Principles of Training

Learning Principles - Facilitator Guide.docx

Learning Principles - Facilitator Guide A4.docx

Adult Learning Principles

Objectives:

Apply principles of adult learning and how adults use their knowledge, skills, and attitudes in a training environment or while engaged in work
Apply techniques for enhancing learner engagement

Section Overview

“The purpose of this section is to provide new instructors with an overview of adult learning principles. It contains detailed descriptions of each adult learning principle.”

<aside> 💡 Make sure you encourage and thank each of the trainers who is participating. They all have busy, full schedules so it is a sacrifice and shows how much they value their students. Usually we are good about doing this in person but it is easy to forget if your class is on Zoom.

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Opening Activity

The key to making this a successful training event is to model the behaviors you expect students to emulate. For the adult learning principles open up with an activity that incorporates these learning principles.

<aside> 💡 Before beginning the exercise ask each trainer to share what education/training and experience they have in adult education.

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Climate Setting

Exercise - Setting the Climate

This activity serves as both an example of an opener activity and as a valuable comparison in its own right. Read the instructions in the learner guide and capture as many characteristics as your learners can come up with that describe a boring class. This is an opportunity for you to illustrate the use of humor in class by reading the instructions like this, “Think of the most boring class you have attended (outside of this class of course)…” Your instructor candidates will appreciate it and it will demonstrate an appropriate use of humor in climate setting.

After you have read the instructions, solicit as many responses from the class as you can. Many of them will be similar. Using a whiteboard or flip chart, divide it into left and right columns. Ask the learners to list the characteristics of a boring class. Record their answers. Collect enough responses to identify all the opposites of the six learning principles.

Once you have captured all the ideas and condensed or categorized similar responses, then ask learners to describe what the opposite characteristic of each is and record it in a second column next to the first. If you have not already done so, direct them to copy the list from the board or PowerPoint presentation into their learner guides. When they are done, congratulate them on coming up with a very thorough list and transition to the slide on the six principles of adult learning.