Adults Learn Differently Than Children
There’s a lot more to training than talking! An awful lot of us are educating our staff, our co-workers, our members these days without a clue of how to really help adults learn.
Studies show that we remember 80-90% of what we see and touch, and only 10-15% of what we hear...so there’s one thing for sure - people don’t learn by us talking!
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. Involve me and I learn”
—Benjamin Franklin
When you think of involving people in the learning process don’t you think of currently popular activities, such as outdoor experiences, interactive video, team building exercises? Involvement in the learning process is an adult learning “thing”. Adults need to be involved in the learning process in order to be able to perform what they’ve learned. Most of us agree with the previously stated research—we remember 80-90% of what we see and touch and only 10-15% of what we hear—it makes sense, but we don’t put it into practice when we plan for leadership training, certification programs, or helping a new co-worker or staff person learn their job or a new process.
I believe there are two reasons for this.
Number 1, many of us haven’t been trained to help people learn – we don’t have a BA or MA in Human Resource Development or Instructional Development, we don’t read Training Magazine each month, we don’t go to training on how to help people learn – we’re simply the most experienced at a task or we’re a meeting planner. So we get to be in charge of conferences, seminars and training.
There are a handful of us who went to school to learn how to educate and train but we too don’t involve people in the learning process as much as we ought to because we have been just that—trained to educate. No association on earth cares if someone can educate, or if the members or employees are educated, do they? We only care if the member or employee learned and can perform!
Even if you’ve been trained to educate, you probably still find yourself involving learners in the learning process less than you should because we think of ourselves as the educator – but no one cares if you can educate, they only care if the learner learns. Make a new mindset for yourself and you’ll involve learners more often – your job is not to educate but to create learning, so think of yourself as a Creator of Learning and you’ll involve people in the learning process more often because you’ll always be focusing on whether they’re learning, not whether you’re educating!
To be a great Creator of Learning you must understand one great truth about adults - adults learn differently than children. This is because adults and young adults come to the learning with experiences. The older the person, the more experiences they come with. Those of you who snow ski know all about those 5 year olds that zoom past you while you’re carefully maneuvering the slope. Why are they able to ski so fast, so quickly? Because they have no experience of falling, and even if they did, it’s only a foot and a half to the ground, so it’s no big deal! They have no experience of running into trees, like I have. They have no experience of another skier running into them, like I have.
So adults come to the learning with these negative experiences which hold them back from learning the new process, the new information or new task. The cool thing, of course, is that adults also come to learning with positive experiences which, when you recognize them, you can capitalize on them and generalize the past experience to the new one!
Adults learn from experiences. It’s a fact, and they are going to come to the learning with those experiences already in place. So our job—if we want to help them learn quickly and learn it the first time—is to recognize the experience they’ve had. If it’s negative, find a way to wipe it out, and if it’s positive, generalize it to the new task. For example, most of us, when we’re helping someone learn something, spend the first few minutes telling them all the neat new things this piece of equipment or software or process will do or the reasons why they’ll benefit from working in this new manner - new, new, new, new! And then we wonder why they’re holding back, not trying very hard, asking 500 questions! What we should do is start by telling them all the things this new piece of equipment, new process or new form does and how this is similar to old ones or ways they’ve done it before!
Adult Learning Theory (Malcolm Knowles) says that in order for adults to learn they must be involved in a 5 step process, beginning with experiencing - which can be remembering an experience or acting out the past experience (i.e. “show me what you can do before we get started with the training”) and then trying the new one, or for some reading about the new way to do it or watching another do it. They must then have the opportunity to publish - tell about the experience, the old one and the new one. Next, they need time to process - think about, talk about or evaluate what they’ve done, read or watched and therefore what they’ve learned. Then they must have the opportunity to generalize - relate in writing or speaking how what they’ve done, read or seen applies to what they’ll be doing on the job on their own once the training time is finished. The 5th step is for the learner to apply - which for many of us is actually doing the task, for others it’s planning what we’re going to do including a date to start. (insert Learning Theory graphic)
Adults must experience (which they’ll do with or without your help), publish, process, generalize and apply in order to learn. Your job, when you need to help someone learn, is to provide education that includes the ability for the learner to be involved in all 5 steps so the learning will be retained! Each learner is slightly different, some learners will want to read, others to talk, others to watch someone else doing the task first, etc. All of these are significantly more involving than the standard talking to them (lecture) or the “you show them, they try, you leave” type of training which is involving but only works for some learners as some learn better from trying without you and others from reading.
Tell us what you can you do to stop talking so much and start helping people learn!