A Systematic Approach to Educating the Emerging Adult Learner in Undergraduate Management Courses

Management education research has provided educators with new instructional tools to improve course design and update the methods used in the classroom. In an effort to provide the typical undergraduate management student with the best possible learning experience and outcomes, it is important to recognize how and why these new activities benefit the student. To reach this goal, one must first understand that the traditional undergraduate management student, aged 18 to 25 years, is in a phase of life development referred to as emerging adulthood in which they are distinctly different from mature adults demographically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially. With this understanding, our research analyzes how each of the six assumptions of andragogy can be applied uniquely to the emerging adult undergraduate management student. We provide the management educator with a method for classifying the level of development of students along the focus areas of andragogy, general instructional design ideas for addr...