Archive for the ‘Adult Learning Principles’ Category
Monday, May 9th, 2016
Anyone who has done teaching or taken classes in teaching methods has likely heard the term “pedagogy.” This term is most widely used currently to mean “the art and science … of teaching,” although the original meaning was actually more specific to teaching children. As librarians, we strive to create instructional materials that are appropriate for the learning needs of our students. For this reason, andragogy may be a better alternative and approach, especially for adult and online learners.
Andragogy as a methodology has its roots as far back as 1833 with a German teacher named Alexander Kapp, although its current usage is attributed to Malcolm Knowles, who adopted the word to describe the differences in the ways individuals – especially adults – learn.
Pedagogy and andragogy are very different teaching models. For example, pedagogy is considered a content model, whereas andragogy is a process model. The process model aims to provide the skills and resources needed to acquire information, rather than simply presenting information. Andragogy encourages the teacher as facilitator, where the emphasis in on enabling the student to learn. For adult learners and online students, andragogy may provide a more suitable teaching model. And, with the increasing tendency toward online classes, students are increasingly self-directed.
This table illustrates key differences between pedagogical and andragogical design.
It should be noted that these two methods are not mutually exclusive. It is always up to the the teacher or facilitator to determine the best approach for his or her students.
For more information, please see the full article, “Keeping Up With … Andragogy”
Monday, March 21st, 2016
The month of March means “spring break” for many academic institutions. And that may mean a break from instruction, but we wanted to give you a short “reading list” in case you are looking for something to occupy any extra time you might have!Here are three titles which the NTC staff have been reading and using in our training recently. In fact, if you’ve been in PubMed for Trainers within the past several months, you may have heard us mention at least one of them.
- The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age by Cammy Bean. Here’s a blurb from the back cover: “We’ve all been taught to think that training is always the solution and that just about anyone can figure out how to do it. And as technology-based learning continues to slip into the mainstream, managers will continue to tap heads to turn regular people, who know the content or show some talent at creating a PowerPoint deck, into instructional designers and trainers. This means that we’ll see accidents – in the form of accidental instructional designers – happening more and more.”
- Telling Ain’t Training by Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps. Here’s a brief summary from amazon.com: This book is an entertaining and practical guide for every trainer and performance improvement professional as it tackles the three universal and persistent questions of the profession―how do learners learn, why do learners learn, and how do you ensure that learning sticks. Playful illustrations demonstrate the solid research that back up the authors’ contentions and help readers separate learning myth from fact to dispel beliefs and practices that often harm the instructional process.
- The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training by Karl M. Kapp. Here’s what one reviewer said: “Kapp argues convincingly that gamification is not just about adding points, levels and badges to an eLearning program, but about fundamentally rethinking learning design. He has put together a brilliant primer for learning professionals on how to gamify learning, packed with useful advice and examples (Anders Gronstedt, president, Gronstedt Group via amazon.com).
Hope there is something here that sparks your interest. Happy reading!
Photo credit: torchalum.wordpress.com
Tuesday, March 1st, 2016
Note: The NTC wishes to thank Karen Vargas and the NN/LM OERC for permission to repost this blog from http://nnlm.gov/evaluation/blog . It seemed especially relevant to what we as the NTC are about and do, as well as to the OERC.
I enjoyed reading an article in Public Libraries titled “The Grass Is Always Greener” by Melanie A. Lyttle and Shawn D. Walsh. They discuss the complexities of deciding whether a program was “well attended” or “nobody came.” Sometimes a program that seems well attended in one situation is the same as a poorly attended program in another.
I can think of a lot of times I’ve experienced this exact situation. When I was a branch manager at a public library, the program manager at the main library would ask if she could send authors to speak at our branch library. When I said, “maybe you should send them somewhere else – we only had ten people come to the last one,” she replied “ten is a lot – ten is more than we get anywhere else.”
When I worked at the NN/LM South Central Region, in some parts of the region 30 people could be expected to attend training sessions. In other parts of the region, we considered 6 people a successfully attended program. These differences often corresponded to urban vs. rural, or the travel distance needed to get to the training, or whether the librarians were largely solo librarians or worked in multi-librarian organizations, or whether their institutions supported taking time off for training. Other considerations include whether the trainers had already built an audience over time that would regularly attend the programs. Or on the other hand, whether the trainers had saturated their market and there were very few new people to learn about the topic.
So how can you decide what a good target participation level should be, or maybe more importantly, how can you explain your participation targets to your funder or parent organization?
Tying your participation level to your intermediate and long-term intended outcomes is one way to do that. Let me give you an example of a program in Houston that was funded by the NN/LM South Central Region. The Greater Houston AHEC received funding many years ago to do an in-depth training project with a small number of seniors in the most underserved areas of Houston. The goals were to teach these seniors how to use computers, how to get on the Internet, how to use email, and then how to use MedlinePlus and NIHSeniorHealth to look up health information. They planned for the seniors to take 2-3 classes a week, and each class lasted several hours. It was a big commitment, but they intended for these seniors to really know how to use the Internet at the end of the series. There were so few seniors who saw the need to learn to use computers that they had to persuade about 10 people from each location to sign up. However, the classes were so good and the seniors so enthusiastic, that after a couple of weeks, the other seniors wanted to take classes too. This led to a phase 2 project which included funding for a permanent computer and coffee area in a senior center where students could practice their Internet skills. There is now a third phase of the program called M-SEARCH which teaches seniors to use mobile devices to look up their health information.
At the beginning, Greater Houston AHEC may not have envisioned these specific outcomes. However, if they were trying to convince a funder that 10 person classes were a reasonable use of the funder’s money, it might be good to show that small in-depth classes could lead to a long-term outcome like “seniors in even the poorest neighborhoods in Houston will be able to research their health conditions on NIHSeniorHealth.” In addition, it would be important to bring in other factors, such as your intended goals for the project, for example whether you hope to have a small group of these seniors that you can train to really use the Internet for health research or whether you want to reach a lot of seniors in underserved areas to let them know that it’s possible to find great health information using NLM resources (see the Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation for more information on evaluating your training goals).
For more on creating long-term outcomes, see Booklet 2 of the OERC’s booklets: Planning Outcomes-based Outreach Projects
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
The National Training Center (NTC) is all about training and learning. We use a variety of methods to provide training related to National Library of Medicine products and services. And, we strive to provide leadership to the NN/LM related to e-learning delivery methods and instructional best practices for adult learners. Today we celebrate Digital Learning Day #DLD! This event, now in its fifth year, is sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, and offers educators (and students) an opportunity to reflect and tell the story about how digital tools are empowering learning in classrooms, schools, homes, and communities.
Based on feedback from our own evaluations, we have a sense that these online training courses and webinars have been beneficial to you in your work. One of the ways to celebrate #DLD is to tell the story of how you have benefited from digital learning environments. While much of the focus of #DLD is around K-12 schools and learning, we know that increasing numbers of adult learners are taking advantage of digital learning opportunities through webinars, twitter chats, Google hangouts, MOOCs, and more.
To participate in a Digital Learning Day activity, learn more, or tell your own story visit the Edutopia or Digital Learning Day website. Or, join in on some of the conversation via Twitter, using #DLD or #DigitalLearningDay.
Thursday, February 4th, 2016
Because we’re all about training, we try to keep up with what professionals in the areas of learning, training, and technologies are saying. This week,in the Learning Technologies Blog from ATD (Association for Talent Development), Karl M. Kapp identified “a list of five trends learning professionals should consider when mapping out strategies for the next five of years.”
According to Kapp, “When mapping out learning strategies for your organization, you need to carefully consider the elements of technology, learning science, and societal influences to ensure that you have a strategy that is on target, scalable, and meets the needs of your learners to help them achieve organizational goals and objectives.” Here’s a brief look at the top five he identifies:
- Microlearning: delivering content to learners in small, specific bursts over time or just when needed.
- Gamification: the goal is engagement of learners, not just trying to make things “fun.”
- Social Learning: critical for exchanging ideas and getting questions answered from people you’ve never met.
- Adaptive Learning: instruction that adapts and changes based on individual learner inputs and actions.
- Immersive Learning: different facets of the same concept which make learning more immersive.
To read the full article, go to: http://ow.ly/XWKvc