Adapting and Enhancing Messages for Adult Learners

In adult education, a message that worked perfectly last month may fall flat today. Learners come in with diverse backgrounds, shifting priorities, and varying levels of prior knowledge – and what reaches one person may completely miss another. This is precisely why restructuring the message is not a one-time task but a continuous process. It means revisiting, refining, and reshaping educational communication based on what learners respond to, what they struggle with, and what evaluation data reveals. When done well, it transforms a static lesson into a living, responsive learning experience.

Why messages need to be restructured in adult education 🔗

Adult learners are fundamentally different from school-going children. According to Malcolm Knowles’ theory of andragogy, adults are self-directed, bring rich personal and professional experience to the classroom, and are most engaged when learning connects directly to real-life problems. A fixed, one-size-fits-all message simply does not account for this diversity. What one learner finds clear and relatable, another may find abstract or irrelevant.

This means the initial version of any educational message – whether it is a lecture, a written module, or a video lesson – is really just a starting point. Andragogical principles suggest that adult learners need to understand why they are learning something before they can meaningfully engage with it. If the message does not clearly communicate relevance and purpose, it needs to be restructured, not just repeated louder or more slowly.

Feedback as the foundation of message restructuring 🔗

Feedback is the primary engine that drives any meaningful restructuring of educational messages. It signals whether a message has been understood, partially grasped, or missed entirely. Without a steady flow of feedback, educators are essentially guessing about the effectiveness of their communication.

Research published in PMC on communication in learning environments identifies three essential strands of formative information in any curriculum: statements of expectations, staff feedback on performance, and staff feedforward – information intended to develop a learner’s ability for future tasks. Together, these three elements create a communication cycle that is genuinely bi-directional, with information flowing not just from educator to learner, but back again.

In practical terms, feedback for message restructuring can be gathered through several channels:

• Surveys and questionnaires: These provide structured, quantifiable data on how well learners are receiving the current message.
• Discussion forums and group conversations: Open-ended dialogue reveals the nuances of learner understanding that tick-box surveys often miss.
• Direct observation: Watching how learners engage – or disengage – during a session is itself a powerful form of real-time feedback.
• Assessments: Quiz results and test scores can highlight exactly where comprehension breaks down, pointing directly to the parts of the message that need reworking.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Adult Education and Literacy resources emphasise that high-quality feedback should bridge understanding from expert to learner, scaffold metacognitive strategy, and keep the focus on meaning and expression rather than surface-level errors. This is equally true of the educator restructuring their message – the goal is deeper comprehension, not cosmetic adjustments.

The role of formative and summative evaluation 🔗

Evaluation is what converts feedback from raw data into actionable insight. Two types of evaluation are particularly relevant to message restructuring in adult education.

Formative evaluation 🔗

Formative evaluation, according to Northern Illinois University’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, measures whether teaching methods are effectively relaying the intended messages. It is conducted while the learning is still in progress, making it possible to catch problems early and fix them before they compound. According to instructional design literature, formative evaluation is an iterative process – results from each phase are fed back to educators to improve design. For adult learners specifically, this iterative cycle is especially valuable because their needs and contexts can shift rapidly.

Common formative evaluation tools include low-stakes quizzes, reflective journals, in-class Q&A sessions, and periodic learner check-ins. Each of these provides a window into whether the message is landing – and where it needs to be revised.

Summative evaluation 🔗

Summative evaluation, by contrast, takes place at the end of a learning unit or programme. As defined in instructional design theory, summative evaluation tests the validity of an approach and determines its impact so that future efforts can be improved or modified. For message restructuring, summative evaluation answers a key question: did the final version of the message achieve its intended educational outcome? If not, that finding becomes the starting point for the next round of restructuring.

Adapting the message for diverse adult learners 🔗

Adult learner groups are rarely homogeneous. They differ in age, cultural background, prior education, learning preferences, and the specific life challenges they are navigating while studying. A message restructured for one cohort may need further adjustment for another.

A study published in Frontiers in Education highlights that post-feedback discussions between educators and learners are genuinely beneficial – they open new horizons of thinking for both parties, help resolve misunderstandings, and deepen comprehension. These interactions also reveal whether the restructured message has actually addressed the gap, or whether further revision is needed.

Several practical strategies help educators adapt messages across a diverse adult learner audience:

• Multimodal delivery: Presenting the same core content through text, audio, visual aids, and hands-on activities gives learners multiple entry points into the material.
• Contextual relevance: Anchoring abstract concepts to situations learners encounter in their professional or personal lives significantly improves retention. Knowles’ andragogy principles specifically identify immediate relevance as a driver of adult engagement.
• Simplified language: Jargon-heavy messages often exclude learners who are new to a subject. Restructuring towards plain, direct language broadens accessibility without sacrificing depth.
• Cultural sensitivity: Messages that reflect or respect the cultural contexts of learners are received more openly and with less resistance.

Technology as a tool for ongoing message refinement 🔗

Digital tools have made message restructuring faster and more data-rich than ever before. Learning Management Systems (LMS) now allow educators to track exactly which parts of a lesson learners spent most time on, where they dropped off, and which questions they got wrong most frequently. This data is extraordinarily useful for pinpointing which sections of a message need to be reworked.

Beyond analytics, technology enables real-time restructuring. Educators using live digital platforms can adjust their explanations mid-session based on responses in the chat or poll results. Discussion forums allow learners to articulate confusion in their own words, which often reveals gaps in the original message that the educator had not anticipated. The feedback loop in instructional design – consisting of continuous feedback, analysis, reflection, and iterative improvement – is most effective when supported by these digital tools, which capture and surface learner data quickly and efficiently.

Making restructuring a deliberate practice 🔗

Message restructuring is most effective when it is treated as a deliberate, structured practice rather than an occasional response to poor results. This means building evaluation checkpoints into every programme, creating clear channels for learner feedback from the very first session, and establishing a routine of reviewing what the feedback is saying before the next session begins.

Research on educational leadership communication reminds us that an effective communication strategy is ultimately about sharing meaning, not just sharing information. The same applies directly to adult education: a message that has been thoughtfully restructured based on evidence is a message that carries meaning for its audience. It is no longer just what the educator wants to say – it is what the learner is ready and able to receive.

Educators should also involve learners in the restructuring process itself. Knowles’ andragogical framework explicitly states that adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction. When learners are invited to reflect on how well the message is working for them, they become partners in improving it – and that sense of ownership deepens their engagement with the material.

The continuous nature of message restructuring 🔗

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about restructuring the message is that it never truly ends. Adult learners’ needs evolve, their contexts change, and new cohorts bring entirely new dynamics. A message that was well-calibrated for one group must be re-evaluated for the next. Formative evaluation theory frames this as an iterative approach – one that ensures learners engage effectively with material and achieve desired outcomes through ongoing refinement rather than a single, fixed design.

This iterative mindset is not a sign of failure in the original message; it is evidence of a responsive, learner-centred educator. The willingness to revisit, revise, and restructure is what separates a genuinely effective adult educator from one who simply delivers content and hopes for the best.

What do you think? If you are currently teaching adults, how regularly do you evaluate whether your message is actually landing – and what is your process for restructuring it when it is not? And do you think involving learners directly in evaluating the message changes how they engage with the content itself?

References

1. https://elearningindustry.com/the-adult-learning-theory-andragogy-of-malcolm-knowles
2. https://research.com/education/the-andragogy-approach
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10712501/
4. https://lincs.ed.gov/state-resources/federal-initiatives/teal/guide/feedback
5. https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/formative-and-summative-assessment.shtml
6. https://edtechbooks.org/id/instructional_design_evaluation
7. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/isd/types_of_evaluations.html
8. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1344997/full
9. https://symondsresearch.com/malcolm-knowles-adult-learning-theory/
10. https://elearningindustry.com/evaluating-instructional-design-projects-assessing-success-and-identifying-improvement-areas
11. https://www.newleaders.org/blog/inclusive-effective-communication-4-strategies-for-education-leaders
12. https://www.napsa-now.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Workshop801901Handout5ForSlide30.pdf
13. https://www.coursensu.com/instructional-design-terms/formative-evaluation