Workshop Title: Facilitating the Adult Learning Experience – Engaging People in Ways that Transform Behavior and Results
Description: However exciting and brilliant the teacher may be, it is well known that one-way lecture is not the best way for adults to learn. Malcolm Shepherd Knowles was an American educator who, in 1984, suggested four principles of adult learning:
- Adults need to be actively involved in planning and evaluating their learning experiences.
- Experience, including mistakes, provides the basis for adult learning activities.
- Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.
- Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.
In order to be effective, rather than an expert communicating content via lecture, a “learning laboratory” must be created where participants can actively engage in their educational experience. Facilitating these learning laboratories requires different skills and approaches than delivering content via lecture. These can be learned and integrated into the teaching style of educators who have previously relied primarily on lecture.
One professor at a famous university, when confronted with the realities of the adult learning experience, admitted “I have not updated my course for the past 20 years.” In less than a day this professor and his colleagues were able to experience the effectiveness of an active, lively, and engaging adult learning laboratory, understand the models underlying the effectiveness of this approach, and practice applying this experiential facilitation approach to their own teaching style.
This is not “case-study” based teaching. This is a transformational workshop where teachers become facilitators that create the environments that provide the opportunity for their students to explore, discover, learn, change and grow.
Objectives:
- Learn a Model of Adult Learning Theory based on experiential education.
- Experience a “Learning Laboratory” that positively impacts performance after the workshop.
- Practice Facilitation Techniques proven effective in changing mindset, language and behavior.
- Design Experiential Learning into Your Next “Class”.
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