Learning Skill

The attributes of the learners and how they can help the learners to be successful in an online learning environment
Education of children is compulsory, formal and standardized. Adult learning is voluntary and intentional. The purpose of adult education is the independent self-directed learner. Adults tend to resist a learning process which is incongruent with their self-concept as autonomous individuals and does not correspond to their needs and interests.
Adults focus on direct application. Given their daily duty in job, profession, family and community, they learn to cope with the pressures and problems of life they are facing. For that reason, the adult educator’s concern is primarily focused on the needs and interests of the learners. "Andragogy (adult education) calls for program builders and teachers who are person-centered, who don’t teach subject matter but rather help persons learn" (Knowles). Hence, the interests of adults are their real needs. Or the solutions learners have in mind do not solve their problems. The adult educator often has to register into a "needs negotiation" (Bhola) with learners when teaching new needs about boiled water or a balanced diet, about clean surroundings, preventive health practices or small families. In the dialectical process of needs negotiation the needs as felt by the learners and the needs as seen by the adult educators must be showed together to reach a consensus on the "real" needs. These real needs must agree to the experience of adult learners. If an adult gets the impression that his experience is not being valued he feels turned down as a person. New learnings take on meaning as adults are able to relate them to their life experience. Experienced adult educators, so, build into the design of their learning experiences provision for the learners to plan and rehearse how they are going to apply their learnings in their day-to-day lives or duties and combine training with transfer and application. A workshop