This is a presentation at the workshop on Emerging opportunities in post-graduate public health education for health systems development, Cape Town, 2015 The School of Public Health (SOPH) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) hosted a two-part workshop series in May and October 2015, as part of its ongoing work with 15 sister institutions in Africa and the global South. The overall aim of the workshops was to explore emerging opportunities for expanding access to, and delivery of, post-graduate training in public health for people working in or managing health services/systems.

1. The Educa)onal Process
BARBARA HUTTON

2. How will we provide a suppor)ve,
distance learning environment for
our students?

3. Factors Influencing a Learner’s Decision to Drop-Out
or Persist in Higher Educa;on Distance Learning
Hannah Street, Mississippi State University

4. How do adults learn best?
Malcolm Knowles - a pioneer in the field of adult
learning - iden)fied characteris)cs of adult learners:
1. Adults are autonomous and self-directed
2. They bring life experience and knowledge to the
learning environment
3. They are goal directed
4. They are relevancy oriented

5. 1. Autonomous and self-
directed
They prefer to be ac)vely involved
in their own learning, and in
direc)ng their own learning goals.
• Engage students in ac)vi)es/tasks
that enable them to construct and
create knowledge and not simply
reproduce it.
• Engage them in ac)vi)es/tasks that
cause them to work with the topic –
rather than merely reading about it.
• Looks for opportuni)es where
students can make choices and
direct their own learning (e.g. set
their own goals; decide how to
complete a task).
What this means for
educators:
Adult learners are:

6. 2. Adults bring life experiences
and knowledge:
They have a wealth of
experiences, knowledge,
opinions and learning that they
bring to the learning programme,
e.g. previous work experience,
family responsibilities, knowledge
of the market, and previous
education and academic
knowledge.
Adult learners are:
What this means for
educators:
• Provide opportuni)es for
students to share their prior
knowledge and experiences.
• Encourage reflec)on, comparing
what they know with what they
are learning.
• Work from the:
• personal to analy)cal
• basic to more complex
• known to unknown
• concrete to abstract

7. 3. Adults are goal-oriented:
They are motivated to learn when
they can see the need to acquire
knowledge to address a real life
problem or situation.
• Develop clearly iden)fied learning
outcomes.
• Develop tasks and ac)vi)es related
to these.
• Encourage 4Cs – cri)cal.,
construc)ve, crea)ve, conscious
learning
Adult learners are:
What this means for
educators:

8. The no;on of ‘unlearning’
Adult experience makes some kind of learning easy and
opens doors to new informa)on because we can use this
experience as the ‘hook’ on which we can ‘hang’ /
understand and internalise new informa)on.
To get past these barriers to learning we first need to
UNLEARN internalised behaviour pa]erns and relearn
new pa]erns/ develop a new set of skills or
competencies. O^en we talk about this in terms of
reflec)on and awareness or conscien)sa)on.
But some)mes adult experience gets in the way and
becomes a barrier to learning especially when we first
encounter something new and outside our experience.
We try to tackle it using the same habits, rules,
percep)ons or construc)ons we have always used and it
doesn’t fit.

9. 4. Relevancy oriented:
Adult learners learn best when they
can relate the learning task to their
own goals and to what they want
to achieve.
What this means for
educators:
Adult learners are:
• Provide some choice if possible, for
example, in a project to work on, in a
topic, a problem to solve, an
assignment to do, etc.
• Give maximum opportunity to put
new knowledge and skill into
prac)ce/ to apply theory to real life
experience and seangs.

10. Bloom’s taxonomy
• Bloom’s tradi)onal taxonomy which was published
some)me in the middle of the last century.
• It was revised in 2001 and was labelled Bloom’s
Revised Taxonomy.
• The revision is a bit different from the original one in
that it replaces nouns with verbs and places emphasis
on the process of crea)ng by puang it on the top of
the thinking con)nuum.
• Since the emergence of the Revised Taxonomy,
several educators have been adding to it expanding
its scope and making it even more comprehensible by
integra)ng technology component into it.

11. Source: h]ps://digitallearningandteaching.wordpress.com/category/blooms-
taxonomy-2/

12. Source: h]p://www.schrockguide.net/
Andrew Churches has ‘married’ the revised taxonomy and technology;
a marriage which resulted in “digital Blooms Taxonomy”.