Tutoring Strategies for Adult Learners

 Hi guys!  This week's module was about learning strategies for adults with various learning needs.  From the get go, adults learn differently from children.  Children typically need instructors to spoonfeed them information and motivate them through a reward system.  Adults on the other hand actively seek learning for themselves. According to Marcus Knowles, adults take responsibility for their own education and seek learning for their own benefit.  Arthur Chickering lists some helpful tips for peer tutors to provide college students with the necessary internal stability and motivation to become competent adult learners.  This includes developing the students’ studying capabilities as well as guiding their mindset to find their reason and purpose for learning.

Not everyone learns the same way and it’s important to tailor your tutoring methods to fit their needs.  This applies to more than disabilities since all humans have quirks and tendencies.  That’s the main point of Universal Design for Learning.  UDL seeks to mitigate the effect of students not learning effectively using one single avenue by integrating multiple mediums into the classeoom.  This includes visual, auditory, and kinesthetic presentations as well as more complex diagrams shown using technology.  The same applies for types of work done hy students.  They can choose to show their understanding through various means of expression in the same way that they learned.  Ultimately, the goal is to accommodate all types of students.

After taking the VARK learning questionnaire, I learned that I’m actually a multimodal learner.  This means I learn through more than just visual or auditory processes and prefer a variety of learning mechanisms for different subjects.  I definitely have noticed when learning physics and other sciences, I try to visualize concepts in my head and come up with an intuitive way of understanding them.

When tutoring a student, I would try to figure out what they need by simply asking them.  I think checking in frequently to make sure they understood an explanation is very helpful in setting the ideal pace for learning and also making sure the tutoring was effective.  Unlike in a classroom, there’s less of a time limit so there’s more flexibility in how much time is spent ensuring that the student learned what they needed.  Asking the students to repeat the process for reaching the answer is one way to gauge their understanding.  Some students have physical challenges such as hearing or eyesight.  I believe regardless of who the student is, patience is the most important factor.  One of the biggest benefits of tutoring is simply having someone by your side to tackle challenges with.  Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is a team effort between the tutor and tutee.