Teaching strategies for adult learners

From WikiEducator
Jump to: navigation, search



It is important to find teaching strategies that encourage active learning and enhance what your students learn, why they learn and support how they learn. Perhaps it is a good time to consider a few teaching strategies relevant for adult learners and to reflect on how you could use some of these in the following context.



OP icon activity.gif

Activity

Consider this scenario.

A first year National Diploma group of 30 students (mostly school leavers and some mature students) have made several complaints about their most recent lecturer in a vocational subject (Level 5). Students complained that class sessions were unstructured, very few handouts were provided, in-class presentations were made using slides containing a lot of text, and it was difficult to follow the teacher. They also had no idea what was expected of them in their first assessment, which was a closed-book test based on the first six weeks' content. The lecturer resigned after eight weeks, leaving students with no feedback from the first assessment.
  • Outline how you would respond to at least two issues raised in the scenario if you were asked to teach this group of students mid-semester. What strategies would you choose? To do this:
  • Choose two approaches which would be particularly relevant to improve this teaching context. What are they, and why have you chosen them?