Learn about the adult learning principles in 3 areas: The adult as learner, content for whom? and organize content.

1. Adult Learning Principles
By Vanessa Aller
Does this
apply to me?

2. Adults like to be in
charge of their learning
and associate new info
with old info.
The Adult as
Learner
Adult Learning Principles
In this e-learning, you will learn:
Adults only care about
content that is relevant
to their needs.
Content for
Whom?
Structuring the content
for easy assimilation is
more efficient.
Organize
Content
Click here to review
this section
Click here to review
this section
Click here to review
this section

3. Engaging Learning

4. Vanessa Aller
It is important to get adult learners
involved in their learning process
through the use of:
• Questions
• Problems-Solving Scenarios
• Exercises
• Additional Resources
This will allow them to apply the
content and store it in the long
term memory.

5. Have you even tried to find similarities between new
information and old information?
I had the experience of teaching
an 80-year-old man how to use
a cell phone. Part of what I did
was tell him that the red button
and the green button are like the
red light and the green light in a
traffic light.
The next day he came and said
to me: “Hey, I was able to
make a phone call. I
remembered the red light
means stop and the green one
mean go like the traffic light.”

6. Applicable Valuable

7. Have you had to complete a
form that has optional
fields?
What do you do? Do you
complete those fields?
The majority of adult learners
ignore any information that is
not necessary just like
people ignore optional fields
in forms.
Training is about content that the learner “needs to
know” not “nice to know”. It is a waste of content
because adult learners will ignore it.

8. Frequent Flier Seating
(Excused from safety
demo)
When you travel: have you
ever had to train on how to
communicate with the
control tower or where to
store the beverages?
No. Why? You are the
passenger not the pilot or the
flight attendant.
Training has to be specific to
the role the person has in
the organization.
One size fits all is not a good approach for
adult learners.

9. Organized
Easy to
understand

10. Intro
Content
End
Content
Agenda
Content
Content
Content
Content
Content
Content
Questions
You loose
your
audience
right about
here
Most PPT presentations look
like the author dumped content
between an introduction and a
question slide.
What happens with this
structure?
• You loose your audience
• And they don’t learn every
point presented.

11. Intro
Part 1
Content
Agenda
Content
Part 2
Content
Content
Content
Questions
Part 3
Content
Content
Content
Summary
Questions
Part 4
Content
Content
Content
Summary
It is best to group the information by areas which will allow for
better learning, and an engaged audience because the
information is easier to digest. It also allows for places where
participants can ask questions or provide examples to illustrate
the points presented and tied them to known information.

12. To summarize....
• Adult learners like to be active in their learning process and
like to connect new information with old information to make it
easier to remember.
• Use content that is necessary, not optional and make it
relevant to the person receiving the training.
• It’s easier to eat a cake in pieces than as a whole.
Organizing content in small units makes it easier to digest and
provides the opportunity for breaks that allow for participation.

13. Homework
Share with us a training experience where you felt engaged
throughout the training. What was it that made it engaging?
Have you ever associate new content with previously known
content so that you could remember?