Articles-Thought Leadership Creating Experts In Healthcare | Page 3

“Adult learners are coming with their years of
experience, and new information only adds to what
they perceive. They already have their own perception
of reality and how to do things. You can lose them
really quickly if you are teaching them something that
they do not think they need to know.”
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To avoid surface learning, adult learners need to find value in what is being taught
One of the most common negative experiences
of adult learners is surface learning, a type of
learning that most children rely on in early
childhood and throughout their schooling.
Surface learning occurs when students cram a
large amount of information in preparation for an
exam and forget the material afterwards.
Dr. Yosaitis explains that medical students
interact with learning the same way—they are
thirsty for information and will learn whatever is
given to them and be prepared for testing. He
has noticed a shift towards deeper learning as
those students enter into residency; they begin
asking why they need to know certain
information and deeply learn what is important.
Adult learners are the same way, Dr. Yosaitis
explains. “Adult learners are coming with their
years of experience, and new information only
adds to what they perceive. They already have
their own perception of reality and how to do
things. You can lose them really quickly if you are
teaching them something that they do not think
they need to know.”
In order to excite adult students about learning
and improving, Dr. Yosaitis suggests making sure
that the new information solves a problem, is of
interest to the learner, or tells a story. “If you
take the adult learner and give them a solution
to something that they perceive is a problem,
they’ll be excited about it,” Dr. Yosaitis explains.
“If they feel like you’re only giving them lists or
information that isn’t helpful to them, there
won’t be excitement and interest for the learner
to retain the knowledge. There needs to be
what we call ‘pearls’ of information in the
learning—knowledge gained by experienced
instructors who are willing to share how they
dealt with real-life scenarios.”