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Summary

Trainers, coaches, instructional designers, and university educators need to understand the dynamics of adult learning as described by Knowles and others. Knowles's insights into adult learning behaviors and motivations are supported by other research and are widely accepted today.

Excellent online training courses in both corporate and university settings apply creative combinations of teaching strategies, using methods like instructional articles, case studies, simulations, and self-evaluations to engage adult learners. Such courses adhere to:

  • the readiness principle, enabling adult learners to see the relevance of the material;
  • the experience principle, respecting the expertise learners bring to the course;
  • the autonomy principle, providing options by which learners can control their own learning paths through meaningful exercises that allow them to explore and reinforce what they are learning; and
  • the action principle, emphasizing clearly and continually the connections between what is being learned and the real world in which it will be applied.

The two versions of this article—the Innovate journal format and the instructional format presented here—demonstrate the difference format makes. The journal format is an easy, quick read and, if bookmarked, it can be very useful as a compact future reference. It is also easy to make a printed copy that can be augmented with personal highlighting and handwritten notes. This instructional format which actually employs these teaching strategies is a more engaging experience in which the learning objectives are more effectively presented and reinforced.

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