Tips for Teaching

Adult Learners
Pew FTLC Fall Teaching Conference
August 21, 2013
Overview
• Review motivation

• Characteristics of adult learners

• Self-determination Theory

• Strategies for incorporating

• Purpose
• Mastery
• Autonomy
What is an “Adult Learner”
• American Council on Education (ACE)

Adult learners are typically defined as learners over the age

of 25, and are often referred to as nontraditional students.
Yet for almost two decades, adult learners have comprised
close to 40 percent of the college-going population,
spanning a range of backgrounds and experiences, from Iraq
and Afghanistan war veterans and GED® credential holders
to 55-year-old professionals and skilled workers in career
transition.
Characteristics of Adult Learners
• Competing interests: family, work, school

• Seek education as means to an end (new career, promotion,

learn new skills, etc..)

• Learning is voluntary; it’s a choice, therefore often more

motivated to learn
 Direction and Intensity of Effort:
Where do you want your students?
Approach

Tendency to participate, but puts forth little effort Tendency to participate and puts forth high effort

Low intensity High intensity

Tendency to avoid participation and if forced Tendency to avoid, but if forced to participate, puts forth great effort
to participate, puts forth little effort

Avoid
Tips for Teaching Adult Students
Deci & Ryan, 1991

• Purpose-how learning fits in big picture, social connectedness

• Autonomy- control, independence, choice

• Mastery- learn skill, obtain knowledge, ability

*** When these needs are met, individuals exhibit optimal

motivation!
Validate where people are
Create a supportive classroom environment:
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Small group discussion
• Develop own goals for this course- what do you want to be
able to do upon completion of this course?
• 3 techniques that enhance own learning
Purpose
• Interested in courses that focus heavily on application of
concepts to real-life problems

• Adults bring a invaluable life experience into classroom and

can learn much from dialogue with respected peers

• Faculty need to connect concepts to learner experience on

daily basis
Develop course rationale statement
• What’s in it for me?
• Why do I need this information
• How will I benefit from it?
• How can I make use of it in a practical way?
• How will it help me be a better person or professional?

***what is your course rationale?

Autonomy
• Adults want some control over learning
• Favor self-directed and self-designed projects over group
learning led by faculty
• They like more than one medium for learning(books, online
resources, media, etc…)

• Faculty need to incorporate students interests, preferences

and values into learning activities and avoid rewards,
directives, deadlines and compliance requests
Mastery
• Adult learners tend to take mistakes and errors personally and
take fewer risks.

• Adults have expectations of success and it is critical that

Faculty clarify and articulate goals and expectations before
getting into content
Mastery cont.…
• Change threatens mastery- adult learners might resist new
information that challenges what they know/do. Need to be
able to integrate new ideas with what already know if going to
“keep” and “use” new information

• Faculty need to work slowly through the why and how of

challenging information
Mastery: Experience makes a
difference
For traditional students- experience is something that happens
to them
vs.
Adult learners define themselves by their experiences

Adults are life/task/problem centered

vs.
Subject matter oriented
There is a difference
Undergraduate
• Major usually provides only a
broad overview of the field.
• Spend a great deal of time
memorizing facts, definitions,
lists, and formulas for tests and
assignments
• Simple book reports and 5-7 page
papers on general topics
Graduate
• Entails specializing and becoming an
expert in your very narrow field of
study
• Requires ability to synthesize what is
read and learned in class and ask
student to critically analyze it in light
of own experience and perspective.
• Papers require student to analyze
problems by applying the literature
and constructing arguments that are
supported by the literature.
Which would be adult learner centered?
• Students complete a • Students are asked to
group quiz over the write an individual
assigned reading at reaction or reflection
the beginning of class paper or solve a
problem based on
own experience in
response to the
reading
Which would be adult learner centered?
• You assign a group • You ask individuals to
project that requires select a policy in
students to “plug-in” their current
class concepts to workplace and
create a workplace update/revise it
policy based on class
concepts
Adult Learners
• Have high expectations of you, the course, themselves

• Need to be co-creators of knowledge

• Desire clear structure & expectations

• Desire timely and constructive feedback

• You teach a 200 level Introduction to X
Profession course for your department. Of the
30 students who have enrolled, all but two are
traditional college students. One of the non-
traditional students is a male veteran in his
early 30’s; the other is a first time in college
female in her early 40’s.
• You teach both graduate and undergraduate
classes for your department. This semester you
are teaching a graduate course in which about
half of the student’s recently received their
bachelor’s degree in your major. The remaining
half of the student’s enrolled are adult learners
who are not from your program but possess
rich, real world, work experience.
• You teach graduate classes in a professional
program at the university. Due to licensure and
certification standards, required courses are very
structured and allow for very little flexibility
across the curriculum. The “lock-step” nature of
this program is challenging as it requires
students to acquire both a breadth and depth of
knowledge/skills in a regimented time frame.