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Master in Adult Education (Global) is an innovative online, coursework only program offered by the Faculty of Education in collaboration with the University of British Columbia (Canada), Linköping Univeristy (Sweden), and the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). Participants will benefit from a truly international experience, engaging with instructional staff and students from four continents within both Northern and Southern hemispheres.
For internally motivated learners who appreciate cultural differences, this course is ideal! Incorporating diverse learning styles and instructional approaches, the curriculum covers contemporary changes in work and learning. Participants will look at the role learning plays in understanding and responding to globalising forces, and their impact on workplaces, communities, economies and the environment.
The course is designed to suit those with full-time professional responsibilities, working together in collaborative inter-continental cohorts drawn from the four participating universities.
Specific course enquiries
For more information about this course contact the Administrative Officer Postgraduate Programs:
Robina Sharp
Ph: +61 3 990 58646
Robina.Sharp@education.monash.edu.au
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is this a 6 unit masters? The master of marketing which I'm also considering is 12 units long. Does that make one better than the other? And why is this one so short.
The Masters is an 18 month masters based on 6 units of work. This timeframe and unit structure has been negotiated between the 4 partner universities on 4 different continents.
It is no better or worse than a 12 unit masters. Often the number of units is tied to the number of credit points that a university awards each unit. So for instance, in our usual MEd at Monash we ask students to do 6 x 12 credit point units. In the Faculty of Business and Economics they use 6 credit point units. So students have to do more units in their masters, but the assessment word length per unit is shorter.
In terms of recognition, how well regarded is this qualification within the industry, what does it compare with? What future job opportunities will this course make me better suited for?
This is a new qualification which has been made possible by developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It is leading an emerging trend. It means that in the future, there will be many more of these kinds of degrees that will operate across boundaries. For instance, universities like the University of Phoenix are doing their teaching as fully online programs all over the world.
The Masters in Adult Education (Global) is particularly innovative because the program brings students and teachers from four continents to work and learn together. It provides a great opportunity to learn about each other's place and working lives. There are other programs that are developing models for systematically organising this kind of cross-boundary learning, but most of the initiatives are still at the prototype stage.
The downside of this being a relatively new qualification and type of program is that there isn't yet much industry visibility (although we are working on that with the help of students enrolled in the program). The upside is that you would be involved in a new wave of flexible learning, learning experientially about this kind of pedagogy, which will become more common in the future. You can therefore lead the field and sell your expertise to employers on the grounds that you were at the cutting edge.
The other week in the Age there was a number of jobs advertised for people with expertise in applied adult education, which required them to have expertise in designing and implementing programs that teach people about working and learning across boundaries. One of those industry jobs was offering a $140,000 salary.
There are more and more jobs in corporate, non-government and public sector organisations that want people who can support adult learning in rapidly changing workplaces - more and more of which are globally interconnected via ICTs (eg. multinationals etc). This course is intended to give people an expertise base to feed into this diverse range of roles. But at this stage, this kind of work hasn't been systematised into a particular category of work, so each application invites you to write up your expertise in a way that profiles what you can do. Having a degree called Master in Adult Education (Global) and having completed this program - the Intercontinental Masters in Adult Learning and Global Change, provides a good platform for your story to a prospective employer.
When does enrolment have to be in by?
As soon as possible. Our 2008 program will start in August.
Would you have an issue me commencing my Masters in 2009 part time (2 units a semester)
Formally the program runs as a sequence of the 6 units over an 18 month time frame. There is no part-time provision. This is because we have had to negotiate the teaching schedule in a way that suits people in north and south hemispheres and around the world. However, all the students are working full-time and studying alongside. So the workload demands recognise that people have constraints on their time.
At times students have to hold off on one or more units because of other work commitments etc. They then pick up the units they have missed by enrolling the following year with the following year's cohort of students. We don't encourage this approach as a formal part-time arrangements because the cohort does get a sense of its own identity and people in the cohort get to know each other. However, if people find that they have unexpected demands or dramas, and can't complete a unit within the sequence, it can be accommodated in the program.
How would someone who hasn't studied education before cope with the course?
You would be fine. In the program we encourage you to reflect on your working life experience and as you are working as an educator in TAFE, this will provide a good basis for your study. Lots of the adult educators we work with don't have qualifications in education, but work in business, non-government organisations and other fields.
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