Understanding Adult Learning

1. Characteristics of adult learners

Seek novel information = “pearls”

Seek practical information (grades no longer a motivation)

Best attention and retention achieved with active learning aka Learner Centered Approach

2. Types of Learners

Learning types can grow and adapt but generally remain dominant

Different approaches work for different types – so feature a variety!

Teacher tend to use styles best for their own type (alienates others)

Perception Types(what kinds of data do we value/recognize?)

Sensory Dominant Perceivers

  • Respond to data over concepts/relationships
  • Easily receive large amounts of information
  • Struggle to organize, interpret

Clearly explain the relevance and relationship of data

Use metaphors

Intuitive Perceivers

  • Pay more attention to recognizing & understanding patterns, implications of data
  • Often tend to be less conscious of their environment
  • Struggle with recalling detail (“what if’s” > “what is’s”)

Challenge them to use the data to support ideas

Decision Making:how do learners decide what to do with new information?

Thinking Decision Makers

  • Rational, logical. Quantitative weighing of data
  • Prioritize what is efficient, effective

Emphasize logic and facts

Be wary of unsupported “expert” opinion

Feeling Decision Makers

  • Compare alternatives against their own values, beliefs
  • Prioritize what is good, true, just, beautiful

Humanize the lesson – use stories and values discussions to justify “logical conclusions”

Data Collectors

  • Feel that attitudes will continually evolve with additional data
  • prefer others to make decisions

need firm deadlines, criteria, expectations

Decision-dominant

  • Value making a decision and moving on
  • Reluctant to reconsider a decision once made

Challenge them to provide supporting evidence

Introversion vs Extroversion:Value placed on group thinking

Extroverts

  • Look to others for ideas, validation
  • Make decisions through consultation
  • Value consensus – thrive in group activities
  • Decisions tend to lack originality but incorporate different perspectives

Use group activities to engage

Reference groups and supporters of your conclusions

Introverts

  • Decisions driven by personal logic, understanding, values
  • Struggle with group projects
  • Original ideas which may seem too foreign to the group

Limit groups to 3 to optimize participation

Validate, encourage, model individual approaches

Champagne, David W. Improving your teaching: how do students learn? Law Library J 1991; 83:85-90.

3. Levels of Learning (aka Models in Instructional Design)

Every learner is at a unique stage in their development.

Understanding new material requires a foundation – i.e. you must teach to their Zone of Proximal Learning

a. RIME Model: Reporter Interpreter Manager Evaluator

b.Consciousness and Competence

Unconsciously incompetent
MS – 2 / Consciously Incompetent
MS – 3,4; PGY-1
Consciously Competent
PGY – 2 / Unconsciously Competent
PGY- 3

c. Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Knowledge – define, list, arrange

Comprehension – describe, classify, explain, identify, locate, select,

Application – apply, choose, demonstrate

Analysis – appraise, categorize, compare, contrast, test

Synthesis – arrange, assemble, collect, compose, organize, plan

Evaluation – argue, assess, judge, predict

d. Conditions of Learning (Robert Gagne)

Theory stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning - each different type requires different types of instruction.

5 categories of learning: Different internal & external conditions are necessary for each type of learning.

  • verbal information
  • intellectual skills
  • cognitive strategies
  • motor skills
  • attitudes

9 instructional events and corresponding cognitive processes:

  1. Gaining attention (reception)
  2. Informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
  3. Stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
  4. Presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
  5. Providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
  6. Eliciting performance (responding)
  7. Providing feedback (reinforcement)
  8. Assessing performance (retrieval)
  9. Enhancing retention and transfer (generalization).

Principles

  1. Different instruction is required for different learning outcomes.
  2. Events of learning operate on the learner in ways that constitute the conditions of learning.
  3. The specific operations that constitute instructional events are different for each different type of learning outcome.
  4. Learning hierarchies define what intellectual skills are to be learned and a sequence of instruction.

4.Understanding Memory

In general we can recall:

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

80% of what we do (and teach)

The key to memory is linking new information to something already understood

Moonwalking with Einsteinby Joshua Foer

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