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5 Principles for teaching adult learners.

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5 Principles for teaching adult learners.

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The motivations to learn evolve as you become older; and for an adult educator, teaching can be even more difficult without a basic understanding of adult learning theory.

Malcolm Knowles, a pioneer in adult education, popularized the concept of five teaching strategies for adults, which states that students learn best when:

1. Adults understand why something is important to know or do.

2. Adults have the freedom to learn in their own way.

3. Learning is experiential.

4. The time is right for them to learn.

5. The education process is positive and encouraging.

This post breaks down each principle outlined above, and details why it's an important method of teaching adults effectively.

Make sure adults understand why something is important to know or do.

When we step into adulthood many of us choose to take classes to meet personal and/or career goals. Adult students are special because they step foot into a classroom with the desire to learn. They are there to learn something new or become certified in a particular field.

This principle is not about why adults are sitting in your class looking to feed off of your knowledge, but rather why each component of the course you're teaching is an important part of the learning process.

Adults have the freedom to learn in their own way.

Many adults can remember having only one type of learning style growing up; this is mainly determined by their teachers' preferred teaching method. However, as an adult learner you may find out that you prefer a different learning style, or a combination of all three.
Visual Learners
Visual learners prefer to be shown a lesson through graphs, diagrams, and illustrations. They rely on what the instructor is doing and often sit in the front of the classroom to avoid visual obstructions. The best form of communication is providing worksheets, white boarding, and leveraging phrases such as, "Do you see how this works?"
Auditory Learners
Auditory learners listen carefully to all sounds associated with the lesson. "Tell me," is their motto. They will pay close attention to the sound of your voice and all of its subtle messages, and they will actively participate in discussions. You can best communicate with them by speaking clearly, asking questions, and using phrases like, "How does that sound to you?"
Tactile Learners
Tactile learners need to physically do something to understand it. Their motto is "Let me do it." They trust their feelings and emotions about what they're learning and how you're teaching it. Tactile learners are those students who will get up and assist instructors with role playing in the classroom.

You can best communicate with tactile learners by involving volunteers; allow them to practice what they're learning, and use phrases like, "How do you feel about that?"

The type of learner that makes up your classroom can easily be identified by conducting a short learning style assessment at the beginning of class. This assessment will benefit you and the students and will allow you and your students to be successful. This information will be as valuable to the student as it is to you.

Learning is experiential.

Experiential learning experiences can take multiple forms. Activities that get your students involved enhance your students' learning experience. Examples of learning activities include small group discussions, experiments, role playing, skits, building something at their table or desk, or writing/drawing something specific. Learning activities also keep people energized, especially activities that involve stepping away from their desks.

Honoring the life experiences your students bring to the classroom is another component of experiential learning. It's important to tap into that wealth of wisdom of your classroom whenever it's appropriate.

The time is right for them to learn.

No matter how hard a teacher tries, if a student isn't ready to learn, they won't. Luckily, adult students chose to be in your classroom, which means they have already determined that the time is right.

As an instructor, listen carefully for teaching moments and take advantage of them. When an adult learner says or does something that triggers a topic on your agenda, be flexible and teach it right then.

The education process is positive and encouraging.

For most adults, stepping back into the classroom can be intimidating, which is understandable if they haven't taken a class in years. Students may be apprehensive about what the course will be like and how well they'll do.

As an instructor of adult students, it's important to exude positivity, encouragement, and patience. Establishing motivation in the classroom can facilitate effective learning for students. Give your students time to respond when you ask a question. They may need a few moments to consider their answer. Recognize the contributions they make, even when small.

Give your students words of encouragement whenever the opportunity arises. Most adults will rise to your expectations if you're clear about them.
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5 Principles For Teaching Adults - GA Blog

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The motivations to learn evolve as you become older; and for an adult educator, teaching can be even more difficult without a basic understanding of adult learning theory. Malcolm Knowles, a pioneer in adult education, popularized the concept of five teaching strategies for adults, which states that students learn best when: Adults understand why something is important to know or do.

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In my classroom I would use all and have activities that encompasses all the three learning styles : visual learners, tactile learner and auditory learners.

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Adult Motivation is fueled by experience

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Motivation is the force that drives people to fulfill a need. If you can tap into a learner's intrinsic motivation-where an individual is rewarded by the learning itself or an internal goal-you've got it made. But in both workplace and academic environments, people are often unmotivated because they are required to take courses in which they have no interest.

That puts designers and developers of learning products in a tough position. We need to work hard at creating experiences that get audiences engaged and motivated. Here are some strategies you can use to motivate adult learners, based on their characteristics.

1. Create useful and relevant learning experiences. Adult learners appreciate immediate relevancy. It's a great incentive when training is immediately valuable and helpful to one's work or personal life.

2. Focus on practical knowledge and skills. Related to the strategy above, try to concentrate on workplace (or real life) performance, rather than on extraneous facts and theories.

3. Provide options. Adults usually like choices that promote self-direction. When possible, allow learners to choose the courses they will take within a curriculum or subject category. Even if you provide a suggested order, allow learners to take lessons in a sequence that works for them.

4. Facilitate exploration. Provide resources, references, videos and podcasts to create an ideal environment for personal exploration. Adults have a breadth of experience. Exploration provides an opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful for each learner.

5. Build community through social technologies for learning. Implement a social media strategy as part of a learning experience. Use social networking applications and services to build groups with a common interest or goal. Sharing knowledge and experience through informal networks is a motivating and natural way to learn. See Using Social Media for Learning.

6. Accommodate group interactions. Provide opportunities for group discussion, collaboration and group problem solving.

7. Enable testing out. Allow learners to test out of courses for which they know the content.

8. Create active learning. As a general rule, most learners are motivated by engaging and active learning events over passive ones. You'll find specific strategies for making learning active in this list.

9. Put a face on it. When it fits with your goals, let learners know that there is a real person behind an online learning course. Provide opportunities for this expert to interact with the audience through live or online question and answer sessions.

10. Challenge through games; entice with immersive environments. When your audience members are involved in the challenge of a game or focused on solving problems in a virtual environment, learning becomes an incidental aspect of winning or finding solutions. Although this usually requires a higher budget than other strategies, look around for pre-programmed games that work with your tool set.

11. Use a witty character. Humor is a great way to keep learners motivated. Use humorous characters that reflect familiar situations and personalities to arouse interest.

12. Accommodate busy schedules. Create learning experiences that can be mastered in small segments of time. Make it easy for learners to access individual learning objects for just-in-time answers.

13. Chunk information. Another reason for organizing information into small chunks is to build confidence, which is motivating. Small bits of information are easier to process, comprehend and retain than large chunks.

14. Add a dose of suspense. Don't give away everything at first. Make learners want to find out more by starting out with a suspenseful scenario that learners need to solve. Mystery is a great motivator.

15. Use creative treatments. Many online courses can be tied to a theme, a dramatic presentation, a compelling narrative or an unusual metaphor that can be carried through the instruction. This adds novelty and interest, which are motivating forces in learning.

16. Individualize the learning. During interactive events, use context-sensitive feedback for a more accurate response to the learner's input. Even better is if you can provide multiple paths through a course so that learners are guided by the choices they make. This type of individualization can help a person build accurate knowledge structures, which improves competence and confidence.

17. Accommodate individual interests and career goals. Each learner is a unique individual with his or her own goals. Empowering a person to work toward these goals through training is a powerful incentive to learn.

18. Stimulate the mind. Ask thought-provoking questions and offer problems that don't have one right answer. Challenge learners to think about exceptions to a rule or to question conventional wisdom. Learners appreciate it when you respect their intelligence.

19. Let learning occur through mistakes. In our everyday life, we learn from our mistakes. We can simulate this in structured learning experiences by offering context-sensitive feedback during games, reviews and tests.

20. Offer just-in-time resources: No one can retain all the content in a course. Provide learners with job aids, online support systems, like wikis and micro-blogging technologies to get just-in-time support in the workplace.

21. Get emotional. When you tap into the emotional dimension of your audience, you can get them hooked and engaged. Add realistic stories, refer to an individual's cherished memories or say something controversial. Do what it takes to get the audience emotionally involved.

22. Encourage mastery learning. Help learners gain confidence and competence as they learn. Make sure courses are at the right level for each learner. Provide opportunities for people to retake courses until they have mastered the content. Provide real world practice activities. Ensure remediation presents content in a new way.

23. Make it visually compelling. It may be hard to make a course look like it was produced by 3D experts, but there are low-budget ways to make it aesthetically appealing. People are hard-wired for pictures, so use visuals to motivate your audience. See Realistic Graphics and Learning: What's Most Effective?

24. Simulate the workplace. Take your cues from the workplace. Uncover the issues or difficulties your audience is experiencing and base scenarios and practice activities on real-world experience. This makes learning meaningful.

25. Respect the audience. Let your audience know why it's important to take a particular course. Avoid a cynical or condescending tone and honor the learners. You may be the only advocate they have in this big world.

26. Get learners to create graphic organizers. Encourage learners to visually represent the content they are learning. This can keep them engaged and help them structure their new knowledge for easy retrieval in the future.

27. Use good design principles. Make sure your online courses are legible by using a font that can be read by adults of all ages. Ensure graphical text can be easily read too. Keep the screen clear from clutter. It's demotivating to struggle through a course because of legibility or design issues. See more articles on visual design.

28. Ask for feedback. Find a way to let your audience contribute to a course. Let them know they can provide feedback to help you improve it. This might help some learners buy in to the program. Listen to The Art and Science of Practice and Feedback or read the transcript.

29. Present the benefits. Sometimes motivating learners is as simple as presenting the benefits of a course. "This course will help you become more productive with your time, probably saving you 20 minutes every day. In one year, that adds up to 121 hours!"

30. Create an experience, not just a course. What can you do to make a course unforgettable? Create an online and offline learning experience. Market your course to the audience to create buzz, get buy-in from key people, throw a related event, incorporate sophisticated activities to enhance learning, provide personal support for those having difficulty and provide follow-up.

What strategies do you use to motivate adult learners? Comment below.
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Get Your Audience Pumped: 30 Ways to Motivate Adult Learners

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Motivation is the force that drives people to fulfill a need. If you can tap into a learner's intrinsic motivation-where an individual is rewarded by the learning itself or an internal goal-you've got it made. But in both workplace and academic environments, people are often unmotivated because they are required to take courses in which they have no interest.

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I would strive to treat each learner is a unique individual with his or her own goals. Empowering a person to work toward these goals through training is a powerful incentive to learn.Even with little children it is possible at their level.

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How to identify need, need topic and questions to create an active learning environment

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Step 1: Analyzing needs for implementing an active learning strategy

Before deciding on an active learning strategy, analyze the need. Ask yourself:

Evidence & Data

What evidence is there that a particular active learning strategy will enhance my teaching and learning or improve learning?

How will this active learning strategy help your students meet the learning objectives?

What observational or concrete data do you have about your classroom that can inform you about why you need to change it and how?

What does the research literature suggest about my particular subject matter and best approaches to teaching it?

Pedagogical Challenges

What is the challenge with your current classroom?

What concepts or topics do students struggle with the most based on observation, in-class student responses, quiz/test scores and/or other assignments?

Do students need more personalized attention applying certain skills and knowledge in-class where your expertise could guide or coach their development?

Strategies

Based on the feedback and data you have collected about your class and students, where do active learning strategies makes sense in your course?

Are there examples of the active learning strategies that you have seen that would be valuable to your students?

Step 2: Identify topic and questions

The first step is to identify the topics you wish to apply active learning strategies. Additionally, identify the overarching questions about this topic.

Example: Topic: Water Pollution in the Hudson River, New York City

Questions: Is the Hudson River really polluted? What are acceptable levels? Who decides these levels? Is there a single right answer to this problem?

Step 3: Identify learning objectives & outcomes

Next, define the learning objectives and outcomes for each topic:

Give an example of a well-written learning objective with outcome: Students will collaborate in small groups (2-3) to conduct a research study on water pollution

Learning outcome: Students will demonstrate their understanding by gathering data, analyzing data, providing written results that meet professional research standards, and presenting orally and pictorially to the class the results [Outcome].

Step 4: Plan and design the activity

Now that you have clearly identified learning objectives and outcomes, you can begin to plan and design the activity through considering the following questions:

Will the activity occur in the classroom, outside the classroom, or both? Prepare a timeline plan to help you manage the activity and keep students on task.

Provide clear and specific instructions to students before the session.

Describe how students will engage with each other and complete the activity. Outline the steps.

Establish and communicate ground rules and guidelines for group etiquette.

Assign roles and responsibilities for any group work, collaboration, discussions or debate.

Provide an agenda that includes a timeline of the topics and activities to be covered during the session.

Provide verbal feedback that is consistent and fair.

Consider how the in-class activity will continue after class in order to extend the learning process and experience.

Communicate to students after the session. Prepare a rubric for assessing student effort. Determine what kind of technology or media you will need for the classroom, for students to access outside the classroom, etc...

Step 5: Identify sequence of learning events

Next, plan the sequence of learning events that will best meet the learning objectives and outcomes. Active learning does not have to replace traditional lecturing; instead, it may be interspersed with the ways you usually conduct the class. For example, you could lecture for 10-15 minutes, carry out an active learning activity, and, then, return to lecturing. Or, one week you could lecture, but assign an active learning activity for homework; then, the next week, you could flip your class and carry out active learning exercises with students already familiar with the lecture material during class time. There are many ways to sequence the learning events. Your job is to carefully think through the planning and delivery of these events to support your learners.

Step 6: Evaluate and assess

You should analyze the effectiveness of the active learning activity and assess whether or not it aided student understanding and met the associated learning objectives. Please see the next section for specific information on how to complete this evaluation and assessments.

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Steps to Creating an Active Learning Environment

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Step 1: Analyzing needs for implementing an active learning strategy Before deciding on an active learning strategy, analyze the need. Ask yourself: Evidence & Data What evidence is there that a particular active learning strategy will enhance my teaching and learning or improve learning?

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Identifying the needs, the learning styles and motivation of the class will help to create an active learning environment.
In the beginning of the class, I would present an activity which helps to identify the learning style of the student.For exampleI would give a quick auditory instruction and see if anyone needed a step by step visual instruction or others may need an hands-on modeling of the same instruction.

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Nine successful strategies for Business leaders

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Nine successful strategies for Business leaders

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It is critical to manage stage presence to encourage students to connect with you

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The more you grow your thought leadership and become an industry expert, the more opportunities you'll have to become a speaker at conferences, workshops, seminars and tradeshows. It is critical that you effectively manage your stage presence so your audience will want further opportunities to connect with you and your company.

Having trained hundreds of coaches, consultants, authors, and entrepreneurs to become top-notch stage presenters, I've identified nine specific strategies for presenting, but before I give you those secrets, it's important you know some potential presentation pitfalls:

1. Reading straight from PowerPoint. Nothing hurts your audience engagement more than getting on stage only to read what you've written on the PowerPoint. PowerPoints are designed to engage your audience and remind you of a topic to cover.

2. Turning your back to the audience. Under no circumstances should you turn your back to the audience. You should always be presenting to them. If you must turn back to look at the screen or to reference your PowerPoint, angle slightly, but don't turn completely.

3. Lack of clarity. If you are unclear in your message, the audience will be too. The best thing to do in preparing for a presentation is to clarify what you want your audience to walk away with. Do you want them to take an action, feel an emotion, or make a shift in their lives? Build your presentation around the overall outcome you have for your audience.

Now let's delve into the nine strategies of a successful preparation:

1. Share your personal journey. Nothing is worse than a presenter who doesn't allow the audience to get to know them as a thought leader. One of the best ways to connect with your audience is to share your story with them. How did you come to be in the position you are today? What makes you credible on this topic?

2. Use stories. One of the best ways to engage your audience is to share client success stories, case studies, and examples of what you are teaching in your presentation.

3. Incorporate statistics. One of the best ways to show your credibility to the audience is to incorporate research and statistics. These figures can come from external sources, or you can create your own statistics. To create your own statistics, I advise clients to use SurveyMonkey. The goal is to have a minimum of 100 quantitative responses from your target market to identify a trend.

4. Be humble. Speakers can quickly turn off an entire audience if they are too egotistical or unable to convey their humility. This means sharing with the audience how you or your company gives back and why the work you do aligns with your vision and mission. Let the success stories show what you can do for them. In sales, they teach underpromise and overdeliver - the same is true in presentations.

5. Create a flow. Presenters must be conscious of the audience's experience. The flow of a presentation brings the audience down a clear path. The best speakers start by introducing the concept, outlining the importance of the topic, breaking down the components, clarifying the action steps, and concluding the section. There are many other flows you can use, but this example works well for new presenters.

6. Engage with PowerPoint. The rule of thumb with your PowerPoint is that it must be engaging, not distracting, or you shouldn't use one at all. The best PowerPoint presentation is one that overviews the concepts you are discussing, incorporates graphics, charts and illustrations to engage the audience, and potentially even brings in cartoons and other sources of comedy for added entertainment.

7. Hold questions until the end. I advise my clients to request the audience hold on to their questions until the end. Allowing questions in the midst of a presentation often throws off the flow and thought process of the presenter.

8. Make content a priority. The best presenters provide so much high-quality content and value, the audience wants to know how to get more. They'll want to work with you without you even needing to pitch them. By providing them with your best content and positioning yourself as the go-to-expert in your field, the pressure to close a sale is removed, allowing for a more organic and natural sales process to occur with your audience.

9. Seed your book and other products. When presenting, you always want to be referencing your book, your products, and your services to ensure your audience is aware of the additional opportunities they have to engage with you beyond the presentation.

Remember, nothing is more important than completing your presentation with the audience feeling like you've given them valuable information they can walk away with. Always close your presentation with an opportunity for them to engage with you further. Whether that means your presentation ends with a formal sales pitch, or an informal statement, like "connect with me if you'd like to discuss working together," make sure they know how to access the next opportunity with you.

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Nine Successful Presentation Strategies For Business Leaders

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The more you grow your thought leadership and become an industry expert, the more opportunities you'll have to become a speaker at conferences, workshops, seminars and tradeshows. It is critical that you effectively manage your stage presence so your audience will want further opportunities to connect with you and your company.

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In order to be an effective presenter , I use the slide show to guide me in my lesson and not provide me with facts.
Also making an emotional connection with the students helps me to relate to them at their level and reach out to them effectively.
Preparing a step by step presentation allows flow and clarity to the presentation.

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Teachers need a continuous flow of accurate information on student learning.

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In my classroom , I plan to have three points of assessment. The initial assessment to see what they know and how to proceed, the intermediate to see if the students are keeping up with my teaching, and the final to see if they have learned or attained the objectives of the lesson. I would also use mini assessments throughout the lesson to ensure that we are on the right track.