How do adults learn best

Knowing how adults learn is crucial when designing your employee training. Within these differences, adult learning styles further complicate how adults learn. Learners of all ages are wired differently. Adding the specialized requirements of adult learners to different learning styles is a big lift, but then consider the cognitive impact of a training.

All learners can only handle so much information before they are unable to process and apply it. Training that makes sure your material is presented in the proper way with a consideration of learning styles helps lighten that cognitive load. Research has shown that not everyone learns the same way. Consider the following adult learning styles as you design your employee training programs.

These learners are able to vividly picture patterns and learn best with images and graphics that use fewer words. Further, these learners can literally see the forest and the trees. Consider infographics, drawn guides, and text broken up with illustrations.

Or, use PowerPoints, flipcharts, videos, and graphics to better reach this type of learner. Schools are designed around this type of learner. Lectures, podcasts, and traditional classroom-style learning is geared towards auditory learners. The best adult learning methods for auditory learners incorporate these resources into training. Linguistic learners process information best through speaking and language.

They are often voracious readers and able to pick up other languages and nuances in their own language. Consider a book group that reads a book and then uses guided questions to unpack themes and deepen understanding. Linguistic learners function the same way. Further, a linguistic learner is generally a good communicator. They might listen to someone speaking and then summarize what was said to gain clarity or identify anything they missed. Linguistic learners will pick up anything you write down.

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.

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.

Establishing motivation in the classroom can facilitate effective learning for students. Give your students time to respond when you ask a question. Education is, as Brookfield points out a " transactional encounters". That means that the sole responsibility for determining curricula or for selecting appropriate methods does not rest either with the educator or with the learner.

If the first obtains, then we have an authoritarian style and a one-way transmission of knowledge and skills. If curricula, methods and evaluative criteria become predetermined solely by what learners say they want, then the "cafeteria approach" governs the educational process.

Accepting the felt needs rationale without any further inquiry and needs negotiation means that the facilitator has abandoned responsibility for the learning process and the achievement of learning aims and objectives.

Successful learning especially in workshop settings means to keep the balance between the learning process and the learning outcome so that the results justify the efforts and if they are not excellent they should be at least and always "good enough". Principles of participatory training The training model presented in this handbook is based on participation.

The principles of participatory training Shrivastave and Tandon explain these principle in greater detail reflect how adults learn. Participatory training is life-centered What is learned must be applicable to real life situations. A workshop programme, therefore, must provide opportunity and assist adult learners to apply what has been learned to life situations and job requirements.

Participatory training is learner-centred A workshop programme arises out of the needs of participants as articulated by them and negotiated with them. These "needs-negotiations" are necessary to keep the balance between the interests and needs as voiced by the learners and the state-of-the-art of the subject matter which learners have to become familiar with in order to acquire knowledge and competence and to get the feeling of success and achievement.

However, participants should always maintain control of the training process and influence upon the methods used. Participatory training is flexible The teaching-learning process, while not losing track of the objectives and the subject matter, should always take into consideration the problems participants are facing and the learning progress, they are making.

The programme schedule must be open and leave room for repetition and the unforeseen. Tue final programme of a workshop evolves as the workshop goes on. Participatory training is comprehensive with focus on awareness, as well as on knowledge and skills This combined focus makes the choice of training methods complex. Awareness-raising, is most aptly achieved through a dialogue between facilitator and learner.

Knowledge-acquisition is most effectively done through lecture-discussions or-readings based on handbooks and carefully selected reference material. Learning new skills or sharpening existing ones demands giving opportunity to practice within a workshop, be it in groups with peer review or individually under guidance by the facilitator.

Participatory training is learning through the experiences of learners Learners come with their experiences and make new ones during the training process. It is important that learners and resource persons report on their experiences and share their experiences to find appropriate solutions.

Thus a workshop becomes a "learning cooperatives. Participatory training is based on mutual respect Learners always need a opportunity to first unlearn and then relearn. Both processes imply a deficiency and can be highly threatening to a person. In order to accept criticism, learners must feel accepted as they are, must be encouraged to run risks and to accept support. The atmosphere in a workshop must be such that participants enjoy learning and feel comfortable and confident that, whatever happens in training, will not be used against them.

In participatory training trainers are a team of facilitators In participatory training the trainers' behaviour and value system is as important as his professional knowledge and his teaching abilities.

In workshop settings trainers should work as a team of facilitators, open to self-criticism, ready to support each other without becoming defensive against participants. The team of facilitators should be present throughout a workshop from its beginning to the end.

The venue is of great influence on the learning process The venue should facilitate an uninterrupted learning process. It should be outside major towns, where participants, free from daily obligations, can exchange their experiences and cooperate in finding solutions.

It will usually be a residential setting so that the learning co-operative becomes a captive audience. Participatory training is based on feedback Nobody is perfect! Feedback is necessary not only to adapt an ongoing workshop programme to the learning needs and progress of participants but also to learn from past workshop experiences in order to prove future programmes.

This can be done by appropriate methods of internal evaluation be it formative during the workshop or summative at its end. A model to combine principles of adult education and participatory training with production The Action Training Model is meant to train adult educators. It takes into consideration how adults learn and is based on the principles of participatory training.

Andragogy combines many of the insights from the above theories. This approach starts by recognizing the differences between adults and children and designs learning experiences from there. For example, learning experiences are created with the assumptions that adults come to the table with their own set of life experiences and motivations, can direct their own learning, tend to learn better by doing, and will want to apply their learning to concrete situations sooner rather than later.

There are more, and many variations on these, too. It is a mistake to think of any one of these as the correct theory. Each provides insight into the ways in which adults learn. Conversely, not all adults learn in the same way, and it is important to find approaches that blend several theories so that they can work for the majority. How do you tie together the principles of adult learning with the nuts-and-bolts of creating training materials that work?

This is where instructional design comes into play. But these describe the processes used to create instructional materials and courses. For any of them to be effective, they need to start from a firm understanding of how adults learn in the first place. Our own approach to adult learning does not pick and choose among theories but uses a blend of them. For example:. Our video content seeks to engage learners where they are, slowly building on past knowledge and bringing in new facts and points of view, ending up with sustainable changes in behavior—much like transformational learning.

Courses come with plenty of concrete examples, with information that students can use immediately, as emphasized in experiential learning. Remember, how adults learn on their own is very different from the ways children learn in a classroom. Here are seven ways we here at ej4 do just that in this process of designing our own off-the-shelf content!

Format is huge, especially if you are trying to encourage adults to continually learn on their own. The format should be easy to navigate, should be repeatable, and should encourage learners to do more. Imagine if you could get your employees to focus on your training content by using similar tools! This effect was greatest for learners with little background about a topic, meaning that, when adults with different levels of expertise encounter a piece of training content, those with less familiarity with a topic will be helped by visuals.

Relevance and moderation are important, however. Too many visuals can overwhelm what is being said and why. Irrelevant visuals will interrupt learning, too.