It is no secret that I believe adult learning principles and styles are essentially vague and useless in terms of instructing “adults” versus “non-adults” and that the work of many popular adult learning “experts” is terrible, and that includes Knowles. I’m not alone in that respect.
So I was browsing around and came across a well written article entitled How to Use Adult Learning Principles and Styles in Your Next Course, which I believe is typical of the thinking in that field. Despite the fact that it is well written, and clear, it’s nonsense, and it doesn’t even take much thought to realize it IS nonsense. Why many people can’t see the lack of clothing on this particular emperor is beyond me.
So, here’s the article, interspersed with my comments. As always I invite your comments.
Training Design Tips – How to Use Adult Learning Principles and Styles in Your Next Course
By Amy Franko
So you’ve finally decided to go for it and design your first workshop, tele-class, or home study! Now what? First things first. You need some working knowledge of adult learning principles and styles to guide your course design.
One of the books I always have on my shelf is Telling Ain’t Training by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps. They outline four key principles from Malcolm Knowles, a leader in the adult-education field.
- Readiness. Adult learners come to you with previous knowledge, attitudes, and priorities – all of which effect their readiness level.
- Experience. Take into account their experience level – not just with your content, but general life and business experience as well.
- Autonomy. Usually adult learners decide what they learn. This decision-making process matters, because when they decide to participate they become better engaged, retain more information, and stay committed to your course.
- Action. Your course must provide a way to apply new information right away. Adults take a course because they need new information or a new skill now; they want to apply it now and see results.
Unless you are trying to teach a potato to sing, ALL learners come with these things, not just adults. I suppose if you are working with embryos but I don’t know any trainers who do that.
Ditto. Potatoes don’t have experience, but with any live creatures capable of learning, and that includes children, adults and perhaps dogs (we can’t be sure about cats), you always have to take into account experience levels.
Actually, children don’t decide what they learn because we don’t let them. We don’t necessary have the control over adults to decide for them (except of course in universities, apprentice programs, technology courses, and on and on). Children aren’t terrible engaged when they are forced. Adults neither.
In all seriousness this is one of the most interesting bits of adult learning nonsense. Actually children need this MORE than adults due to the cognitive limitations that are developmental in nature that restrict abstract symbolic thought. Action and concreteness are much more important for children in learning than adults.
Next is learning motivation. Remember, your audience is taking your course most likely because they made the choice to be there. Regardless of your subject matter, your learner is usually motivated by a specific need. Your learner may be motivated by:
- Achieving a specific goal. For example, if your course is on internet marketing, your learner might be a small business owner looking for specific ways to increase internet traffic. Does your content outline specific goals?
- Social contact and relationships. The learner is interested in meeting and building relationships with like-minded people. So they might like to use Twitter or join an email list to collaborate during your course.
- Learning for the sake of learning. You may have some students who are there just because they love learning or your topic.
Lastly, consider learning styles. This refers to how a learner prefers to consume, process, and apply new information. Most of us are strong in one area, but also use the others as secondary methods. Some styles to consider when creating your course:
- Visual. Visual learners might draw diagrams, view video, or use pictures to help better understand information.
- Auditory. Auditory learners might like to listen to podcasts and tele-classes to help assimilate information, or participate in a coaching conversation. They might also like to read a transcript along with listening or viewing.
- Tactile/Kinesthetic. The learner might prefer learning by doing or movement-oriented activities, or taking notes in a student guide as part of class participation.
This is so misleading it’s really not funny anymore. First of all, apart from trying to vary instruction so it involves these “channels”, there’s nothing else of value here. You can’t really provide different activities for learners with different styles, for practical reasons, and it turns out you may not want to anyway.
The research on this is rather copious, and I’d guess that the majority of trainers have never looked at a single journal article on this topic, much less reviewed the field properly. It turns out there is some research to suggest that people learn better if you use a style that involves a mismatch with the preferred style. Generally speaking if you spend a year or two reading the body of learning styles research, you’d probably a) discover the findings are all contradictory, and b) realize that the reason for all the contradictory findings is that learning styles and matching simply are not very important for instructional success.
Basic knowledge of learning principles and styles will make a noticeable difference in your course design.
I invite you to visit http://www.amyfranko.com and subscribe to my e-course, “5 Essential Strategies for Becoming Booked Solid.”
I’m the owner and principal learning designer of Amy Franko Consulting. I’m also a certified Book Yourself Solid ™ business coach, serving women who are solo service professionals. I use a simple system of protocols specifically designed to bring more ideal clients into your business, even if marketing and selling isn’t something you like to do!
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#1 by Kelly Dawson on August 25, 2009 - 9:45 pm
I disagree with at least some of the opinions in your “well deserved poke”. I have a few of my own theories on adult learning which may or may not necessarily line up with the standard way of thinking. As far as learning styles however, my own personal learning experience has taught me a thing or two. I am very much a “visual” learner. I remember things based upon visual recall. If you lecture to me only, I will be asleep within the first 15 minutes. I am not an auditory learner – at least not in and of itself. I believe that a well designed class should encompass all of the learning styles because everyone utilizes each of them. A little bit of lecture is okay, but you better mix it up with visual and kinisthetic to keep my attention. The courses that include all of these styles are the ones that I remember. The others are just history and mean nothing to me. Those are the ones that were a waste of my time.
Thanks for allowing me to express myself – I enjoyed reading your thoughts and opinions. All are valuable.
#2 by Robert Bacal on August 25, 2009 - 10:14 pm
Thanks for commenting. An interesting thing about “sense channels”, is they are modifiable via experience. That you are currently a visual learner does not mean you will always be so. My own direct personal experience (which may not be all that relevant) is that depending on how I spend my time, I may prefer different modalities. I happen to have or have had hobbies that include photography and music, in addition to writing, of course, and other numerous hobbies involving body movement. If I am more active in photography, I tend to perceive and value visuals more, and differently. When I played music, same with sound.
To tell you the truth, all this seems to simply be habit, not anything else. And there is that research that suggests that MISmatching teaching method to style results in more learning. ANd of course findings that say the opposite.
There ARE reasons to include a variety of stimuli in various sense modalities during learning experiences, but learning styles simply isn’t one of them. And as for falling asleep in 15 minutes of lecture? Not in my classes in my prime.
Lecture has a bad rap because most people do it so badly. Done properly, it can be spell binding (but even so, it is only part of an instructional strategy.