Lifelong Learning at Its Best : Innovative Practices in Adult Credit Programs (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)

Rating:
Summary: Lifelong Learning at its Best
Review: Bill Maehl's Lifelong Learning at its Best:Innovative Practices in Adult Credit Programs is an outstanding resource for post-secondary educators, programmers, administrators, and policy-makers. Those who are interested in enabling our universities to respond fully and effectively to adults will find this book full of valuable information, insights, models, and recommendations. The book's content is timely, especially with the growing national and international interest in credit and degree programs offered at a distance.

The primary content for the book was collected through national interviews and visits to innovative adult learning programs conducted at a number of universities. The goal of the book is to stimulate new ideas and programs at the post-secondary level rather than simply to acknowledge and describe outstanding innovative programs. Thus, the reader will find not only successful models, such as an excellent chapter on competency-based degree education, but also recommendations for how to promote innovation and overcome resistance and barriers to change through thorough study of how others have overcome these barriers. The book's approach illuminates not only the outcomes of innovation but also the processes that produced the innovation. With a wealth of professional experience and personal perspective derived from his years as President of The Fielding Institute and as an innovative administrator at the University of Oklahoma, Maehl has provided an important resource for anyone interested in adapting post-secondary systems, structures, and programs to future learning needs.

Rating:
Summary: Lifelong Learning at its Best
Review: Bill Maehl's Lifelong Learning at its Best:Innovative Practices in Adult Credit Programs is an outstanding resource for post-secondary educators, programmers, administrators, and policy-makers. Those who are interested in enabling our universities to respond fully and effectively to adults will find this book full of valuable information, insights, models, and recommendations. The book's content is timely, especially with the growing national and international interest in credit and degree programs offered at a distance.

The primary content for the book was collected through national interviews and visits to innovative adult learning programs conducted at a number of universities. The goal of the book is to stimulate new ideas and programs at the post-secondary level rather than simply to acknowledge and describe outstanding innovative programs. Thus, the reader will find not only successful models, such as an excellent chapter on competency-based degree education, but also recommendations for how to promote innovation and overcome resistance and barriers to change through thorough study of how others have overcome these barriers. The book's approach illuminates not only the outcomes of innovation but also the processes that produced the innovation. With a wealth of professional experience and personal perspective derived from his years as President of The Fielding Institute and as an innovative administrator at the University of Oklahoma, Maehl has provided an important resource for anyone interested in adapting post-secondary systems, structures, and programs to future learning needs.

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable, seminal, informative resource.
Review: Lifelong Learning At Its Best: Innovative Practices In Adult Credit Programs examines more than thirty of the most successful adult learning programs in the country. Utilizing a national study funded by the Kellogg Foundation, author William Maehl details the kinds of education and training that have been demonstrated and documented as being especially effective in keeping the American workforce competitive. The adult education and training success stories comprising Lifelong Learning At Its Best will prove to be an invaluable, seminal, informative resource for educators, administrators, and students seeking to maximize adult learning outcomes.

Rating:
Summary: Acting on the Best in Adult Education
Review: The summary description of this book is accurate, and I will not repeat it. The value of this book is in guiding those who wish to take action in the increasingly important field of adult education. As institutions of higher education develop plans to meet the increasing demand for adult learning, this book should be consulted, both to act on the best, and to avoid costly mistakes. I have known and worked with Bill Maehl over a number of years, and am strongly of the opinion that this is the best policy guide available for the innovative non-traditional educator. Only a person with his vast knowledge and experience could have produced a work that is this valuable.