Adult Learning Principles

Connect life experiences and prior learning to new knowledge.

Involve students in the learning process, by facilitating the sharing and application of knowledge and not just supplying facts.

Create well organised educational programmes with clearly defined objectives and components, showing how education will help students reach their goals.

Help students understand why they should be learning about a topic by making it pertinent to, and ensuring that it impacts, their personal and professional lives.

Show students how the learning will benefit them and create a comfortable and appropriately challenging learning environment.

Limit lecturing and provide opportunities for questions, exercises, and the sharing of experiences, that require students to practice a skill or apply knowledge.

Offer a variety of teaching methods (e.g., group discussion, role-playing, lecturing, case studies, panel/guest expert, games, structured note-taking, individual coaching, demonstration, the use of a variety of media) and use different visual, auditory, and kinesthetic teaching techniques.

Ensure feedback is timely, clear, focuses on improvement strategies, and encourages reflection. Communicate a curiosity about what learners know, what they understand, where they make errors, when they have misconceptions, and when they are not engaged.