8 Proven Strategies for Teaching Adult Learners

TL;DR: Strategies for Teaching Adult Learners
Adult learners bring life experience, autonomy, and purpose to the learning process. However, they also face challenges such as time constraints, insecurity, and resistance to change.

To teach them effectively:

– Keep lessons relevant with real-world examples.
– Leverage learners’ life experience and adjust tone based on audience maturity.
– Tell stories to improve retention and engagement.
– Break down content to prevent cognitive overload.
– Give timely feedback to correct misunderstandings early.
– Use visuals wisely to boost memory without distraction.
– Encourage interaction through discussion and questions.
– Be flexible with structure while keeping control.

The most important strategy? Keep learning yourself.

You’re never too old to learn something new.

This age-old saying is more relevant than ever as AI and technology continue to disrupt industries, replace jobs, and make lifelong learning a necessity.

I’ve been at the forefront of adult learning and professional training and development for over two decades

And I can confidently say this space is buzzing like never before.

According to IBM, 89% of organizations say their workforce needs serious upskilling in the face of AI advancements.

What’s different this time is that adult learners themselves realize that enhancing their skills is the only way to grow in their careers.

But as a trainer, do you understand the best practices and strategies for adult learning?

Trainers, like everyone else, need to keep learning to share what they know and connect with adult learners in the best way possible.

In this article, I’ll share some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about adult learning strategies over the years.

What Is Adult Teaching?

Adult teaching or training is the act of helping adult learners achieve specific career, personal, or life goals by acquiring new skills and knowledge.

It’s an approach to education that recognizes and builds upon the unique characteristics and needs of adult learners.

And it is drastically different from teaching children or young college students.

At its core, adult teaching acknowledges that grown-up students bring rich life experiences and established perspectives to the learning environment.

Unlike children, who are often learning things for the first time, adults approach education with pre-existing knowledge, career experiences, and formed opinions.

The essence of adult teaching lies in its respect for learner autonomy and self-direction. Adults typically choose to learn for specific reasons – whether it’s career advancement, personal interest, or solving practical problems.

This motivation shapes how they engage with learning material. For instance, a professional attending a project management course isn’t just memorizing concepts. They’re actively thinking about how to apply these skills to their current workplace challenges.

The Main Challenges Of Teaching Adult Learners

Teaching adult learners has its own set of challenges that you need to understand to acknowledge.

Challenge #1: Resistance To New Methods

When you teach adults, you’ll often face their strong resistance to new methods.

And it’s understandable.

If you’ve done something successfully for years, you’d naturally question someone telling you to do it differently.

We see this resistance regularly in our training sessions where people challenge new approaches, defending their tried-and-true methods.

You’ll hear comments like “I’ve always done it this way” or “My method works fine.”

The key challenge we face isn’t just teaching new skills, it’s helping learners let go of deeply ingrained habits.

But instead of dismissing their experience, we must show them how new methods can make their existing skills even more effective.

Challenge #2: Motivation And Engagement

Adults need clear, practical reasons for everything they learn. They want to see how it helps them today, not someday. If your training feels too theoretical or disconnected from their daily work, you’ll watch their interest fade fast.

The situation gets even trickier with mandatory training when adults feel forced to learn something they didn’t choose, they often mentally check out before you even begin.

Challenge #3: Insecurity

The lack of self-confidence can be a big hurdle for adult learners. In fact, in my experience, it is one of the biggest challenges of teaching adult learners.

People often worry about looking incompetent in front of their peers, which makes them hold back. They can also feel anxious about diving back into formal learning after years away, wondering if they’ll be able to keep up.

Sitting next to younger learners can add another layer of stress, making them feel like they’re in a silent competition.

That’s why it’s so important to create a space where they feel comfortable and supported.

Challenge #4: Availability And Time Constraints

Adult learners are juggling work, family, and everything else life throws at them. It’s tough to carve out time for assignments or even attend classes regularly when your schedule is already packed.

After a long day at work, sitting through a lesson can feel almost impossible. Keeping up week after week becomes a real struggle, especially when other responsibilities keep coming up.

As a trainer, you must empathize with adult learners and understand their challenges while structuring your courses.

Challenge #5: Personality Clashes And Ego

When you put a group of adults together, everyone brings their own opinions, experiences, and personalities to the table. Sometimes that creates great discussions, but other times it leads to friction.

You might have someone who dominates the conversation or resists feedback because they think they already know it all. On the flip side, quieter learners might shut down if they feel overshadowed.

Managing these dynamics takes patience and a firm hand to ensure everyone feels heard and respected. It’s about balancing the room so learning stays on track.

How To Teach Adult Learners: Best Practices And Proven Strategies

Teaching adult learners has many potential advantages over teaching younger students.

They have much more life experience which can be leveraged as part of the knowledge that is shared among the participants in your class.

If your aim is to make money teaching online, adults obviously tend to have much more direct control over the decision to spend money on an online learning experience.

However, while you may not need to put the same effort into engaging your class that a school teacher would, you still need to build rapport with your learners and develop a teaching strategy that maximizes their learning outcomes.

Understanding how adults parse and retain new knowledge is critical to creating a learning experience that achieves its goals.

Let’s discuss the key adult learning best practices and strategies.

1. Keep your lessons relevant

The most significant way adult learners digest information is through real-world filters.

As already noted, adults have far more life experience than children, and that comes with a stronger need to understand the hows and whys of your material.

By making connections with their own experiences, they confirm for themselves the truth of your teaching, and your lessons will stick more strongly in their minds if you can make those connections for them.

Including real-world applications or outcomes of your lessons when teaching adult learners is important so your students can understand and visualize how to apply what you teach.

Use examples of times when people should follow your teaching in their everyday lives, or of the pitfalls that can befall them if they fail to do so.

By putting your lessons in context, they become easier for adult learners to understand and retain.

2. Focus on your learners’ life experience

If you’re teaching a coding bootcamp for beginners, for example, don’t overwhelm them with jargon.

Equally, if you’re teaching business leaders a new recruiting strategy, don’t talk down to them.

In general, when teaching adult learners, use familiar terms and address them at an appropriate level for their experience, background, and age.

Sometimes using acronyms and buzzwords is the most appropriate way of teaching—it can quickly convey your experience and authority within your field, and reassure learners that you know what you’re talking about.

However, with a novice audience, too many new terms will only be confusing. You want your learners to be able to follow what you’re saying without having to focus on deciphering the meaning of your words.

The average age of your learners is also an important consideration when you choose how to approach teaching your masterclass. Bear in mind that older learners might not be up to date with the latest online trends and fads, while young adult learners will be put off by edupreneurs who try to emulate their style of talking.

Most learners respond best when educators use established frames of reference and limit their use of slang and jargon.

3. Tell stories as you’re teaching

Stories have been used as mnemonics for centuries. From recalling the colors of the rainbow to the order of notes in music, children are taught a significant amount of information by converting it into stories.

As adults, stories remain powerful memory devices. Adult learners are often more emotionally driven, and storytelling can harness their emotions and help them retain your lessons.

Tie storytelling into your real-world examples by talking about a time your lesson helped someone, or could have helped them.

If you use slides or charts to illustrate your masterclass, choose powerful images, colors, and even fonts that are evocative of particular emotions.

Think about the educators who have most influenced you in the past, and the lessons that stand out most sharply.

What methods did your teachers use to gain and keep your interest? What technique made one lesson stand out above the others?

Chances are good that stories were a part of their effectiveness – and you may even be able to borrow from some of those stories.

4. Break up information to avoid cognitive overload

Adult learners can follow more, and more complex, information than children, but you should still aim to structure your masterclass into compartmentalized lessons that progress logically as you teach.

By breaking down your masterclass, you can ensure that all learners follow your teaching, and build in time to recap each section and ensure everyone is keeping up.

Use notes or slides to highlight the key points of each lesson, and provide learners with these materials either before or after your masterclass so they can independently review what they learned.

Make a list or bullet points of each step of your masterclass, and identify where individual sections begin and end. This style of teaching will help keep you on track, as well as improve your learners’ outcomes.

If you have to pause for any reason or find the class discussion wandered away from your original subject, it’s easy to return to your lesson plan and continue from where you left off.

5. Provide feedback in the moment of need

When creating your online course, masterclass, seminar, or other offering, it’s a good idea to structure your teaching so you have space for a recap and questions at the end of each section.

This ensures that your learners can keep up with your material and prevents anyone from being left behind.

This is especially important if your masterclass is particularly long, or covers a wide range of material.

While interruptions to your teaching can be disruptive and prevent students from learning, it’s important to correct mistakes or wrong assumptions the moment you become aware of them.

This prevents the incorrect idea from taking hold and confusing learners. It is almost always better to interrupt your masterclass at the “moment of need” (the point at which the mistake has been made) in order to set your learners on the right path, rather than circle back to it at a later stage.

6. Make your material visually stimulating

It isn’t only children who find color and images appealing. If your handouts and slides are too plain they become boring, and your learners’ minds will switch off.

Instead, attract learners’ attention with the judicious use of color, fonts, and pictures to highlight important information and boost the memorability of your masterclass.

Be mindful of going too far with this tip—too much color, or too many images, also detracts from your lesson. If your slides and handouts are visually overwhelming, that can also turn learners off.

Instead, aim to have one focal point on each page. It could be highlighting key words or phrases in a different color or font, including an amusing doodle that demonstrates the point of your lesson, or switching out boring bullet points for a subject-relevant icon.

Remember that whatever element you choose to stand out will be the thing your learners remember most clearly, so make it count.

7. Encourage questions and discussion

Adult learners typically need to understand new material in the context of their own life experiences, and one of the best ways to make those connections is by talking.

Allowing your learners time to ask you questions, and to discuss your lessons among each other, is a great way of helping cement your teaching in their minds.

It’s also a good time for you to spot any mistakes or incorrect assumptions your learners are making, and by opening the floor to general questions you might find learners are approaching your material in ways you hadn’t envisioned.

This provides invaluable feedback and insight into your teaching, and gives you the opportunity to make adjustments in real time.

When choosing a host for your online educational offerings, look for the option to include a live chat alongside your video so learners can make notes, talk, and ask questions.

Some learners will always be reluctant to speak up in a group setting, so allowing them to send you messages or ask questions in writing will encourage more participation and generate better results than asking learners to talk before the whole group.

8. Be flexible with your course structure

Unlike kids, adult learners don’t have to be kept to a rigid schedule to keep learning. Structuring your courses is a great idea, both to keep you on track and to help frame your lessons in a logical, progressive way.

However, you can afford to allow short breaks and discussions without your learners losing track of what you were teaching.

Trust in your learners’ enthusiasm for your subject, and their passion for learning from you. Many school teachers are addressing a captive audience who would rather be elsewhere, and turning your back for five minutes can quickly result in the conversation moving away from the class material and toward something more interesting.

When you host a masterclass for adult learners, you and your lessons are the most interesting thing. This means you can relax a little and let your masterclass flow more naturally.

Broadening the scope of discussion during a learning experience is also a great way of understanding how your learners are interacting with your teaching, and what information they’re really taking away from your class.

Listen with an open mind and you can learn a lot about becoming a better educator. If you immediately close down any discussion you think isn’t relevant, you’ll never understand where the original connection to your material came from.

Ultimately, you control and lead your class, so don’t be afraid to make the call to get back on schedule once you think the general discussion has gone on long enough.

But by opening the floor to your adult learners, they can teach you as much about being an edupreneur as you can teach them about your subject.

The Number One Best Practice For Teaching Adult Learners

Be open to learning yourself.

Teaching adult learning is significantly different from teaching young kids or teenagers. Adult learners with lifelong experiences challenge you as a trainer.

They value their time and can easily spot filler content if your lessons aren’t up to the mark.

In my experience, the most critical part of teaching adult learners is to make it an interactive experience where you help them shape their experiences to understand new realities.

Exchange ideas, encourage discussion, and create an environment where everyone can speak their mind, share their doubts, and ask questions without the fear of being judged or ridiculed.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the best way to assess learning progress in adult learners?
Use formative assessments like quizzes, reflection prompts, peer feedback, or project-based evaluations. These allow adults to apply knowledge and get feedback without the pressure of traditional tests.

2. How can I adapt my teaching for neurodiverse adult learners?
Offer multiple formats—video, audio, text—and allow flexible pacing. Use clear, consistent layouts and avoid overloading slides with text. Check in individually when possible.

3. Should I use gamification when teaching adults?
Yes—if used strategically. Adults enjoy progress tracking, rewards, and challenges, especially when tied to real-world outcomes. Just avoid making it feel childish.

4. How do I handle tech issues when teaching adults online?
Start every course with a tech orientation. Provide backup formats (like downloadable PDFs), simple guides, and offer support via email or chat for troubleshooting.

5. What role does emotional intelligence play in teaching adults?
A huge one. Being empathetic, reading group dynamics, and managing conflict respectfully are key to building trust and engagement in adult learning settings.

6. How can I support adult learners who are returning to education after many years?
Reassure them early, set clear expectations, and provide frequent encouragement. Help them rebuild learning confidence with small wins early on.

7. What’s the ideal class size for adult learning environments?
Smaller is better—ideally under 20 students for deeper interaction. For asynchronous courses, ensure there are support tools like discussion boards or feedback loops.

8. How important is certification for adult learners?
Very. Many adults learn to advance their careers. Providing a certificate of completion, digital badge, or even CEU credits can increase motivation and course value.

9. How should I deal with adult learners who dominate group discussions?
Set ground rules early. Politely redirect, use time limits, or assign rotating roles in group activities to ensure balanced participation.

10. How do I encourage lifelong learning beyond the course?
End with an action plan. Share curated resources, communities, or follow-up courses. Encourage learners to set goals and track their own growth.

Additional Resources

More on adult teaching and learning:

• Adult Learning 101 for Edupreneurs
• An Essential Guide to Andragogy for Learning Businesses (Leading Learning)
• Presenting for Impact – a free online course for creating more educationally effective presentations

Course creation and improvement:

• How to Create and Host an Online Masterclass
• 7 Steps to Record a Successful Virtual Presentation
• 13 Proven Ways To Increase Online Course Completion Rates
• 7 Ways to Improve Your Online Course Retention Rate

Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution

Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.