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Nicole Westrick
Vanessa Williams
Abstract
In the world of adult professional and continuing education, a plethora of out-of-the-box options are available for organizations looking for professional training for their employees. Temple University’s Office of Off-Campus Programs and Training (TUOCPT) offers a wide range of non-credit programs for corporate partners with the vital addition of bespoke instructional design. This ensures that every organization’s exact training needs are met and that programs are created and delivered in line with best practices in the field of adult learning and competency-focused design. This chapter outlines TUOCPT’s work. It demonstrates how the instructional design process has been fully embedded into the provision of corporate training, linking overarching business objectives with student learning outcomes. The chapter draws on a variety of exemplars from TUOCPT’s diverse bespoke corporate training programs, including a half-day course on assertive communication skills for professional women, a three-week hybrid course on digital media advertising, and a 12-week Vocational Certificate program for incarcerated individuals. Case studies are presented as parts of a larger argument for the vital importance of integrating business goals with a rigorous instructional design process, founded on principles of adult learning and competency-based education.
Introduction: Education in the Context of the U.S. Workforce
The U.S. economy is undergoing a major transformation. It has seen a rise in the “gig economy” and the number of self-employed individuals: a Forbes article from 2018 cited statistics showing that more than one in three U.S. workers are freelancers, and estimated that this figure will rise to one in two by 2020 (Muhammed, 2018). Today’s workforce is multi-generational and includes the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials (Fry, 2018; Ng & Parry, 2016), and according to the Pew Research Center, more than one in three U.S. labor force participants are Millennials (Fry, 2018). Millennial workers value on-the-job opportunities for growth and development above most other factors including compensation, and this search for learning and development opportunities plays a part in the stereotype of Millennials as constantly changing jobs: “The reason Millennials are coined job-hoppers is because they see every opportunity as a stepping-stone and opportunity for growth. When they feel they have maxed out that growth, or that growth isn’t attainable, they move on” (Smith, 2019, p. 51). Additionally, with the ever-increasing pace of technological change, there is a great demand for high-quality skills-based training directly tailored to the needs of specific workplaces and their business objectives. In sum, the demand for innovative, tailored training solutions that fit around heavy employee workloads and deliver relevant content efficiently is rising, with no signs of slowing down.
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