6 Things You Should Know About How Adults Learn

How many times have you taught or explained something to someone and they could perfectly do it, AND they remembered exactly how to do that thing the next time the opportunity presented itself.  

Yeah...probably never.  

When we talk about professional development we are talking about the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors of adults.  Therefore it is important to understand how adults learn.  

A guy named Malcolm Knowles developed a theory on how adults learn.  Getting familiar with this theory will greatly help you as you work to develop resources for Stat PD

There are 6 assumptions of adult learners: 

1. Need to Know Why - if adults are going to learn something they first need to know the why.  This is especially true when someone in their life is asking them to learn something. Let’s take a nurse leader for instance. You want your nurses to learn about interventions for pressure ulcers. You can invite them to an in-service and share all the interventions with them and how to use those interventions in the prevention of pressure ulcers, but if they don’t know why they are learning it they won’t retain it.  

Maybe you have seen an uptick in hospital acquired pressure ulcers on your unit? Maybe you notice specific interventions are not being used appropriately and are causing more harm than good.

Whatever it is lead with WHY.

This gets their attention and helps them understand the value of the resources and how it will improve their performance. 

2. Self-Direction -  Adults have the privilege of being in control of themselves.  Any time we tell adults something is mandatory - whether a class, meeting, or even a vaccine - they will resist.  Flash back to being forced to eat those peas at the dinner table.  This conflicts with the newly developed psychological sense of being in control. While they might show up and let you force feed the peas, they aren’t going to enjoy it and likely won’t retain it. 

So what do we do?

Give them choices. 

Now I know what you are thinking: "some of this stuff is required by accreditation bodies or government agencies". That is absolutely true.  While there will always be things that are ‘mandatory’, I would encourage you to think about where you can offer choices.  Are there multiple opportunities for people to attend an in person session? Can they read the information, watch a video, or listen to an audio clip? Reflect on where you can give them choices to help them feel in control of their own learning experience. 

Hint to our Stat PD Sellers: Think about how you can format your resource in a variety of ways to help our buyers offer more choice to their learners. Upcycle, recycle, and reuse your content. 

3. Value Their Differences - Adults have gained experience in life. We need to honor that. If your professional development is targeted at professionals that have been working a while, don't insult them by feeding them information about basic concepts. Instead, ask what they know about the topic already and design your resources to reinforce what they already know, deepen their understanding, or teach them something completely new.  

This is why application learning is key. Tap into their experience by developing activities that promote discussion, group sharing, problem solving, or anything that requires hands-on activities. Think simulation exercises, practicing skills and using equipment in real-life, or exploring case studies together.  Get them using what they know so when you build on that, it sticks.

4. Readiness - In addition to knowing why something is important, they really need to be ready to learn as well. They are often ready to learn when the thing they need to know will help them in real-life, and can use immediately.

I often think of the orientation of healthcare professionals.  During those first days or weeks, so much information is thrown their way that they are simply not ready to learn because chances are it won’t be used for weeks, months, or years.  

So do you just wait patiently until a person is ready? Absolutely not. As you design and build resources, consider how you can help your learner to be ready. Sometimes it is simply building in the connection of how the thing you are trying to teach them is immediately usable in different situations.  This can be done by providing examples, discussion, or simulation exercises in which they gain awareness around their need for more knowledge. 

5. Life-Centered - While this isn’t true for all, a lot of adults don’t want to know things just for the sake of knowing things. Between home, work, and family obligations, many adults feel that there is no room in their brain to hold what they classify as useless information.  Adults are life-centered, which means they don’t want just more information.  They want meaning.  

Develop resources that allow them to apply what you need them to know in the real world.  More specifically, real world situations they can encounter on any given day.  For example instead of teaching a course on general communication principles, consider teaching a course on how to communicate with a physician. This provides more meaning and is a skill all healthcare professionals could use almost daily. 

6. Motivation - Dangling the carrot may work for some in terms of motivation, but the biggest motivation come from within. While pay, continuing education credits, and promotions can help, if you really want to make learning stick, figure out how you can tap into internal motivators such as autonomy, competence, and application. 

Motivation will come from feeling like they are in the driver's seat. Creating resources that aren’t too easy or too hard, but just right. Helping them to connect what they are learning back to the real world. These things will motivate learning more than any external motivator ever could. 

Now that you have gotten a mini tutorial on adult learning principles, I encourage you to really consider how you can use this information in the creation of the educational resources you are wanting to sell on Stat PD. Lead with the why, give them choices where possible, build on their prior knowledge, connect to their immediate needs, use real world example, and tap into their internal motivation. Using these key principles will help you to build stellar resources that add real value to your learners. 

Reference: 

Knowles, M., Elwood, H., & Swanson, R. (2005). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier.