Adult Learning Principles

Chapter highlights:

Four key adult learning principles Several sample situations The Training Golden Rule.

 

Have you ever completed a course of study that truly inspired you? One in which you really got a lot out of the learning experience? You left feeling more competent—at least understanding how you could become more competent—and confident that you could do it! We hate to interrupt this pleasant reminiscence, but instruction also has a darker side.

Have you ever taken a course or participated in a learning session that left you disappointed? Did you tune out and turn off early in the session? Although you had some interest to learn and grow in whatever was being presented when you arrived, you left with a negative attitude and with little you could use.

Let’s look at what turns adult learners on or off, and what helps or disrupts their willingness to learn.

Good Classes and Bad Classes

What makes a great learning experience? We have posed this question to thousands of working adults, from managers operating in executive offices to workers out on the front line, from highly sophisticated knowledge professionals to routine-task physical workers. We’ve been repeatedly amazed by the similarity of responses across all work levels and types and all worker groups. Let’s see how your responses match. Here is the specific question we always ask: Think of a great course, class, or learning session you attended. What made it great for you?

Examine table 5-1. Those are some of the most common responses we’ve heard in the past. Check off those that apply in your case. We’ve left a few blanks for you to add your own.

Now, over to the flip side. We posed the following question to our adult groups: Think of a rotten course, class, or learning session you attended. For you, what made it rotten?

Table 5-1. Examples of What Makes Great Training

 

 

In table 5-2, check off the items that you feel apply to your negative experiences. Adult learners we questioned generated the items in table 5-2.

Table 5-2. Examples of What Makes Training Poor

 

 

Let’s perform a little analysis on your responses. We can’t see them but if they are in the typical range, we generally discover the following:

Good class: Somebody—the instructor, a course designer, or a decision maker of some sort—made an effort to create a learning experience that was relevant to you from a personal perspective (work and/or life); structured it so that you knew where you were going; provided the content in a way that was meaningful to you; gave you opportunities to get involved meaningfully; and provided you with tools and/or a sense of direction for applying what you learned to your work, your life, or both. Bravo! Kudos to the person who made this happen.

Bad class: Somebody, perhaps even the instructor, decided this was useful for you; figured out not only what you needed, but at what level and in what format and sequence it made sense to deliver it; made sure that it was full of the right content that he or she believed you should have; and dumped it into you. You were an empty vessel into which the instructor or the instructional materials poured the contents.

Perhaps we have set up a straw man and your experience wasn’t quite that simple or that bad. Nevertheless, in our many years of research and observation we have found few instructional programs—live, computer-based, print-based, or video-based—that truly focus on the needs and characteristics of the adult learner.

The proper care and handling of adult learners is extremely important when building terrific training sessions, regardless of the means of delivery—live or otherwise. Most of the training we have witnessed (confirmed by our research with many adult learners) is reminiscent of our school and college days. Although we were bored or confused by our teachers and professors when we were students, as instructors and trainers we tend to repeat the practices we hated in others.

How can we break out of this pattern? The cues and clues are the items in tables 5-1 and 5-2 that describe good and bad training. We can break away from boring, unproductive practices by focusing on our learners as adults with the same sorts of needs, concerns, desires, fears, frustrations, quirks, ambitions, capabilities, and personal priorities that we have.

Our job, as trainers, instructors, and educators, is to help our adult learners learn. Their success is our success. That sounds simple, but it’s challenging. We can do it by understanding how adult learners learn and by applying that insight to our practices. What’s great about this is that it all makes sense, is not that hard to do, and is incredibly rewarding. (“Wow! They learned from me, and they can all do it!”) In addition, you can test this on yourself. By leaving the trainer role and assuming a learner’s position, you get to see that what you are attempting really will work. Be your own guinea pig.

Four Key Adult Learning Principles¹

Considerable research has been done on adult learning.² So much research, in fact, that this chapter could easily expand to become a whole book.³ For our purposes, however, we focus on four key findings from all that research. These findings were generated by Malcolm Knowles, a leader in the field of adult education (also called “andragogy”), as well as others, and we believe they are the most applicable and meaningful principles for adult learning in the work setting.⁴ These four key principles are

• readiness
• experience
• autonomy
• action.

What follows is a brief review of each of those principles. A concluding section of this chapter will show you how to use the principles effectively to become a star trainer.

Readiness

Imagine the following scene. In one hand I have a pitcher filled with water. In the other I have a glass with a lid. What happens when I try to pour water into the glass? Obviously, it spills over the glass and my hand because the inside of the glass is closed off.

This physical example of wasted effort is analogous to a trainer trying to pour content into a closed adult learner’s mind. Not much enters. So what to do? How can we open the mind? The answer is simple and straightforward. Adults come to a learning situation with their own priorities and attitudes. They are ready to learn when they decide to open their minds and spirits to it. How can you get them to do this, especially if they are determined not to do so? There is one truly effective way: Show them in a believable manner that what you have to offer

• solves a problem or avoids one for them
• provides an opportunity or increased status
• includes professional or personal growth.

It must be clear that it is for them, not for you or the organization. You can’t fill a glass with water if the glass has no opening. You can’t fill a learner with skills, knowledge, or new values and attitudes if his or her mind is blocked.

The readiness principle is simple: Always focus training on your learners’ needs. Make your training session respond to the learner’s question: “What’s in it for me?” When you can structure your training—whether live, online, or at a distance—so that meaningful benefits are reinforced constantly, both explicitly and implicitly, your learners will open themselves to what you are sharing with them. The following sample situation illustrates that fact.

Sample Situation: Protect Yourself. A group of MBA graduates recruited from the top 10 percent of their classes was in the second week of a training program at the bank. The instructor, a seasoned credit manager, is scratching his head and wondering how to start the afternoon session. According to the training timetable, the subject is the C-549 overdraft protection form. This group of learners is sharp and demanding. They quickly lose interest if the content appears boring. Several instructors have already been crushed by the coldness and lack of interest of the group when it sensed that the topic was boring, not challenging, and not personally valuable. So how will the credit manager teach this priority population for the bank about the important but not exciting C-549 form? He faces his bright, upwardly destined class of young adults and launches into a story:

“Imagine that you’ve been dreaming for years of owning a Porsche sports car. You really want it. By saving and working extra hours, you finally pull together a decent-size down payment so that you can just make the monthly payments on what you’re earning. Finally, you’ve done it! You go to pick up the car, but suddenly realize you don’t have enough cash to get the insurance. It’s OK. You’ll pick it up, drive it home, and then figure out the insurance.

“Driving back from the dealership, you gaze around, proud of your new wheels. You hope someone you know will spot you. Your eyes wander. Too late you see the garbage truck just ahead of you. You slam on the brakes. There’s a screech, followed by a loud bang. Collision!

“As you examine the wreckage, you wonder if you really were lucky not to have been killed. What will you do now, with no insurance, no car, and no money?

“What if you could have had some free insurance that fully protected you from personal financial disaster? An insurance that helps you avoid personal and career disaster? Would you have taken it? Would you like me to hand it to you right now? For free?

“Then, let’s meet the C-549, a simple form that protects you, not from an auto wreck, but from a career disaster in the form of a loan you issued that you thought was great, but which suddenly becomes vulnerable. You could be in hot water, but here’s C-549! It’s your insurance policy, which removes your personal responsibility once it’s filled out. Let’s examine it closely together. Just imagine. This form can help you protect your Porsche.”

If you were one of the young MBA graduates in that training, would you have been caught up in the story? Would you want that free insurance policy? What would you see the instructor offering to do for you? (Check off all that apply.)

• Solve a problem.
• Avoid a problem.
• Provide an opportunity.
• Provide status or growth.

In this case, he is offering a means to avoid a problem. By presenting any or all of these in a way the learner values, you enhance the learner’s readiness and increase the probability of learning and retention.⁵

Experience

Here’s a question for you: Combien font cinq fois soixante-douze? The answer isn’t difficult. It’s trois cent soixante (360). Of course, you have to know some French to respond.

This leads us right to something we encountered in chapter 4: the effect of prior knowledge on learning. Adult learners come to each learning event with their unique former knowledge. This is what we may term as their experience. Adult learners possess a great deal more experience than do children. Some of it facilitates learning, but it also may act as an inhibitor. Adult learners learn if the training is pitched at their level and type of experience. If the training goes over their heads or is outside of their experience base (as in the case of our French math question above, which really asked, “How much is 5 3 72?”), then you lose them. Once lost, they are difficult to find again.

Treat adult learners as if they have little or no experience when they do, and you insult them and lose them. It is critical to effective training that you acknowledge the rich store of experience your learners possess—perhaps different from what you are training them on, but no less valuable—and exploit it. Help them to contribute to their own and other people’s learning. And be aware that some of their previous experience can create resistance to new knowledge.

Here’s a sample situation to illustrate our point:

Sample Situation: You Want Customer What? The public transit company for the city decided to do something about the rising number of ridership complaints and declining revenues. After much investigation, it decided to send every one of its 4,000 bus drivers to a course on customer service. The well-intentioned instructor had just opened the session with an overview of what the course was to accomplish when an irate participant shouted, “You want me to improve my customer service?

“Last week I did just that. I helped a nice old lady who could hardly walk get off the bus. She could barely get down the steps. I stopped the bus and slowly, carefully helped her off. Just as I got her steady on the sidewalk, an inspector pulls up, tells me I’m late. Complains that I left my seat. Writes me up and hands me a disciplinary warning. Customer service? No thanks!”

The experience principle suggests that the more you factor the experience of your learners into the design and delivery of your training, the more effective the learning outcome. Here are some basic rules for doing so:

• Check the backgrounds of your learners (aptitudes, prior knowledge, attitudes, learning and language preferences, prerequisite skills, culture, and relevant strengths or deficiencies). Don’t lose them by aiming your training session too high or too low or by presenting it in a personally or organizationally unacceptable manner.
• Use vocabulary, language style, examples, and references that are familiar without being patronizing.
• Draw examples and experiences from the group to enrich the session and build bridges from the familiar to the new.
• “Inoculate” your learners. When there have been bad experiences, warn them that you are moving into negative territory. Diffuse resistance by demonstrating sympathetic awareness of past problems. To illustrate, let’s return to our bus drivers and start the training session over again.

Sample Situation: You Want Customer What? [Take Two]. Being aware of the work realities his learners have faced on the job, the instructor began the session by acknowledging his participants’ experiences and urging them to share with the group:

“When we talk about customer service on the bus, we often get heated discussions about the positives and negatives as we do our job of transporting our riders to their destinations safely and on time. Can anyone give me an example from his or her work in which customer service paid off for both you and the customer?

“Now, can anyone give me an example where trying to deliver customer service backfired?

“Great. These positive and negative experiences you have had show us that a simple view of customer service—be nice, polite, friendly, helpful—is too naïve for our kind of work. Let’s examine some statistics and examples of what is happening in our transit company and others. Let’s look at some trends occurring outside of our industry that may affect us. Then let’s put our heads together to analyze the information and figure out what’s really right for our customers, our company, our community, and, also important, ourselves. We are responsible for our customers’ transportation and safety regardless of the traffic, weather, road conditions, and crazy drivers out there. Let’s see what we can do about serving our customers despite all these obstacles.”

 

Obviously, this approach is based on respect for the bus drivers’ backgrounds and experiences. It acknowledges that the subject is tough. It also treats the drivers as adults and asks that they help figure out what is right by weighing the numerous variables and ultimately deriving intelligent and workable customer service guidelines with which they can live. It avoids any impression of arbitrarily imposing a set of preestablished rules on them.

Does Tapping Into Experiene Really Facilitate Learning? As early as the 1870s, Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, began measuring the relationship between experience and the rapidity of learning (the velocity of the learning curve). By the mid-1930s, the U.S. Air Force had developed mathematical models and formulas for calculating the precise effect of previous experience on speed of learning. Limited as these formulas may have been, they did quantitatively demonstrate a relationship between experience and learning efficiency. Recently, neuroscientists discovered through experimentation, specifically on observed effects of experience on learning, how impactful, neurologically, prior experience can be on new learning.6 In a quote from one of the experimenters, “[the study findings] suggest that information on [an] experience is kept for a long time…this finding indicates the way in which new neurons in the adult brain could contribute to learning and long-term memory by storing the information of one’s previous experiences.” By drawing from and speaking to our learners’ experience, we definitely can increase the impact and effectiveness of learning.

Autonomy

How much freedom of choice (that is, autonomy) does a young child have? Does she or he decide what to wear, what to eat, how to get to school, how to organize his or her day, or where to have dinner? The answer is typically “no.” Adults largely manage children’s activities—especially at school where administrators generate class schedules. Subject matter and content flow are the realms of the department of education and the teachers. Homework is meted out by the teacher-authority. None of that is necessarily bad, but it does contrast strongly with most modern workplace environments. Although people still must work within guidelines, increasingly more autonomy—or self-directedness, to use an adult learning term—is being handed to workers in setting goals, making work and resource priority decisions, handling customers, cutting deals, and creating organizational strategic plans.

When we enter the learning arena, particularly in formal classes, we often see a return to traditional, school-based, teacher-centered models of instruction. Training, in its broadest sense, requires a dynamic climate for adult learners to grow and develop. Adult learners understand best if they take charge of their learning. After all, their value in the organization and the marketplace depends on what they know and are able to do. They own their personal human capital, which they invest in their jobs. It is in their best interest to build their human capital accounts. The more they take charge, the greater the value they—and their organizations—acquire.

Adult learners like to participate actively and contribute toward their learning. Reexamine the examples of good training in table 5-1 and notice how many address the issues of participation and contribution. The more the learner does and contributes, the more the learner learns.

Adult learners want to make their own decisions. Decision making is a major characteristic of adulthood. There are two values in this for learning. The first value is that decision making requires gathering information, analyzing that information, generating alternative decisions, weighing the consequences of each alternative, and, finally, sorting through and selecting what appears to be the optimal decision. All this mental engagement strongly contributes to learning and retention and to increasing the future application to the job of what has been decided. The second value to decision making is that the more the learner participates in the decision, the higher the probability that the participant will consider the decision credible and therefore will commit to it. This contribution has a powerful impact on comprehension, retention, and application posttraining.

Adult learners want to be treated as independent, capable people. They require respect, even when they make mistakes. Respect is an essential aspect of autonomy, especially in a learning context. It enables the learner to try and to err without feeling threatened or put down. In many ways, adult learners are more fragile and vulnerable than children. The fear of failure and accompanying loss of face can be high.

The balance between being challenging—“go ahead and take charge”—but supportive—“Don’t worry if you don’t succeed; it’s all right”—is a delicate one for the trainer, instructor, educator, or instructional designer.

 

To operationalize the autonomy principle, we suggest you take the following actions:

 

• Create lots of opportunities for learners to participate in your training sessions. Build in exercises, hands-on practice, cases, simulations, games, and discussion opportunities. (In later chapters we’ll describe how to create these—especially in chapter 8.) Testing, but not necessarily with exams, offers a great opportunity for learners to participate. (We devote chapter 9 to the subject of testing.)
• Build in numerous opportunities for learners to contribute their unique ideas, suggestions, solutions, information, and examples. The more they contribute, the more they’ll feel they own the learning and commit to making it useful.
• Reinforce independent and innovative ideas. By rewarding such ideas, you encourage learners to adapt the learning in ways that enhance their own performance potential.

On a final note concerning self-directedness, we are not suggesting that adult learners simply take total control of their learning in initial stages of acquiring new competencies and knowledge. Prior knowledge of a content area and prior experience in “taking charge” of one’s own learning affect the degree of control the adult learner can effectively handle. Autonomy exists on a continuum from a nearly completely controlled environment to increased loosening of constraints. As the competence and confidence of the adult learner increases, so, too, does his or her autonomy. Nevertheless, within even the most structured learning program, providing opportunities for participation and contribution should be maximized.⁷

Action

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the proof of the training is in its successful on-the-job application. Have you ever gone to some form of training or instruction, found it wonderful, rated it highly, and then never used it?

Here is a list of some courses we’ve taken in person, online, from a DVD, or from a hardcopy manual. We enjoyed them, thought they were great, but somehow they didn’t have staying power. Check off any that sound familiar to you. Add a couple of your own at the end.

Spanish	first aid
painting on silk	flattening your stomach
touch typing	table decorations
project management	Chinese cooking
a programming language	bread baking
running meetings	calculating with the abacus
time management	___________________________
scientific investment	___________________________

 

Don’t get us wrong. We do bits and pieces of many of these topics—we conduct meetings, we try to manage our time, and we even exercise a little. While we were in the learning mode, we were inspired, motivated, and found that what we were learning made excellent sense. The problem was in the follow-through. Here’s an interesting question: What percentage of people who go on a diet program and lose weight maintain their weight loss 12 months later?

10%	20%	30%	40%	50%
60%	70%	80%	90%	100%.

 

The dreadful but correct answer is 50 percent.⁸ About half of dieters who actually lose their targeted weight, regain much of it within 12 months. Within two years, the result is even worse—and this is even with diets that included exercise. These findings fit in well with the action principle.

Adult learners in the work setting participate in training to learn how to improve or alter their performance on the job. To ensure buy-in from the learners, their attention must be focused on immediate application of what they are supposed to learn. If they can’t see how they can put it into action as soon as they return to the job, their interest and learning decrease. And if they don’t receive any form of posttraining support to help them sustain application of what they are learning, they may find the training entertaining and enlightening, but they won’t apply it back on the job. As with weight loss programs, dramatic change can occur during the learning period. But off the program and back in one’s normal environment or with no food and exercise plan or support systems, old habits soon reassert themselves. Without an action orientation back to the job, learning dissipates quickly. This is an enormous challenge for trainers and training managers.

 

To develop an action mindset in our learners, we must design training that will do these things:

 

• Point out how learners can apply their learning immediately and provide them with on-the-job support mechanisms.
• Provide opportunities within the training sessions to practice new learning in an environment that is as close to the learners’ work setting as possible. Practice increases competence and confidence, both highly correlated with motivation to transfer learning to the job.
• Ensure that the new learning can be applied on the job. Work with the operational environment to align policies, procedures, feedback systems, incentives, resources, and rewards with the new learning. That requires the trainer to assist learners’ supervisors in encouraging and supporting application of the new learning.
• If the learning is used only occasionally (for example, in emergencies, or twice a year when the auditors arrive), create job aids and refresher opportunities that keep the learning accessible.

The bottom line in the action principle is, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Adult learners have to be action driven because they face so many competing priorities in the workplace. Successful adult training must factor in the action orientation.

Sample Situation: Adult Learning Principles in Action. Your company has experienced some unpleasant occurrences over the past year. It’s been tough in the global marketplace. There has been tremendous pressure to improve output and to extract increased productivity from each employee, from the president to the most-recent hire. Competition is fierce, and the economy is uncertain.

Alarmingly, the human resources department and line management have noticed the following internal problems:

• increased rates of absenteeism
• increased requests for sick leave
• people suddenly quitting
• greater tension in the workplace, including open arguments and even some physical attacks
• higher rates of depression, breakdowns, divorces, and substance abuse.

An HR study has determined that the major cause of these negative factors appears to be stress. The company has decided that although the competitive environment isn’t going to decrease pressure, it can implement programs to alleviate some of the negative effects. It has given HR adequate funds to launch a stress management program.

You have been selected to be part of the “Coping with Stress” team. There will be a number of initiatives, from redesigning work environments and building new exercise facilities to creating greater job flexibility and job sharing arrangements, and so forth. As part of the learning initiative group, you have been tasked with developing a training program on “Stress and Stress Management” for all employees, from seasoned executives to entry-level new hires. The program is to be delivered live in groups of 12 to 20. The training session will be one day long (7.5 hours). A generous budget has been promised, but you will have to make a strong case to obtain your funds.

You’ve been studying stress and stress management with expert consultants for the past six weeks. During that time you and they have identified this program content:

• What is stress? Its psychological and physiological symptoms.
• Evaluating your own stress level.
• Your stress profile.
• Sources of stress at work.
• Sources of stress outside the workplace.
• Effective responses to stress.
• Ineffective responses to stress.
• Ways to manage stress.

Your immediate mission is to take a first pass at the content and come up with an initial plan for the training. You decide to approach this task by applying the four adult learning principles to the one-day course. Let’s see what happens.

Readiness

How do you open the learners’ minds and spirits to the content? How do you show the value of the learning for them? Take a moment to consider this. What would you do to get them ready?

Pause. Reflect. Jot down some readiness ideas.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

 

Here are some of our suggestions, and we don’t claim that ours are the best. Consider them in addition to the ones you wrote.

 

• Before the program invitations go out, send information about stress via email or with pay notices or checks to all employees.
• Provide eye-catching information on the effect of stress in the workplace and in our personal lives.
• Break down the silence barrier by letting people know that stress is a common concern that leads to undesirable but normal feelings and behaviors.
• With the invitations to the stress sessions include a list of benefits to the individual, team, organization, family, and friends.
• Prior to the session, send out a simple, easy-to-respond-to stress assessment. Offer to provide an explanation and interpretation of scores during the session.
• Create a welcoming, low-stress environment for the session.
• Open the session with a dramatic, personal, stress-related anecdote that is a bit shocking, but also one with which participants can empathize. Draw them into a dialogue early.
• As you open each new part of the session, begin with a discussion or activities that emphasize the session’s personal benefits to participants.

Experience

How do you speak the learners’ language and build from their experience at the right level? How do you acknowledge and exploit positive and negative experiences?

Pause. Reflect. Jot down some ideas of how to ensure that you deal with and draw from participants’ experiences.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

 

Here are some of our ideas:

 

• Interview employees at various levels prior to developing your training session. Collect war stories about stress occurrences. Find out what sorts of stress people experience that cut across all employee groups, and what sorts of stress are more specific to certain populations.
• Convert those stories and the information you gather into examples, role plays, and anecdotes (even videotape vignettes, if funds are available) for use during the session.
• Collect research data on how people experience and deal with stress in organizations similar to yours.
• In your interviews or focus groups with employees, find out how they deal with stress at work and at home. Integrate their solutions into session activities and materials.
• During the session, ask participants to define stress in their own words and to share experiences, sources of stress, and solutions to eliminate it.
• Provide case examples and let participants form self-selected teams to solve them.
• Press the participants to explain the rationales for their solutions based on experiences, both personal and from observation.

Autonomy

How do you get participants to take charge of their own learning? What must you do to get them to participate and contribute?

Pause. Reflect. Generate some ideas for making the participant-learners as autonomous as possible.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

 

The key in this case is to build numerous exercises that require participation and contribution. Develop scenarios, role plays, cases, brainstorming, and practice activities that require learner involvement. Examples of those activities are shown in table 5-3.

Table 5-3. Examples of Participatory Learning Activities

 

Activity	Example
Scenario	• Show a video vignette from a known film or popular television show or play an audio-recorded scene that is dramatic and stressful. Open the discussion. • Have two or three participants read roles for various characters in a stressful situation. Stop at a dramatic moment and draw reactions, solutions, and so on from the participants. (Draw from your earlier interviews to build scenarios.)
Role play	• Based on your research, develop a role-play setting with a stressful theme (for example, aging parents with health problems coupled with high work demands and inadequate resources). Have participants play out the roles to increase or reduce stress.
Cases	• Provide reality-based cases dealing with different stress themes. Have participants select the cases they wish to work on in teams. Have teams identify key stress elements, symptoms, causes, solutions, and so forth. Debrief with the teams. Draw from the solutions to generate lists of principles for coping with stress.
Brainstorming	• Select some of the stress examples from the focus groups you conducted during your research and brainstorm ways of dealing with them.
Practice activities	• Demonstrate stress identification or stress reduction exercises. Have participants practice, for example, relaxation techniques, self-massage, and partner massage. (Note: These activities are only for those who are comfortable doing them. You don’t want the activity to create more stress.) • Provide a menu of materials, artifacts, and techniques. Have participants select these and try them out.

Action

How do you make sure adult learners see that they can apply what they are learning to their jobs and lives immediately? How can you maximize transfer from the learning context to the real world?

Once more, pause. Reflect. Come up with suggestions for making the stress and stress management content something the participants see they can use right away and with success. Action!

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

 

This is the toughest of the learning principles, but being aware of that prepares you to do many things to operationalize learning. Consider the following means:

 

• Create a blank personal action plan for use throughout the entire session. As participants go through each activity, they make notes or check off items in various sections of the action plan that they can apply immediately following the training.
• Provide company materials and lists of resources and community services with contact information that apply to the different topics in the session (for example, a company employee assistance program and a list of support groups, financial assistance agencies, substance abuse programs, and career assistance programs).
• Distribute audio and video materials that provide information participants can share on or off the job, or ones that help reduce stress at the office, at home, or in the car.
• Create a buddy system among participants and establish regular contact times.
• Develop an automated stress-o-meter that pops up on a person’s computer screen back on the job. He or she responds to questions weekly and obtains feedback on stress level and stress reduction progress. The individual can compare himself or herself with self-selected groups by choosing among different ages, genders, types of work, or other descriptors.

The possibilities for developing and delivering learner-centered educational opportunities based on sound adult learning principles are endless. This sample situation asked you to reflect on how you might apply the four adult learning principles to a stress and stress management learning session. With this approach, are you focusing more on the

• learner?
• content?

We’re certain that you checked off learner. The content only comes alive when you focus on the key adult learning principles. Can you name them?

1. _______________________________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________________________
4. _______________________________________________________________

Check your responses against column A in table 5-4. Then match the four items in column A with the appropriate statements in column B.

Table 5-4. Four Principles of Adult Learning

 

Column A	Column B
Readiness	1. Adult learners must participate in and contribute to their learning.
Experience	2. Adult learners must see how they can credibly apply what they have learned immediately.
Autonomy	3. Adult learners see the benefits to themselves of what they are learning and thus open their minds to it.
Action	4. Adult learners are not empty vessels. They learn best when the learning content and activities integrate with what they already know and are aimed at the right level.

 

You’ve got it if you matched the following items: readiness—3; experience—4; autonomy—1; and action—2.

The Bottom Line on Adult Learning Principles

Training is a waste of time—yours, your participants’, and your organization’s—if it doesn’t work. By focusing on adult learners and their needs and characteristics, your (and their) probability of success skyrockets. You, we, and our learners are so much alike. What works for us, by and large, also works for them. The golden rule in all of this is, “Train others as you would have them train you.” Keep this in mind when you move to the next chapter where we derive a model and create a plan for building effective learning sessions based on that golden rule.

 

Remember This

Many important points were raised in this chapter about adult learning. We close this chapter with a brief review quiz. Complete each of these statements by crossing out the less appropriate option.

1. A “good” class is characterized by an instructor, a course designer, or a decision maker who makes the effort to create a learning experience relevant to (you from a personal / the organization from a business) perspective.
2. In “bad” classes, the instructor treats you as an (individual driven by your personal needs / empty vessel into which knowledge can be poured).
3. Given that we were frequently bored or confused by our teachers or professors, observation of trainers shows that we tend to (focus on our learners’ needs, concerns, and issues / repeat the practices we often hated as learners).
4. Our success as trainers, instructors, and educators comes from (the excellence of our presentations / learner success in applying what we taught).
5. “Andragogy” is the field of study dealing with (adult/child) teaching-learning.
6. The most effective way to build readiness in adult learners is to (show them what’s in it for them / demonstrate how what they are learning benefits the organization).
7. Treating adults as if they have no experience when they do generally (insults them and you lose them / relaxes them and opens them more fully to your instruction).
8. In general, adults like to (participate actively and contribute to their learning / absorb what you tell them during instruction so they can reflect before trying things out later).
9. To ensure attention and buy-in from adult learners, focus on (immediate/ eventual) application.
10. Training should be considered a (valiant effort / waste of time) if it doesn’t get applied back on the job.
11. Train others (to be like you / as you would have them train you).

Here is what we would have chosen with a brief rationale for each choice.

1. A “good” class is characterized by an instructor, a course designer, or a decision maker who makes the effort to create a learning experience relevant to you from a personal perspective. The learner is the center of attention. That’s why we insist on all of our training being “learner centered.” It’s all about the learner, your customer. If learners don’t “get it,” neither they nor the organization will benefit.
2. In “bad” classes, the instructor treats you as an empty vessel into which knowledge can be poured. No need to dwell on this one. Learners are not inert, passive vessels. They are driven by their individual requirements and interests. Attaching your instruction to these will open them up to what you offer.
3. Given that we were frequently bored or confused by our teachers or professors, observation of trainers shows that we tend to repeat the practices we often hated as learners. Alas, so true! We are imitators. We may have hated what we experienced, but then, lo and behold, there we are doing it to others. Ingrained models of behavior are hard to shed. Fight it.
4. Our success as trainers, instructors, and educators comes from learner success in applying what we taught. Simply put, their success is our success. We do not train to impress or be great presenters. That is another occupation. There is nothing wrong with presenting well except when it gets in the way of learners doing more. The keys to excellent instruction are practice and feedback. Emphasize what they do.
5. “Andragogy” is the field of study dealing with adult teaching-learning. Pedagogy is the teaching of children.
6. The most effective way to build readiness in adult learners is to show them what’s in it for them. As any good salesperson will explain, the benefit sell is the most effective. The expression “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) applies well to our learners.
7. Treating adults as if they have no experience when they do generally insults them and you lose them. Rather than ignore what your adult learners have experienced over time, exploit it. Even if the experiences have been negative, bring these out and deal with them. Demonstrate that what you are providing are means for overcoming previous negative experiences or enhancing and building upon what they already possess.
8. In general, adults like to participate actively and contribute to their learning. The principle of autonomy in adult learning centers on the fact that adults actively engage in their day-to-day decision making. They engage and contribute in their work. So should they in their learning. The more they contribute the more ownership they create for themselves. Probability of use back on the job increases.
9. To ensure attention and buy-in from adult learners, focus on immediate application. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Eventual use rarely happens. Proximity between learning and application strengthens connections in the brain and increases ease of retrieval.
10. Training should be considered a waste of time if it doesn’t get applied back on the job. Sorry. No one can afford valiant efforts, as noble as they may be. Training is costly, resource demanding, and time consuming. If it didn’t work, we lost valuable resources. The most valuable of those is time.
11. Train others as you would have them train you. You may be a paragon of every virtue—no offense meant—but the bottom line is like the golden rule: Train as you would like to be trained.

To summarize this chapter:

• Our job as trainers, instructors, and educators is to help adult learners learn. Their success is our success.
• By applying the four key adult learning principles—readiness, experience, autonomy, and action—you open your learners’ minds, connect with what they already know, get them involved, and lead them to successful on-thejob application.
• The golden rule of training is, “Train others as you would have them train you.”

What a great segue to the next chapter.