Facilitating Adult Learning

1. Facilitating Adult Learning

2. Why are we here? • Define the value of the EQ Workshop within our ministry strategy. • Examine principles of learning tasks. • Observe an EQ Workshop. • Participate in a coaching appointment. • Prepare key EQ workshop components. • Practice a learning-task approach to communicating. • Examine and use the workshop preparation and follow-through resources.

3. A Moment of Real Learning • Get in pairs with someone at your table. • Describe a moment of real learning in your life: a class, a study, an experience… • Identify one remarkable and memorable factor that was at work to make that learning so memorable. • We will hear all of the factors.

4. Seven Steps of Planning • Who (Participants, target group)? • Why (Purpose)? • When (Time and time frame – how long)? • Where (Site: room, set-up, etc.)? • What (content: knowledge, skills, attitudes)? • What for (achievement-based objectives)? • How (learning tasks and materials)? Taking Learning to Task Jane Vella

5. Learning Styles Active  Reflective Sensing  Intuitive Visual  Verbal Sequential  Global What types of learning activities might best facilitate learning for each learning style? “Learning Styles and Strategies,” Feldman and Solomon 1996

6. Active Sensing Reflective Intuitive Learning Activities

7. Visual Sequential Verbal Global Learning Activities

8. Four Assumptions • Learners arrive with the capacity to do the work involved in learning. • Learners learn when they are actively engaged – mentally, emotionally and physically – with the content. • New content can be presented through learning tasks – structuring the dialogue by presenting content in a variety of ways, with engaging work for the learner built in. • Learning tasks promote accountability. How do learners know they know? How do facilitators know learners know it?

9. What do you believe about learners and the learning process? “A learning task is a way to structure dialogue. It is an open question put to members of a small group, who have been given all the resources they need to respond. A learning task is a way of ensuring engagement of learners with the new content.”Taking Learning to Task – page XIII.

10. How am I doing as a facilitator? • Whose needs are in focus? My needs or theirs? • How am I doing at being vulnerable: honest, open and transparent? • How can these learners tell that I believe “None of us is as smart as all of us?” • How am I doing at taking advantage of the teachable moment? • What am I doing about my need to “cover the material?” • To what degree is lavish dialogue being experienced? • What am I doing to create maximum safety?

11. How am I doing as a facilitator? • How am I doing at building trust? • How am I doing at providing enough opportunities for quiet reflection? • How am I doing at engaging participants in active learning tasks? • In what ways am I affirming those who share? • How am I doing at trusting my intuition, as the Holy Spirit leads me? • How am I doing at handling dissent and resistance? • How am I doing at responding to difficult questions? • How much of “the professor” hasn’t died yet in this training experience? Other Questions to ask yourself?

12. Summary: Empowering Learning Environments • Every person possesses a unique learning style. • Effective learning takes place as we design learning environments that provide specific activities to meet the unique learning style of each person.