Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

With our student populations becoming more and more non-traditional, our pedagogy could probably use a little dusting off and updating. In fact, let’s start with shifting from talking about pedagogy, technically the instruction of children, to andragogy, the teaching strategies that address needs of adult learners. While the term andragogy has been around since the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the research on adult learners took off. Perhaps best known, Malcolm Knowles (1984), identified four principles of effective instructional strategies for adults: they involve the learner in the planning and evaluation of their learning; they use the learner’s experience as the basis for learning (including mistakes); they establish the relevance of the learning to the learner’s context; and they use problem-centered instead of content centered approaches.[1]

Apply Adult Learning Theory to eLearning. Applying Adult Learning Assumptions and Adult Learning Principles to eLearning. Apply Andragogy to eLearning!

In this article I'll discuss how Knowles' 5 adult learning theory assumptions can be translated to modern day eLearning experiences, so that you can integrate the 4 principles of Andragogy into your eLearning course for maximum learner engagement and motivation.

What Andragogy means and which are Knowles’ 5 assumptions of Adult Learners? Are you familiar with Knowles’ 4 Principles Of Andragogy?

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997) was an American educator well known for the use of the term Andragogy as synonymous to the adult education. According Malcolm Knowles, andragogy is the art and science of adult learning, thus andragogy refers to any form of adult learning. (Kearsley, 2010).  

The term andragogy can be supposedly equivalent to the term pedagogy. Andragogy in Greek means the man-leading in comparison to pedagogy, which in Greek means child-leading.  However, it should be noticed that the term pedagogy is used since the Ancient Greek times while Alexander Kapp, a German educator, originally used the term andragogy in 1833.