Adult learning is a relatively young field; it only became a formal field of study in the 1920’s. Prior to that, people rarely graduated from high-school, so little thought was given to educating adults. In the 1920’s adult learning was something that an individual undertook to further one’s standing in the community or one’s socioeconomic status (for example women educating themselves about women’s suffrage or repressed workers learning about unionization).
A formal approach to educating adults in the workplace started to gain momentum two decades later, in the mid-1940’s. An official society of trainers (ASTD) held its first meeting in 1945 in Chicago. At that time it was referred to as The American Society of Training Directors; it then became the American Society of Training and Development and most recently changed its name to the Association for Talent Development.
Here are some basic principles any designer / facilitator should know and embrace:
Motivating the Adult Learner:
* Link the content to experience / things they already know
* Help learner to realize they have a “problem” or why this is “important”
* Elicit curiosity – present factoids or information that makes the audience say “Really? How’d that happen?”
* Tap into “teachable moments” – don’t follow your script so rigidly that when a participant interjects a great idea you glance over it in order to stick to what YOU have to say
* Demonstrate early that it will be useful – The last 200 participants in this class have reported…
Helping the Adult Learning to Embrace A New Way of Doing Things:
* To remember and use new information, adults need to be able to integrate it with what they already know (this open-to-buy policy is just like your personal checkbook)
* Information that forces them to reconsider what they “know to be true,” is assimilated more slowly – revisit new information many times so people get used to hearing it/ seeing it / doing it
* Information that has little conceptual overlap with what they already know is acquired most slowly – see above Ensure low risk – make activities challenging and memorable (fun) but not impossible. If people are focused on the (impossible) activity and not the outcome – you’ve missed your mark.
Break content into manageable chunks – sure it’s efficient to bring people together for 4 hours or 8 hours, but the brain won’t take it all in, so it’s really wasted time. Break the content in to logical chunks that allow people to learn, apply, discuss and process and learn some more.
