Teaching that works for adults

I participated in a helpful workshop yesterday about dialogue education based on the ideas of an apparently very bright woman named Jane Vella. I want to learn more and more how to help people capture and apply valuable information. A good sermon still packs a punch, a powerful speech builds vision, inspires passion and catalyzes action, and well written articles (and blogs?) extend the range of communication. But many people learn best in a situation in which they’re given a chance to interact with the content being taught. Creating such settings was the point of this workshop.




Here are a couple of key take aways for me:

Six principles of effective adult learning theory

1. Respect: Respect your students because they each bring something to the table. Their life experiences matter.

2. Immediacy: Help students understand how they can immediately use the information being conveyed.

3. Relevance: Similar to immediacy, communicate the relevance of the content to the students’ lives.

4. Safety: Build a learning environment that is challenging, but not threatening. Students should feel like they can be involved without embarrassment.

5. Engagement: Students should be involved in the learning event, not simply passive recipients.

6. Inclusion: Teachers should make an effort to engage all students.

I plan to review my next several talks to see how they measure up to these six principles. I think I do well with respect, safety and inclusion, but could do better with immediacy and relevance.

Our instructor, Karen Ridout, also laid out four ways to involve students during a class or presentation by giving them four types of learning activities. She called it:

The Four A Model

Anchor (inductive): This is a task that has the learner access their own prior knowledge or experience with the topic or content. It helps them center on the topic and realize they have stuff to bring to the table.

Add (input): This a learning task that has the student hear, see, or experience substantive new content (information, research, theory, skill).

Apply (implement): With these tasks the learner puts the new content into action during the class.

Away (integrate): This is a task that connects the new learning back to the life of the learner and its future use. Think, “homework with a purpose.” These tasks include action plans and commitment statements.

My plan is to integrate one task from each of these categories into the next four talks I give.

Go here for more info on these ideas. Go here to buy Dr. Vella’s books.