Adult Development
#1: Provide opportunities to learn and practice adult skills and behaviors
How:
- Explicitly teach time management, teamwork, self-directed learning, research skills, negotiation tactics, etc.
- Create activities that cause learners to manage their time, define their needs, employ research skills, negotiate outcomes, and create and present projects that are based as nearly as possible on real situations they are likely to encounter.
- Use role plays, scenarios, case studies and simulations
Why: Because these skills, which are needed in my class, are also important life skills. Now is the time to start practicing them.
#2: Teach at the upper end of Bloom's taxonomy
How:
- Focus on activities that require analysis, synthesis and evaluation
- Use Socratic questioning
- Model the target type of thinking and the processes used; go through the processes step-by-step; use mindmaps and flow charts, provide exemplars
Why: These are higher order thinking skills that will be new to my learners.
#3: Allow learners some control over the classroom
How:
- Provide for choice when learners must demonstrate competency
- Collaboratively create and enforce behavior guidelines
Why: Learners who are experiencing upheaval elsewhere in their lives need to see how to control their environments. Need to practice taming the chaos.
#4: Provide opportunities for learners to assume a variety of roles
How:
- Use team projects and rotate responsibilities
- Use role plays, readers’ theater, scenarios, and simulations to allow students to assume a variety of roles and relationships
Why: Because learners defining their identities need a safe place to test and refine them
#5: Provide experiences that cater to all types of learners
How:
- Create activities based on all the senses, including auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and visual
- Balance active and reflective work
- Plan lessons around the Kolb model of experiential learning to be sure that all the bases have been touched
Why: Learners have just been freed from an academic straight jacket; they need help in exploring their new options.
#6: Create a warm and safe atmosphere in the classroom
How:
- Be lavish but sincere with praise
- Celebrate mistakes
- Collaboratively create protocols for model behavior on discussion boards, in teams, for live chats, etc.
Why: Learners are testing new roles and identities. They need a place where they are not afraid to test them out.
#7: Focus learning on issues most relevant to learners
How:
- Be clear about "what's in it for me"
- To the degree possible, make relationships a predominant theme, especially for reflection activities
Why: Learners are just entering the stage of adult learning. Adult learning theory tells us learners learn what they want to know.