Tips for Adult Learning

1. Adults seek out learning experiences in order to cope with specific life-changing events--e.g. a new job, a promotion, marriage, retiring, moving to a new city.
2. Any change brings in stress and the motivation to cope with change through engagement in a learning experience increases.
3. The learning experiences of the adults are guided by their own perception of the life-changing events.
4. Learning is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
5. Increasing or maintaining one's sense of self-esteem and pleasure are strong secondary motivators for engaging in learning experiences.
6. Adult learners tend to focus heavily on the application of the concept to relevant problems. Adults need to be able to integrate new ideas with what they already know if they are going to keep - and use - the new information.
7. Adults tend to take errors personally and are more likely to let them affect self-esteem. Therefore, they tend to apply tried-and-true solutions and take fewer risks.
8. Adults prefer self-directed and self-designed learning projects to group-learning experiences. They select more than one medium for learning, and they desire to control pace and start/stop time.
9. Self-direction does not mean isolation. Studies of self-directed learning indicate that self-directed projects involve an average of 10 other people as resources, guides, encouragers and the like. But even for the self-professed, self-directed learner, lectures and short seminars get positive ratings, especially when these events give the learner face-to-face, one-to-one access to an expert.
10. Adults have something real to lose in a classroom situation. Self-esteem and ego are on the line when they are asked to risk trying a new behavior in front of peers.
11. Adults bring a great deal of life experience into the classroom, an invaluable asset to be acknowledged, tapped and used. Adults can learn well -and much - from dialogue with respected peers.
12. New knowledge has to be integrated with previous knowledge; students must actively participate in the learning experience.
13. The key to the instructor role is control. The instructor must balance the presentation of new material, debate and discussion, sharing of relevant student experiences, and the clock.

Hence, adults want their learning to be problem-oriented, personalized and accepting of their need for self-direction and personal responsibility.

Source: 30 THINGS WE KNOW FOR SURE ABOUT ADULT LEARNING by Ron and Susan Zemke
Innovation Abstracts Vol VI, No 8, March 9, 1984

Contributed by Ms. Ipsita C. Patranabis

Globsyn Business School