The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Facilitating Adult Learning

In the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) project I developed, I chose to investigate how constructivist teaching strategies influence the learning processes of adult students in higher education. I chose to teach two groups of students to use a constructivist strategy called concept mapping. They used this strategy during the courses I taught in the first semester of this study. Then, I followed these students during semester two to see if they continued to use concept maps and to find out how the use of maps impacted their learning. To accomplish this, I checked the students’ first map and final map from semester one, and their maps, if any, from semester two. In addition, we interviewed the students at the end of semester one, and again at the end of semester two, to find out how the use of mapping affected student thinking and learning. Results indicate that 65% of students continued to use maps in the second semester and all students reported changes in their thinking.