Andragogy

A Learning Experience

As an adult learner in the Agile Fundamentals course I took at my employer a few years ago, I found myself both curious and overwhelmed throughout the learning experience. I was definitely intrinsically motivated to participate, since I was about to transition into a role as an Agile Coach, but there was a great deal of information presented over two days. Thankfully, our facilitators guided us through a variety of activities to break up the two days and apply the concepts as we learned - however, the activities were too simplistic for me to feel like we were applying the ideas as faithfully as we could.

I prefer a focused workshop on a particular skill or small set of related skills, as is the preference of adult learners in general (National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, 2007). The organization deemed that taking people away from their work for two full days, as opposed to a series of shorter workshops, made more sense. Knowing what I know now about adult learners, I would advocate again for breaking into smaller workshops.

The content presented often carried a sense of lecture - too much of the instructor telling us what we should think rather than giving us space to question and build our own self-directed understanding. They did a good job recognizing the experience that participants brought to the course, and referencing those examples throughout the two days as well as tying our experiences to their own and to the concepts of the workshop.

Another opportunity to improve this workshop would be to solve more problems while learning - for instance, presenting a quandary related to the agile concept of planning, and letting participants work through some ways to plan better or plan more in order to resolve the quandary. There are some exercises already around other concepts, but they are not as open-ended - something that really allows learners to flex their learning muscles!