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This Week's Topic Adult Learners and Teaching Principles Whether preparing for class or instructing in the classroom, there are certain principles of good education you want to keep in mind when teaching adults. Use this week’s tips to help you. This Week's Tips Be Flexible (Monday) Students perceive good organization through good communication. You may be the most organized instructor in your field, yet your students may not be able to follow you. Too much organization may actually separate you from your students. To improve your communication skills, try these tips: Be flexible and be prepared to divert from your organized plan when appropriate. Put the syllabus aside and talk with the students instead of to the students. Mark Milestones (Tuesday) Have planned stops throughout the course to mark milestones. This is the time to stop, recap, question where you’ve been and where you’re going, and to establish and reestablish connections between the course material and its relevance to students’ lives. Use the following tips for guidance: When designing the course, write milestones into the material. Listen to students, and redesign sections of the course if necessary. The Art of Asking Questions (Wednesday) Asking questions is the very cornerstone of adult learning. Adults, like most students, learn better when they are actively engaged in learning. Try the following: Use critical thinking questions that require students to make value judgments. Ask this key question: “Why?”. Ask for inferences by setting up specific situations that allow students to use deductive and inductive reasoning. Ask for cause and effect, and explore relationships between events and people or events and ideas. More on the Art of Asking Questions (Thursday) Tips on asking questions include: Have students compare and find similarities between events, people, and ideas. Challenge students to examine relationships between events, people, and ideas. Have them look for the bigger picture. Give students problems and have them work in groups to find new and creative solutions to old problems. Finally, silence is golden. When asking questions, wait for answers rather than offering the answer. Principles of Listening (Friday) To listen well, you need to pay attention to what is being said. This goes without saying, yet it is harder than it sounds. Drifting off while someone is speaking happens to all of us. Try these tips to help you listen better: Resist assuming you know what students are going to say. Let students completely finish speaking before you answer.
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