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      Chapter 1

       Preparing an Effective Message

      Proper preparation and practice prevent poor performance.

      —Robert Pike

      Adult learners are different, and teaching adult educators is vastly different from teaching students. At best, adult learners can be interested, inspired, and enthusiastic, and at worst, they can be irked, jaded, and disrespectful. Let’s face it: some educator audiences will try to behave in ways they would never tolerate from their students. They may resist your greatest ideas and be wary of new, untested concepts. Often, this is because they have had experiences in the past that justified such skepticism. However, you have the power to prevent such negative reactions. How your audience responds is related directly to you and the message you are conveying.

      This chapter takes an in-depth look into how you can tailor your presentations to be maximally effective in front of an adult audience. It begins by considering the needs of adult learners and introduces questions you can ask during the planning stage of your presentation to ensure you meet these needs. Advice for improving and augmenting your knowledge of the subject matter follows. Finally, this chapter discusses the differences that may exist in your audience members, specifically focusing on four distinct adult audiences, and provides useful ideas for how to present to an audience with diverse learning styles. All these features will help you better engage your audience and distinguish your presentation as different and inspiring.

The Needs of Adult Learners

      In most instances, adults want to contribute and have their knowledge honored and respected. There are defining features of virtually all adult learning theories (Dunst & Trivette, 2012; Heflebower, 2018a; Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2012; Kolb, 1984; Schön, 1983, 1987). Summarizing what the various authors espouse leads to the following four key components of adult learning.

      1. Relevant: Adult learners are task- or problem-centered rather than simply topic-centered. They need to know why your training is important to them: What problem might this solve? How might this make their lives easier? The useful past experiences and insights adult educators possess provide them with knowledge about what is likely to work and what is not. Although adult learners are more readily able to relate new facts to past teaching and learning experiences, clearly connecting relevancy helps them buy into your message (Rall, 2017). If it is not relevant to their needs, they are not interested.

      2. Practical: Adult learners consider the immediate usefulness of any new information (Rall, 2017). They are more impatient in the pursuit of learning, and they tend to be intolerant unless they can apply useful connections between your message and their practical problems. Adults bring their own experiences and knowledge into the training; they appreciate having their talents and information recognized and used during a teaching situation. Simply put, adults like learning that provides them with practical activities that build on their prior skills and knowledge.

      3. Active: Adults want experiential learning. Adult participants are mature people and prefer to be treated as such. They learn best in a self-governing, participatory, and collaborative environment. They need to be actively involved in determining how and what they learn; they need active rather than passive learning experiences (Rall, 2017). Adults are self-reliant learners, and prefer to work a bit more at their own pace.

      4. Positive: Mature learners appreciate appropriate humor and elements of entertainment infused into the learning environment. Adults are more intrinsically motivated than most students; they are enthused by internal incentives and curiosity, rather than external rewards. Adult learners are sometimes fatigued when they attend trainings, so they appreciate any teaching approaches that add interest and a sense of liveliness. Use a variety of methods and audiovisual aids, and try to incorporate a change of pace—anything that makes the learning process easier.

Thinking of these key components while crafting your message will ensure you meet the needs of adult learners. Asking yourself the questions in figure 1.1 can assist in planning your message. These questions should guide your initial planning for each of the four key components of adult learning through an effective message.