Message no. 257
Author: Michael Demers
Date: Saturday, April 7, 2007 7:43pm
Learner Analysis Discussion: Dr. Gadget
1. How important is it to understand your learners or potential learning audience?
I must admit that, until recently I really didn’t focus on this topic, although it was always
a topic of conversation. I think the real issue is that, in the past, there was so little
known about how people learn, especially within the educational psychology literature, it
was mostly a heuristic response based on experience rather than well thought out and
strategically planned. It is my belief that the old “teacher focused” model of education is
ineffective and that “learner centered” methods are not only more effective, but were
historically used even in the ancient world. What have we done? I’ve found the history
of the term androgogy useful for helping me understand what went wrong with our
education. The url is http://agelesslearner.com/intros/andragogy.html.
