Adults are motivated to put time and energy into learning if they know the benefits of learning and the costs of not learning.

MEANING: Develop “a need to know” in your learners—make a case for the value of the learning in their lives. Help learners answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

By definition, adult learners have a self-concept of being in charge of their own lives and being responsible for their own decisions, and a need to be seen and treated as being capable of taking responsibility.

MEANING: Realize that despite this self-concept and need for responsibility, once they enter a classroom many adults revert back to their school and college days when they tended to be passive learners. Do not fall into a trap of assuming that they want to learn passively. Empower them to learn and to take responsibility for learning. Enable learners to assess their own learning using self-assessment and feedback. 

Experience is a resource for themselves and for other learners, and it gives richer meaning to new ideas and skills. Experience is a source of an adult’s self-identify.

MEANING: Experience is both a plus and a minus. It is a plus because it is a vast resource. It is a minus because it can lead to bias and presupposition. Because adults define themselves by their experiences, respect and value that experience.

Adults learn when they to choose to learn and commit to learn. That desire to learn usually coincides with the transition from one developmental stage to another and is related to developmental tasks, such as career planning, acquiring job competencies, improving job performance, etc. Often, however, adults perceive employer-provided training as employer-required training.

MEANING: Be aware that some learners might not want to be there. In which case, be honest. Acknowledge that fact and the fact that nothing can be done about it. Then, agree to make the most out of training nevertheless. On the other hand, be aware that for those who want to be in the class, training is important and they must walk away with something.

Education is subject-centered, but adult training should be task-centered. For example, a child in a composition class at school learns grammar, and then sentence and paragraph construction. An adult in a composition training program learns how to write a business letter, a marketing plan, etc.

MEANING: Organize content around tasks, not subjects.