Youv’e identified your audience and learning objectives, organized your content, developed your PowerPoint. and you’re ready to present. Now what?

Best Practices

• Stick to your learning objectives. Ensure that all of your instruction contributes to the learning objectives you established early in your presentation.

• Frame instruction around common problems and experiences in the industry; adult learners, in particular, thrive when instruction is pragmatic, significant and relevant to the position they’re in or the position they’re looking to grow into.

• Demonstrate application. While learning objectives for adults address why they should learn something, instructional content should regularly reinforce how learners can apply it. Providing examples, or better yet, working through real-world scenarios (e.g., “Let’s say Thomas is approached by a competitor…”), helps adult learners bind key concepts to familiar workplace responsibilities, and that ready-to-perform assurance can make instruction more engaging, memorable, and meaningful.

• Acknowledge your learners’ experiences. Adult learners are working professionals who are eager to connect existing knowledge with your instructional content. Recognize their contributions by using variations of “you’ve probably” statements (e.g., “You’ve probably worked with a client who…”). This will help center your audience within your instruction.

• Be explicit. If something is critical for your learners to meet your learning objectives, say so (e.g., “This is important!”, “If you’re going to achieve learning objective x, you need to understand this!”; Harrington & Zakrajsek, 2017).

• Be passionate. Passion is infectious; it inspires learners and encourages them to connect with your content. As noted by Harrington and Zakrajsek (2017), enthusiasm and positive energy can keep your learners, particularly those whose experience with the content is limited, engaged, attentive, and better positioned to learn.

• Vary your instruction. Research suggests that adults’ attention spans begin to wane around the 20-minute mark (Cooper & Richards, 2016). As such, regularly pivoting to different modalities of instruction over the course of a session can help keep your learners present and engaged. Dynamic instruction (incorporating lecture, knowledge checks, discussion questions, etc.) is successful instruction.

• Engage your audience. Whether in a lecture hall or webinar, learners want to feel like active participants. Use snap polling, take temperature checks, and ask questions (e.g., “How might you handle a situation like that? How would that make you feel?”) to ensure that learners feel actively seen and heard. Providing time for learners to contribute to a session or even just self-reflect gives learners agency; they are active participants, not passive observers.

• Be aware of an organization’s key business drivers. If your instruction is commissioned by an organization, ask their leaders to clarify what their expected learning outcomes are. Are they looking to future-proof their workforce? Increase employee retention or organizational agility? Develop skills associated with their operational or aspirational goals? While explicitly tying your content to your learning objectives is critical, implicitly contextualizing instruction within key business drivers can ensure that you’re also meeting the expected learning outcomes of the organization.

• Avoid business speak, particularly jargon, acronyms, and initialisms that may be specific to your role or organization. Should you need to establish key terms, be sure to do so at the beginning of your session.

• Be authentic. Above all, be yourself. Best practices can help you refine your existing approach to adult education, but they should not replace who you are, your personality, your values, your experiences as a professional in the field.