Dual coding – pairing relevant images with words – is a strategy from cognitive psychology that makes the most of the visual and audio channels for learning in working memory. Teachers can use dual coding strategies to design classroom materials that enhance learning and improve adult student outcomes in their behavior-change course.
Here are practical classroom activities that make use of the evidence based strategies of spacing and retrieval practice from cognitive psychology. Building these strategies into your learning design and teaching them to your students can improve adult learner outcomes in your behavior-change course.
Because one-third of adult learners are trauma impacted, teachers, trainers and college faculty must be equipped with strategies to help these learners relax their vigilance and free up psychological energy for learning. One place to start is by creating safety, predictability and consistency through trauma-informed classroom structures and processes.
As teachers and trainers we dread the angry, resistant and reluctant adult learners in our classrooms. If we can adopt a trauma-informed lens to view these folks, we can gain more empathy for them, stop reacting to their reaction, and then become curious about ways we might support them in building a more adaptive and flexible response to learning.
The last activity of your lesson or training should include a performance task in which learners apply what they've learned to a real-life task. Create these demonstration of learning tasks to mimic the situations in which learners will need to use what they know and make this the last task of your session.
