One very successful learning experience that I’ve had as an adult was participating in a tango dance festival over the course of a weekend. It was a mix of both formal and informal instruction: there were classes with a professional teacher who taught specific skills to help us reach instructional goals, but there were also milongas (social dances) where I had the chance to dance with and learn from a large and diverse group of dancers, some of whom had participated in the classes and some of whom were total strangers.

While I wasn’t involved with the planning or evaluation of the learning experience, Knowles’ other three principles certainly applied. Especially in the context of a physical and interpersonal skill like tango, experience is crucial: all the book learning in the world won’t make someone a better dancer; instead, the in-person experiences of being in the studio, dancing alone and with a partner, succeeding and struggling, making mistakes, and receiving feedback are the foundation of learning the dance. Being in a setting where that was the sole focus for a whole weekend, and a focus shared by many dedicated, curious, and intrinsically-motivated dancers, made for a powerful learning experience.

The principle of andragogy that will have a major influence on me as I move forward as an instructional designer is the idea of adults being engaged in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction. I already use hands-on experience and relevance to my learners’ lives as the basis for almost all of my education programs, for both youth and adults, and I aim to keep my adult programs problem-focused rather than content-focused. But the idea of going to a group of adults first, opening the conversation about what they want to learn, how they learn best, what their personal goals are, and so on will certainly shift how I approach educational program design.