An initiative in Adult Learning

Adult Learning is when an adult makes a conscious or unconscious competence choice to learn. This learning theory, though quite new, has its various parameters that mould it and give it the necessary essence. Stephen Lieb has broadly defined adult learners as:
1. Autonomous and self directed
2. Having life experiences
3. Are goal oriented
4. Are relevancy oriented
5. Are practical about the learning
6. Need respect

These characteristics are but generalized ones and need to be modified to suit the Indian audience. Keeping this in mind, adult learning has in the Indian context being termed as Social Learning by some educationists as is evident in the First Five Year Plan (1951-56) by the GOI (Government of India). The major thrust of the Social Education Program was to make illiterate citizens conscious of their rights and responsibilities for building a democratic nation, while incorporating the components of health, recreation, and economic life. This Five Year Plan was not able to make its mark on the education sector in India. In the Fourth and Fifth Five Year Plans, this focus shifted to skill development, but even that did nothing much to promote education for adults. The National Adult Education Program (NEAP) conceptualized in 1976, too was unable to make a dent in the adult literacy areas as was proposed during its inception. The launching of the National Literacy Mission (NLM) in 1988 and its focus on various activities like workshops in rural areas, campaigns, seminars, schemes for rural areas, focus on women empowerment, conservation of the environment, advertisements in radios and TV to gain attention and various other methods focused on developmental literacy, seemed to be the answer to India’s illiteracy problem. The Continuing education program of the NLM is envisaged to link literacy with actual life situations by imparting relevant technical and vocational skills.

In the present scenario, with the increasing popularity of the Internet and other technological breakthroughs, do rural adults still feel themselves at par with their brethren in the cities and metros?

My observation on this is with rapid technological, economic and social changes in society, initial education is now regarded as being inadequate in terms of preparing individuals with the skills and knowledge required for life in a knowledge society. As a result it is necessary to widen access to adult learning opportunities in order to address the changing needs of society. In the rural India context, these adult learners are not just farmers and merchants, they are also higher education students, which till now have been mostly ignored in all adult education programs.

The Times of India started off a unique initiative, Teach India, a few months back to motivate and involve professionals to act as teachers (people who can teach and not just people with a degree to teach) to reach these rural areas. The catch here was to ‘teach the underprivileged’, a term that can propel a person from a run-of-the-mill to being a socially-aware individual. However, this project too has after its initial success, met with a silent demise. I believe the targeted teacher community was not as much interested to teach as was initially thought. But, as the researchers say ‘adult learning is androgogical, i.e. if the learner fails, it’s not seen as a failure of the teacher/instructor’.

Keeping this in mind, we conceptualized the TUNE (Together Understanding the Needs of Education) program. In our case, though the target audience’s age group does not qualify them always to be legally adults, they have taken a decision to be either Management gurus or Engineering giants. This conscious decision to go for a particular stream of education makes them adults.

Various adult learning theories in a nut shell define adults and their learning to be such people who have the necessary access to learning resources but have less time. Our adult learners have less time as they are involved in their college studies, but mostly have no or very less access to learning resources otherwise available so easily on the Internet. This makes our clientele very different from a clichéd adult learner.

TUNE was different from the Teach India initiative in the following ways:
Class: We have targeted MBA and Engineering students studying outside the metros. This was done as the demand for good teachers was found here and so were the ‘underprivileged’ children who come to the class hoping to be taught.
Technology: India till now, thanks to its resource base (read population), has its teachers available. The problem arises as these teachers are mostly available only in the metros leaving a lacunae in educational institutes in the rural sector, where teachers are either lax to go or are just plain unavailable. Taking this factor in consideration we use the VSAT model as a platform for student-teacher interactions. The teachers sit in a metro city and the students can interact with them on real-time, just like they do in a real classroom, albeit with a time delay of 5-6 seconds. This helps highly educated and good teachers to come to this so called ‘Pit stop’ and start teaching.
Reach: We realized that even motivated professionals would have a limited time and considering the length and breath of India, it might not always be feasible for even a really motivated professional to take an off, even for such a lofty cause. So instead, they can sit in a studio close to their home and interact with the students in real time.
Methodology: The aim of the program was to make students interested in the class. As we were aiming at Personality Development/Soft Skills instead of academic excellence, it became even harder to convince students to take these classes. Nobody gives themselves less than an ‘A’ in personality. Our objective is to use simulated work situations, case studies, stories, videos and group activities to build knowledge. This is done based on Pareto’s principle of using 80% practical exercises and 20% lectures to make learning fun. We made the lectures interesting for the student so that they ‘want’ the class and not the other way round. This we achieved by a simple thought that not all students are equally motivated to start learning. So, to make them interested in the class we provide them with ‘Glues’. Glues are meant to glue a student to the class by using videos, stories, etc. that brings out their interest in the class. These items were interspersed with a mixture of ppts, videos showing real time examples of a famous personality, role plays showing a particular situation and how to handle it. Though the major part focuses on Learning by Doing or DIY (Do it yourself).

With 6 colleges in 2 universities, these are still early days for TUNE. We are still modifying and researching new theories, pedagogies and testing them out in our colleges. I will keep you posted about the results of our successes… or otherwise.

Tell me and I will forget, Show me and I will remember, Involve me and I will understand.