Great value is placed on lifelong learning in the workplace, but studies suggest that companies and adult learners are often short-changed.

“Some researchers estimate that as much as 90 cents out of every dollar invested in training is lost because of inadequate understanding of the transfer of learning phenomenon,” says Gordon Graham.

It’s a startling number – meant to catch people’s attention. And while quantifying learning is
difficult, Graham says there’s a definite gap in what people are taught and what they apply in the workplace.

This November, Graham becomes the first person to receive a doctoral degree in adult and workplace learning from the Faculty of Continuing Education at the University of Calgary.

The degree is the result of his research into the transfer of learning among adults in the workplace. What people learn in the classroom isn’t being applied in the workplace nearly often enough, he says.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Gordon Graham says reflection and discussion needed after learning experience.

Who is to blame? Instructors? Company management? The adult learner?

It’s all of the above.

As a fundamental part of his research, Graham worked for eight months with three distinct groups of adult learners in Calgary and across Canada. He found great differences in what the groups retained and applied.

At age 54, the process intrigues Graham. He works as a church pastor, a human-resource development
co-ordinator and an online instructor at the U of C.

From his observations and nearly 200 interviews, he has created a model to improve transference and offers
recommendations for instructors, managers and adult workers.

Beginning with the worker, Graham found two distinct images: the people who accept lifelong learning with malevolence and consider it a necessary part of life; and those who genuinely love the journey of constant discovery and education.

He describes the former group as adults in “career fear” – taking courses because they feel obliged to keep up with, or ahead of, the pack.

“Most adult working learners I interviewed were pretty much overwhelmed by the workplace and the lifelong requirements of the modern workplace,” he says. “So much so, it’s difficult for them to do more than just keep up.

“The rubber hits the road in transfer of learning only because the adult learner makes a commitment to make the most of what they are learning.”

He suggests that adult learners take time to reflect on what they really want from life and their jobs. If they are under stress, not balanced, anything they learn becomes a smorgasbord in its absorption and application.

Company managers, too, have key roles. The way to help adult workers is to create a healthy workplace, says Graham, because exhausted, stressed-out workers can’t learn. It’s that simple.

Workplaces must allow time and space for workers to reflect and create, to discuss ways of applying what they’ve learned with both supervisors and co-workers. And they have to be able to present new ideas without fear, a dynamic that is far too pervasive in many of today’s organizations.

“Everybody knows this stuff, but there are good indications that it’s not being focused on enough,” says Graham. “We really have to slow this whole merry-go-round down and try to apply what we’ve learned.”

Just like the workplace, it’s incumbent on instructors to create healthy classrooms. Graham has a loose definition of classroom that can apply to the boss’s office, a seminar centre or a typical physical adult-education environment – anywhere that learning occurs.

Adult learners intuitively understand the differences between healthy and unhealthy environments. They should expect instructors (at the start) to create a socially relaxed and connected atmosphere.

Once this atmosphere is established, instructors need to provide a balance of content and context.

“If there is no opportunity for students to begin to express how they might use this or explore how they could use it, you won’t achieve transfer of learning,” says Graham. To do this, he suggests that instructors pare down the content. Too often courses just become a race to cover all the curriculum.

Time is required in class to reflect on course content as it applies to the individual’s workplace. Classroom discussions, case studies to help students work through difficult concepts, group work and role-playing can all be beneficial.

In his research, Graham observed there are times in the class when a person learns or hears something they think they can use in the future.

It’s at that point that the instructor and the adult learner must work together to bookmark the idea for future use, and recognize the cues that lead to this moment.

The cues actually surface again and again at work, says Graham. For example, in studying leadership and group dynamics, there are early signs that a meeting is becoming unproductive.

In the classroom situation, adult learners have seen these behaviours (side conversations, tension, inattention) played out and have been taught how to get the meeting back on track.

If a person has taken a course on managing work teams, they have these signals that say: ‘It’s now time to draw on the things we learned in class, that we practised in class . . . ’”

Again, it seems to be common sense, but we don’t do it nearly enough, says Graham.

Graham’s research has turned up many issues. His recommendations are too numerous to list in this space.

But he notes that the U of C is developing two courses which are relevant to adult learners, workplace managers and instructors. They’ll be offered through the Certificate of Adult Learning and the Masters of Continuing Education.

It’s hoped the courses will close the gap in the transfer of learning, and help all parties get a better bang for their training dollar.