Learning doesn’t end with a school diploma. Adults all over the world are sitting in classrooms, community halls and cafes, learning new skills or knowledge, for fun or for profit. But what are best ways to teach them? If you find yourself teaching adults, then using the wide experiences of your participants, creating a learner-centered environment and understanding their needs and expectations will help make it a successful experience for you and them.
Teaching adults sounds relatively easy, doesn’t it? You’d expect them not to read music magazines in class, or pass notes to their friend on the other side of the room, and even for them to do their homework most of the time. In my experience, these expectations have proven correct (although only sometimes for the homework issue!). But there are other challenges to be overcome if you want to teach a group of adults successfully. Whether you’re teaching a community course, training some colleagues or even lecturing in college, the three principles described here will help you create a thriving learning environment where both you and your students are happy.
Use the Motivation and Experience of Your Students
More often than not, adult learners have their own intrinsic motivation to be in a class. Perhaps they want to upgrade their computer skills to help them find a better job, or they have found they need certain language skills in their business travel. They will probably be highly motivated if they sign up for a course on gardening or golf because they are really keen to develop their skills as a hobby. Whenever the student themselves has made the choice to attend a course, their motivation – and very likely, their subsequent effort to learn – is usually very high. Encourage this and you’re already on the way to having happy students. Of course, not all adults will learn something new by choice – perhaps the boss has insisted they spend a day studying the latest tax laws, when they’re not at all interested. But for the most part, adults are self-motivated who are keen to learn something.
Another key point about adult learners is the experience and knowledge they bring to a course. They’re not school kids who only know about the latest sports results and hottest movies and music – they might be business people who’ve traveled the world, or parents who’ve raised several kids, or experts in all kinds of unique fields. Find out about their existing knowledge on the subject of the course and incorporate this into class activities. If some of the students in a course on carrying out negotiations in a multicultural environment have lived and worked abroad, make them team leaders in group activities so they can share their knowledge with other participants. Not everything adults learn should come from the teacher – and most are more than happy to learn from their more experienced peers. A corollary to this is that you, as a teacher, should never pretend to know everything. It’s more than OK to answer a question with, “I don’t know” and turn it over to other members of the class – and if that doesn’t work, I always say “It’s my homework to find the answer to that.” It’s better for a facilitator to help students acquire new skills and knowledge, rather than adopt a traditional “teacher-as-font-of-all-wisdom” kind of attitude. Adult students are wise to this: teachers just can’t know everything! Finally, give students plenty of opportunities to use their previous experience – for example, give options in project work for participants to focus on their own interests and needs and use their past practice as a basis to which they can add new skills.