My clients still ask me to “help redesign and improve this curriculum, whilst at the same time determining and incorporating the learning styles of the audience.” While I used to get into detail about  how learning styles do not have any academic evidence  to support its claims, I now simply redirect the dialogue.

I might reference it briefly but otherwise prefer to invest my efforts into establishing that their desire is, in fact, to take a more learner-centered approach. Once we agree on that, I supply practical alternatives on how to achieve this.

Building the audience profile

In my work as a learning experience designer, one of the most essential elements is to ensure I understand the learner well. I get this from a thorough Learning Needs Analysis, in which I pay particular attention to the target audiences. In my aim to understand the learner, I build several learning personas , that represent the audience group.

                   
As Rothwell made clear, it is important not to assume that all learners have the same characteristics. I therefore develop these fictional characters carefully and map the different characteristics as I (ethically) define the learner’s demographics, educational backgrounds, roles, ranks, age groups, ability levels, gaps, preferences, opportunities, and constraints. Once I get a complete picture of the different profiles that the program needs to cater for, I tie these to andragogic assumptions from Malcolm Knowles to gain an idea on how to design for the target audience.

The Learner: When you know, you Knowles!

Knowles’ andragogy follows on from where pedagogy  stops. Whereas pedagogy solely focuses on methods of education that suit children, Knowles continues this continuum and goes on to differentiate how adults learn by making six critical assumptions for us to consider in designing their education, whilst still including the key pedagogical principles.

Knowles’ andragogic assumptions are:

1. Self Concept

While children are much more inclined (and expected) to take on a more dependent role in their education, this changes as the child grows up and moves from adolescence into adulthood. Once reaching maturity, people increasingly live their lives autonomously and are mostly self-directed.

This self-directedness in the learner sparks an ardent desire for this to be acknowledged and respected by their peers and instructors. This results in a yearning for more involvement, ownership and accountability of the planning, execution, and evaluation of their development journey.

2. Experience

Workplace learners own a wealth of experience. Not that they do not need to learn anything else, nor that content may not be new to them, but what we expect them to learn has levels of foundational knowledge, skills, and behaviors. These need to be respected, even when it is not obvious to start with.

Having prior experience can, of course, aid or hinder us. At worst, the learner first needs to unlearn things. At best, prior experience is successfully linked with new content. The first may slow the process down, and the latter could speed up and engrain the new learning content.

3. Readiness to Learn

One of the first questions I ask clients is why learners should care about the content and why they should care about it now. Adults have a desire for immediate applicability and relevance. As soon as the ‘what’s in it for me’ is clear, adults act. A new job, problems performing a work task, life-changing events, and situations can all spark the readiness to learn.

4. Problem Centered Orientation to Learning

As grownups, we learn most from problem centered situations. Just like the readiness to learn assumption we just explored; a task-based learning intervention brings benefits to the learner through the immediate applicability of the learning content by fixing perceived issues, in ways that memorization of knowledge would not. This may be why learning in the moment of need and performance support systems continues to get good traction.

5. Internal Motivation

Adult learners are more critical about what motivates them to learn and look for intrinsic motivators. They want to choose to learn, rather than being coerced into learning through external motivational factors. Their intrinsic motivation is certainly activated in terms of why the learning is relevant now, but as described in LaWaune Netter’s (2015) overview of Knowles’ assumptions, can also include:

·        Better quality of life

·        Recognition

·        Self-esteem

·        Self-confidence

·        Self-actualization

6. Need to know

To be autonomous and self-directed, the adult needs to know how the learning will happen, what learning will occur when, how it relates to the overall task, what the benefits of learning are and equally what the consequences of not learning are. This means that an obvious structure, supported by robust goals and connections, is visible.

Make the right design choices through personas

Linking Knowles’ assumptions to the learner personas provides a good basis for a learner centered approach, as it will give sufficient room to differentiate between learners and the special needs they may have while we make smart design choices tying these to the ultimate learning tasks, and the desired performance outcomes.


References:

Rothwell, W. J. (2020). Adult learning basics. ATD Press. 

Netter, L (September 20, 2015). Andragogy. Retrieved September 16, 2022, from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hbZM1kq6rQ

Pappas, C. (August 6, 2013). The Myth Of Learning Styles. eLearning Industry. Retrieved on December 16, 2022, from: https://elearningindustry.com/the-myth-of-learning-styles

Wallace, D. (December 16, 2019). Creating Learner Personas for Learning Success. Training Industry. Retrieved on December 16, 2022, from: https://trainingindustry.com/articles/content-development/creating-learner-personas-for-learning-success/

Killian, S. (November 22, 2019). Pedagogy: What It Is & Why Matters? Evidence Based Teaching. Retrieved on December 16, 2022, from: https://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/pedagogy/