complex policies or health information, plain language also holds promise to support learners across adult-education contexts, including but not limited to higher education. As university classrooms grow more diverse, inclusive pedagogy has become an important priority. In alignment with this shift, critical disability praxis calls for more accessible learning opportunities and the democratization of knowledge. A pedagogy of plain language is one that creates, designs, and shares accessible knowledge to learners who are otherwise limited from understanding or engaging with that information. One strategy embodying these principles is the use of plain language summaries (PLSs). By reducing cognitive load and clarifying communication, PLSs can support diverse learners’ more effective engagement with course materials. PLSs supplement course materials and complement other accessible formats. They hold the potential to empower students to better understand, communicate, and contribute to knowledge across disciplines. Instructors can implement PLSs by following a ten-step process that involves reviewing plain language guides and original source materials, identifying and rewriting main arguments and essential information in plain language, and refining the summary through iterative review and feedback. Further research is needed to establish an evidence base for the use of PLSs. Their utility and feasibility should be evaluated across disciplines and within the diverse contexts in which adults learn.
This article explores the integration of pláticas—informal, culturally grounded conversations rooted in Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies—as a transformative pedagogical tool in adult learning contexts. Drawing from experiences as doctoral students and educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the authors illustrate how pláticas foster connection, reflection, and critical consciousness across diverse learner identities. Through narrative, theoretical, and practical lenses, the article positions pláticas as a means of validating lived experience, disrupting traditional hierarchies of knowledge, and cultivating intercultural communication competence. The authors provide concrete strategies for structuring plática circles, co-constructing ground rules, designing reflective prompts, and integrating the practice into course assessments. They argue that when implemented with care and intention, pláticas promote inclusive, student-centered learning environments that enhance engagement, support emotional safety, and foster collective meaning-making. Ultimately, the article affirms pláticas as a liberatory practice that strengthens the social and relational dimensions of higher education and reimagines the role of educator as co-learner and collaborator.
Clinicians often struggle to engage with abstract learning theories due to limited cognitive readiness and time constraints. To address this challenge in a graduate-level learning theories course, we implemented “Before You Dive In” (BYDI), an AI-supported instructional strategy offering optional pre-reading supports. BYDI included reflective study guides, AI-generated podcasts, and concise reading summaries, all delivered asynchronously to accommodate adult learners’ schedules. The intervention aimed to scaffold learners’ understanding and foster engagement with dense theoretical content. Learner feedback indicated that BYDI helped activate prior knowledge, reduce cognitive overload, and improve reading focus. Analysis through the lenses of schema development and self-regulated learning suggests that BYDI facilitated the formation of conceptual frameworks and promoted autonomous, strategic study behaviors. This innovation demonstrates how technology-enhanced scaffolding can improve theory engagement in adult education, particularly in time-pressured professional contexts.
Practices in higher education do not always translate the rigor and applied nature of military training into meaningful academic credit for prior learning (CPL). Drawing on a secondary analysis of qualitative interviews with 10 student veterans, the purpose of the current study was to examine where and why recognition gaps occur, connect those gaps to established adult-learning frameworks that explain veterans’ strengths and needs, and identify design-level implications for faculty practice and institutional processes to move beyond symbolic “veteran-friendly” efforts toward systematic, evidence-based recognition of prior learning. Major findings included three systemic challenges—undervaluation of military training and experience, cultural disconnects between veterans and their faculty members and peers, and the need for coordinated centralized support for veterans. The findings offer implications for instructional practice, institutional policy, higher education reform, and future research to serve veterans as adult learners.
Inclusive teaching is often misunderstood as offering special provisions for a few, rather than being recognized as good pedagogical practice that benefits all learners. This Innovations in Practice article presents four inclusive teaching strategies implemented in higher education classrooms with adult learners, particularly neurodivergent and international students. Drawing on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, each practice was developed in response to recurring structural challenges and learner feedback, not individual diagnoses, thereby allowing all students to access, engage with, and demonstrate learning on their own terms. The first strategy explores flexible assessment and participation formats, enabling learners to choose how they best demonstrate understanding. The second highlights the use of anonymous, low-stakes tools to surface support needs early, reducing the burden of disclosure. The third describes a peer mentoring initiative that supported cultural and academic transitions, with benefits for both mentors and mentees. The final strategy focuses on reducing power distance in the classroom by offering learners greater autonomy over how they navigate sessions and signalling that their needs are valid without formal justification. These practices have been tested across postgraduate and undergraduate modules in a UK university and are grounded in classroom narratives and learner reflections. Each intervention was designed not to respond to specific impairments but to pre-emptively remove barriers for a diverse cohort. The article concludes with practical takeaways for adult educators seeking to embed inclusive design principles in their teaching. Inclusive education, the paper argues, is not an ideological position but a commitment to effective and equitable teaching.
Traditional approaches to teaching technology often emphasize procedural knowledge and fixed pathways, overlooking the need for flexibility, autonomy, and real-world relevance. This innovation report presents a graduate-level course designed around the principles of heutagogy or self-determined learning, which positions adult learners as active designers of their own digital learning experiences. The six-week, online, project-based course supported learners in identifying authentic instructional challenges and developing multimedia solutions using tools of their choice. Assignments were scaffolded through peer feedback and iterative reflection, and learners created products such as infographics, instructional videos, and podcasts tailored to their professional contexts. The course emphasized capability over competency, allowing learners to build confidence and agency while applying their skills in real-world settings. Analysis of over 100 learner reflections revealed five dominant outcomes: increased confidence in using unfamiliar tools, greater autonomy and motivation, high transfer of learning into professional practice, a sense of empowerment as digital creators, and strong appreciation for the relevance of real-world projects. The findings demonstrate that heutagogical design fosters not only skill acquisition but transformation in learners' attitudes, identities, and instructional practices. This model offers an accessible, scalable approach to teaching digital technologies to adult learners that aligns with how adults learn best in an evolving digital age, and it can be readily adapted to professional development, workplace learning, and continuing education contexts.
Technical subjects in science may be difficult to understand because of the abstract nature of the relevant concepts. Alternative forms of teaching material are used to overcome this. One such form is comics, a popular art form providing a more relaxed environment, which has been used in various education setups with encouraging results. Although such novel forms are generally attractive to younger generations familiar with visual information, few studies have focused on their effect on adult learners. In this paper, several instances of the use of science comics in various setups are presented, showing that comics can provide a useful alternative way of education. One such attempt was made to introduce adult students to the subject of Database Systems using only a specialized science comic book. The study took place in the third grade of an Evening Vocational High school, a public adult (18+) vocational education setting. The students were able to perform equally well to a group of students learning the same content using standard class materials. Furthermore, their interest in learning other science subjects was enhanced and they expressed increased preference for an extended use of science comics in their education.
Does Autistic-led instruction influence adult learners’ knowledge and beliefs? A neurodiverse team, including instructor-facilitators and educator-students in a year-long autism sabbatical program, evaluated the primarily Autistic-led program. Four Autistic instructor-facilitators shared what they believed worked well in their teaching, challenges they experienced, how they addressed feedback, and recommendations for the future. We used content analysis to examine potential shifts in 24 student-educators’ beliefs, knowledge, and intended teaching practices, coding their open-ended responses to surveys administered at three points across the program. Findings suggest that Autistic-led instruction promoted meaningful perspective shifts among both instructor-facilitators and educator-students, including increasing focus on meaningful, hands-on learning opportunities among instructor-facilitators and greater respect for Autistic stimming, communication, and interests among educator-students. Educator-students shared that the program taught them to be more flexible and student-centered. Some indicated that they planned to teach their students self-advocacy skills to empower students to spark changes that will make classrooms more equitable and inclusive for all. Some planned to advocate for systems changes themselves, including by teaching their colleagues how to adopt more neurodiversity-affirmative practices. Some Autistic instructor-facilitators and some educator-students described Autistic instructors as key agents of perspective transformations. Others indicated that qualities that make someone a strong educator, like flexibility and responsiveness, may be orthogonal to autism. Tangible outcomes of the program include educator-students’ portfolios which include concrete tools such as innovative assignments that have been refined through ongoing dialogue between instructor-facilitators and educator-students.
