UTS course code: C11164
Testamur title: Graduate Certificate in Adult Education in Community Education
Abbreviation: GradCertAdultEd
Course fee: HECS/$200 per cp (local); $6,250 per semester (international)
Total credit points: 24

Overview
Course aims
Admission requirements
Attendance
Course duration
Course structure
Course program
Assessment
Articulation and progression
Other information

Overview

This course is for people who already have a tertiary qualification or equivalent and who are engaged in helping people learn in a range of community settings. These settings include health education, environmental education, community arts, advocacy work, youth and women's refuges, adult education centres, evening or community colleges, Aboriginal communities and organisations, welfare agencies, charitable organisations, local councils, advice centres, or groups engaged in social and community action.

Course aims

The course aims to help you become a better informed and effective community adult educator and facilitator of popular education. By the end of the course you should be able to:

• describe and apply relevant theory drawn from the literature on adult learning and popular education to your practice as a facilitator of adult learning in community and social action contexts
• describe and apply relevant theory drawn from the literature relating to developing, conducting and evaluating adult education programs in a community or social action context, and
• demonstrate competencies related to self-direction in learning that enable you to continue your development as a community adult educator and facilitator of popular education.

Admission requirements

Students must have an undergraduate degree and access to work experience in the field of community adult education, or equivalent, with employment in or access to work within a community education setting during the year of study.

Attendance

You will be required to participate in on-line study activities plus two full-weekend workshops in the first and second semester. In addition, you need to allow a significant amount of time to research, read and write material related to your negotiated learning contracts, your learning journal and your study group work. Although staff are there to offer support and advice, the course places emphasis on self-direction in learning. The process of designing and planning your own learning can be difficult at first, particularly if you have not experienced this approach to learning before, so you may find you experience some disorientation in the initial period of adjustment.

Course duration

The course is offered over one year of part-time study.

Course structure

Some of the course is prescribed and some learner-directed. This means that there are opportunities for you to pool information, your experience and ideas with other participants, and to tailor your study directly to your professional, community and personal requirements.

In Autumn semester, the seminars are entitled Adult Teaching and Learning. You are encouraged to examine certain adult learning principles and a number of adult learning theories. This leads to a study of teaching and learning approaches that place an emphasis on facilitation and dialogue, and which draw on the theory and practice of educators with experience in the fields of community development and social action.

In Spring semester the seminars are entitled Developing Community Adult Education Programs. In these seminars you are encouraged to examine the theory and practice of designing and implementing a range of educational activities in different community contexts. By looking at the work of a number of adult educators you are encouraged to develop your own theoretical framework to guide your practice.

In Community Workplace Practice a member of staff works with you as you develop your facilitation and teaching skills. You also work with a small group of students in semi-autonomous study groups on a number of learning projects. The study group learning projects are chosen and designed by the study group, working within given parameters.

Some workshops concerning social justice and cultural action offered by the Faculty's Centre for Popular Education.

Learning journals are kept by each participant throughout the year in order to record and reflect on what they are learning from their experiences in the course, and linking their significant learning to their field work and community education practice.

Negotiated learning contracts comprise the major written work for the course. The learning contracts are negotiated by each participant with a member of staff.

The learning contract enables you to link the coursework to your own professional interests and work as a community and popular educator so that you engage in learning within the course that is directly relevant to you. You are required to complete four learning contracts during the course.

Course program

Assessment

Assessment is either Pass or Fail and is related to attendance, participation in all components of the course, the completion of the learning journal and a learning journal overview, completion of an assignment and a number of negotiated learning contracts.

Articulation and progression

The course articulates with other courses offered by the Faculty in the following way: once you have completed the Graduate Certificate you may apply to enter the Master of Arts in Lifelong Learning (C04191), Master of Education (C04200), Master of Education in Vocational Education and Training (C04189), or Master of Education in Adult Education (C04179). The Graduate Certificate is credited towards these Master's degrees (12 credit points).

The Graduate Certificate is designed to offer you a one-year introduction to the field of community and popular education in a way that relates to your immediate professional needs. If at the end of the course you feel you would like to continue studying community and popular education as a field of academic inquiry, then the opportunity is available to you in one of the Master's degrees already mentioned.

Other information

For further information about this course, contact:

telephone (02) 9514 3900
email education@uts.edu.au