Time Management and the Adult Learner, Research Paper Example

One of the greatest challenges that adult students constantly grapple with is making enough time for their studies. More often than not, they are overwhelmed with the career demands and family responsibilities, which deny them the opportunity to concentrate on their studies (Alamprese, 2004). For most adult students, working for long hours or attending to domestic chores, particularly mothers, eats into much of the time that they could have channeled into learning. As a result, such learners have to put more efforts and work extra hard to succeed. One way to do this is through effective time management, which will allow them to meet their academic requirements and at the same time fulfilling their career and family responsibilities. Managing one’s time wisely ensures the ability to meet deadlines, avoid absenteeism, minimize work-related stress as well as achieve long/short-term goals. This paper discusses time management strategies for adult learners.

Setting Priorities

Prioritization involves identifying urgent and important tasks and setting out to fulfill them first (University of New South Wales, 2011). Setting priorities ensures that one makes optimum use of available time and resources. In addition, prioritization is important in creating a calm, stress-free environment, within which adult learners can meet their responsibilities comfortably. The first step in setting priorities is reviewing one’s time constraints, that is, assessing the convenience of available time in relation to the tasks that need to be completed and their relative importance. That task’s value and the time available for its completion will determine its priority. However, importance may override time factors when two tasks have similar deadlines. For instance, one may forego attending a friend’s party in favor of an educational seminar. The same applies for tasks with fixed time-schedules, for example lectures. Therefore, prioritizing is important in not only helping adult students assign sufficient time for various academic and non-academic activities, but also in ensuring that they do not miss on important deadlines.

Working with a Schedule

Scheduling is another technique for effective time management. It involves establishing the available time, and planning how to spend it in order to achieve one’s goals (Keeley, 2011). The most effective tool in this respect is having a daily schedule, because they are short-term goals oriented and more flexible. They allow one to set realistic goals, as well as accommodate sudden change of plans without significantly affecting other assignments. Moreover, daily schedules will allow adult students to be more focused by concentrating on specific tasks. In addition, a daily schedule takes into consideration time that’s actually available, hence eliminates the likelihood of over-scheduling, which may result in overlooking forgetting and overlooking other important tasks, stress, reduced efficiency and productivity.

Good Decision Making

Decision making goes into every task that one intends to carry out. It determines whether a task will actually be carried out, when and how (Griffin, 2011). Making decisions wisely ensures that one’s schedule will remain functional and on-target even if emergencies arise. The important aspect of good decision making is having the right information, thus allowing one to foresee possible challenges and plan for alternative solutions. It also involves assessing the consequences of each alternative and how the resulting situation can be dealt with. With regards to the daily routine of adult learners, quick and effective decision making allows for sudden changes in the class timetable, or clashing of job and classroom activities. A good decision maker will determine the more important task to attend first, and how to compensate for missed responsibilities. Overall, quick decision making will help the adult student to save time and achieve goals effectively.

Utilizing Technology

With the innovation of the internet technology, most tasks nowadays are computer-based, such as teleworking and distance learning. The use of phones, computers and other digital gadgets for communication allow for efficient time-management primarily by eliminating the barriers of geographical distance (Quinn, 2002). Thus, technology is an essential time-saving tool as it allows people to carry out tasks without necessarily having to travel to specific places, such as offices and classrooms. Adult learners will find it an important tool in terms of keeping in touch with their supervisors and accessing learning resources. Instead of spending time visiting a library, learners can easily access library resources online and seek help from peers and instructors through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, technology provides a faster means of communication, hence possible to learn of new developments like change of plans or upcoming events more quickly. In this regard, using technology will help the adult learner make decisions quickly, access resources easily and in so doing save time.

In conclusion, adult learners lack the freedom of time enjoyed by regular students. Besides career duties, they also have to deal with family responsibilities such as child rearing and other domestic chores. Consequently, effective time management is the only way such learners can fulfill their domestic and career responsibilities without compromising their learning. Towards this end, adult learners need to employ time management strategies such as prioritization, scheduling, good decision making and using technology.

References

Alamprese, J. (2004). Helping Adult Learners make the Transition to Post-Secondary education. Washington: U.S. Dept. of Education.

Griffin, R. W. (2011). Fundamentals of Management. New York: Cengage Learning.

Keeley, M. (October, 2011). Managing Your Time and Study Environment. Retrieved April 21, 2012< [Bucks County Community College] http://faculty.bucks.edu/specpop/time-manage.htm

Quinn, S. (2002). Knowledge Management in the Digital Newsroom. New York: Focal Press.