An Adult Learning Focused Institution (ALFI) excels in these ways:

Outreach

Conducts its outreach to adult learners by overcoming barriers in time, place, and tradition in order to create lifelong access to educational opportunities

Life & Career Planning

Addresses adult learners’ life and career goals before or at the onset of enrollment in order to assess and align its capacities to help learners reach their goals

Financing

Promotes choice using an array of payment options for adult learners in order to expand equity and financial flexibility

Assessment of Learning Outcomes

Defines and assesses the knowledge, skills, and competencies acquired by adult learners—both from the curriculum and from life and work experience—in order to assign credit and confer degrees with rigor

Teaching-Learning Process

Faculty uses multiple methods of instruction (including experiential and problem-based methods) for adult learners in order to connect curricular concepts to useful knowledge and skills

Student Support Systems

Assists adult learners using comprehensive academic and student support systems in order to enhance students’ capacities to become self-directed, lifelong learners

Technology

Uses technology to provide relevant and timely information and to enhance the learning experience

Strategic Partnerships

Engages in strategic relationships, partnerships, and collaborations with employers and other organizations in order to develop and improve educational opportunities for adult learners

Transitions

Supports guided pathways that lead into and from the institution's programs and services in order to ensure that students' learning will apply usefully to achieving their educational and career goals

CAEL offers robust ALFI tools to help you understand how well your college or university is doing with adult students.

Use what you learn from the survey and reporting tools to:

• Leverage limited resources in the most advantageous manner
• Customize programs to enhance retention rates
• Prepare for accreditation review
• Develop and prioritize strategic plans
• Create recruitment message

Institutional Self-Assessment Survey (ISAS)
Completed by a cross-institutional team of administrators and faculty, the ISAS evaluates a wide range of activities, policies, and practices for adult students in your institution—from financial policies to assessing prior learning. It offers a unique opportunity for dialogue about adult learners across departments.

Adult Learner Inventory™ (ALI)
Completed by students 25 and older who are earning undergraduate degrees, the ALI measures both satisfaction and levels of importance. In the end, you get a list of your institution’s strengths (high importance, high satisfaction) and challenges (high importance, low satisfaction) that show you how to better meet your adult learners’ needs. It also reveals what issues should receive top priority so you can focus your strategic planning efforts on the issues your adult students identify.

Put It All Together: The Adult Learning Focused Institution (ALFI) Report
Used together, the Institutional Self-Assessment Survey and the Adult Learner Inventory compare faculty and administration views of existing adult programs with the perceptions of adult learners, providing a complete snapshot that you can use to improve your programs.

The ALFI report provides:

• A detailed campus report on the findings from both surveys
• Comparative data on how the perceptions of adult students match up to the perceptions of faculty and administration
• National benchmarking data to compare an institution’s results with institutions serving adults nationwide

Contact Us to learn more about the ALFI Toolkit.

The Institutional Self Assessment Survey is $3150 for CAEL institutional members and $3900 for non-members. For membership information, click here.

Pricing for The Adult Learner Inventory depends on the size of the adult student population being surveyed. The ALI has a standard fee to set up an online account ($225 per campus). The survey itself costs $0.25 per each student invited to the survey. You will be charged $2.30 for each completed survey, and you only pay for the number of surveys actually completed online (institutions can assume a 20% response rate). A 5% handling fee applies to the total order.

For example, for a college or university with 500 adult students, the cost for the Adult Learner Inventory (ALI) would be:

Set up fee: $225
Invitation of 500 students at $0.25 each: $125
Estimated response rate of 20% x 500 = 100 x $2.30 = $230
5% handling applies to the total order: $29
Estimated total: $609*

Pricing for the complete ALFI Toolkit for a college or university that is an institutional member of CAEL and has 500 adult students would be $3,150 for the Institutional Self Assessment Survey and $609* for the Adult Learner Inventory, or, $3,759.

For payment by check or credit card, simply download and print the form you need, then mail the form with your payment, or fax it to us with your credit card payment

Click here for an Institutional Self-Assessment Survey (ISAS) order form

Click here for an Adult Learner Inventory (ALI) order form

* Actual fees will be based on the actual number of students invited and the actual number of completed surveys

The ALFI Coalition is an alliance of CAEL member colleges and universities that strive continuously to improve their programs and services for adult learners. Coalition participants use the ALFI Assessment Tools to assess their programs regularly and share “best practices” with other institutions. View ALFI Coaltion